LibreTV

LibreTV is a lightweight, free web app for searching and watching online video. Its README is written in Chinese. The idea is that you deploy your own copy of LibreTV, and it then searches across several third-party video sources and plays the results in your browser. There is no account or registration: once it is running, you open it and use it, and it works across different devices. The project is a rebuild and extension of an earlier project called bestK/tv.

Most of the README is a deployment guide. Because LibreTV includes a small backend proxy as well as the web pages, it needs to run on a host that supports server-side functions. The README gives step-by-step instructions for several free hosting platforms, including Cloudflare Pages, Vercel, Netlify, and Render, each with a one-click deploy button. It also shows how to run it yourself using Docker or Docker Compose, and how to set up a local development environment with Node.js. A repeated, emphasized instruction is that every deployment must set a PASSWORD environment variable, both for security and to avoid copyright disputes.

The project is clear about its intended use and its legal limits. It states that LibreTV is for learning and personal use only, should not be used commercially or as a public service, and that users are responsible for following their local laws. A disclaimer explains that LibreTV is only a search tool: it does not store, upload, or distribute any video itself, and all results come from third-party APIs.

The README also covers some practical details. You can add your own custom video sources if they follow a standard API format. The video player supports keyboard shortcuts for play and pause, seeking, volume, mute, and full screen. The listed technology stack includes plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Tailwind CSS for styling, the HLS.js library and DPlayer for video playback, serverless functions on the chosen host, and browser local storage for saving settings.