In this article series, we take a second look at current events in countries that often remain only briefly spotlighted in German reporting. Together with local experts, we ask: What political and social developments lie behind the current events that we see in the news? What does this mean for democracy and media freedom? With our exile expertise, we want to reveal global connections and understand what we can learn from this for free, democratic coexistence.
In this episode, Azerbaijani journalist Fatima Karimova writes about the repression of media workers in her homeland and why the European Union repeatedly turns a blind eye to it.
Let’s take this opportunity to review the latest developments and the improvements we will be making in the future.
Publish your videos wherever you are
This was our commitment during last May’s crowdfunding campaign: to add a “creator mode” to the PeerTube app so you can upload your videos wherever you are, directly from your smartphone!
You will now find a “Creator” page in the app. From there, you can manage your channels and videos!
At the top of this page, you can access to your different channels to view and edit their information, or add a new channel.
In the middle of the page is a list of all your videos. Each video has a menu that allows you to perform actions on it. From there, you can edit the video information, download the video, add it to a playlist, or delete it.
Finally, at the bottom of the page, you will find the “Publish” button, which allows you to… publish a new video. (Which is surprising, indeed! 🙃)
When you click on it, a menu will pop, allowing you to choose a file from your phone or record a new video directly through the app.
Live streaming and importing from a URL are two options that are currently unavailable, but we plan to work on them in the future.
After selecting the video, you will be able to preview its content.
Then, all you have to do is select the channel where you want to publish your video and start uploading!
You will then receive a notification that your video is uploading in the background. While you wait, you can do something else in the PeerTube app or elsewhere on your smartphone. The upload will continue even if you are using another app!
Finally, on the last two pages, you can edit your video’s information: thumbnail, subtitles, chapters, description, etc.
As with PeerTube for the Web, the mobile app lets you enter all the necessary information!
After clicking on “Publish my video”, you will be redirected to the “Creator” page. There, you will find your new video and the upload status, if it is not yet complete.
As you can see, it’s quick and easy to upload a video with the PeerTube app!
Of course, we can (and want to) improve the process even more. The paint is still wet, so we expect a few minor bugs. We will spend the next few weeks fixing them.
We also plan to add several new features. These include live streaming and the PeerTube studio, for example. There are two other major features, but they require a lot of work.
In any case, we are thrilled to finally allow you to upload your videos within the app. We look forward to continuing our work to improve your experience with PeerTube on mobile!
From the beginning, our plan was to move forward in stages. We focused on the main building blocks first, gradually adding new features and improving the app based on community feedback.
Developing a widely accessible application for PeerTube is no easy task. Its decentralized and federated nature of the platform is difficult for many people to grasp because they are accustomed to the centralized applications of Big Tech companies.
That’s why we chose to work with La Coopérative des Internets. They designed the application to ensure its “decentralized” aspect causes minimal friction.
Thus, each new element added to the application is preceded by discussions and mock-ups created by a designer. We are delighted to have been able to integrate this process into the project!
This decentralized aspect of PeerTube not only poses a challenge in terms of user experience, but also presents a real headache when it comes to getting past the restrictions imposed by Google and Apple’s app stores. For this reason, the list of available platforms in the app was limited for several months after its launch.
Needless to say, these restrictions were as frustrating for you as they were for us. Fortunately, we were able to publish an unrestricted version on F-Droid (although publishing on F-Droid was no easy task either, for other reasons… 😅).
Wicklow shared his experience in developing the app in two articles: Part 1 and Part 2.
Despite the many difficulties encountered during this journey, the PeerTube application is making steady progress! Since the beginning of the year, we have added the following features:
the ability to log in to your own account;
the ability to comment on and read comments on videos;
the ability to receive notifications related to their account activity;
enjoy playlists;
report problematic videos;
access your viewing history;
download videos (on platforms that allow it);
use gestures to change the volume and brightness;
as well as many other diverse and varied improvements…
All these improvements were made possible thanks to your support! Thanks to crowdfunding in May, we raised the necessary funds to continue developing the application.
However, it is also the year-round donations made to Framasoft that finance the PeerTube project as a whole and allow us to look forward to the future of PeerTube with confidence.
If you can and want to contribute to PeerTube’s robustness, consider making a donation and sharing our support page!
Among the recent improvements to the app (including creator mode), several were part of our May commitments.
However, we haven’t delivered everything yet! Several features are still in the pipeline and will arrive in the coming months.
These include, as mentioned above, the ability to play videos in the background (so you can turn off your screen while listening to a podcast), the ability to broadcast live directly via the app, and the release of a tablet-friendly version of the app.
PeerTube is an ambitious project.
Creating software that allows users to build alternative video platforms to those of the digital giants, centered around users (rather than the financial interests of a company), is a monumental challenge.
However, after ten years of development, more and more organizations recognize PeerTube as a reliable solution for distributing their videos.
Our solidarity-based economic model has given us a considerable advantage, allowing us to develop software we are proud of, without pleasing investors and submitting to their endless quest for quick returns.
You are our compass. Thanks to your feedback, we are developing PeerTube to best meet your needs.
The PeerTube mobile app follows the same model as the web app: we are building our vision of a digital world designed for everyone, brick by brick.
Admittedly, there is still a long way to go… but the path is Free!
Let’s build the robustness of PeerTube and Framasoft
Framasoft (and therefore PeerTube) relies on your donations for funding!
By supporting our solidarity-based model, you are not only ensuring a secure, commercial-free future for PeerTube. You are also enabling Framasoft to provide 23 alternative, free services to more than 2 million users!
To achieve this, we need to raise €250,000 by the end of the year. Thanks to over 3,000 donors, we have already raised around €150,000! 🥳
Help strengthen Framasoft by making a donation (66% of which is tax-deductible for French taxpayers) and spreading the word to your friends and family!
Together, let’s prove that a non-commercial digital world accessible to all is possible!
The illustrations were designed by David Revoy and are licensed under CC-BY 4.0.
We’re thrilled to announce the release of PeerTube v8!
This version features a redesigned video player, an improved experience for importing videos and the ability to share channel management with other accounts!
A brand new video player
We created a new theme for the video player for the first time since the beginning of PeerTube development!
This new theme is named Lucide, in reference to the new icons used. It has been designed to be cleaner in order to better highlight the content.
Instead of bold, imposing icons, we opted for a more discreet style with finer lines on the buttons.
We also reworked the volume adjustment button to hide the volume state by default.
Finally, we moved the peer-to-peer information to the “Stats for nerds” menu, which is accessible by right-clicking on the player.
These few improvements breathe new life into PeerTube, giving it a more modern and professional look. They accomplish this by limiting the displayed information to what is strictly necessary. Less is more, as they say!
If you prefer the old theme, don’t worry, it’s still available! You can choose the player theme at the platform, channel, or video level.
These changes are in line with all the design improvements we’ve made this year. With each update, PeerTube becomes more customizable, allowing you to create a video platform that reflects your personality!
Since PeerTube’s inception, many have asked us to add the ability to collaboratively manage a channel. This is, by the way, one of the most requested feature on our platform dedicated to idea suggestions!
Although use cases can very, it is often a critical need for organizations where several people are responsible for uploading new videos.
We are therefore delighted to announce that the collaborative channel management is now possible with PeerTube! 🥳
Thanks to this new feature you can now designate other members of your platform as editors.
Thus, a channel editor will be able to publish new videos, update or delete videos, playlists and comments, as well as add or delete synchronizations and update channel information!
Please note that editors cannot add or remove other editors, or delete the channel.
Of course, as with each new major version, many other improvements have been made.
Some are invisible to the general public, such as ilfarpro’s contribution, which adds the ability to generate storyboards (you know, the thumbnails that display the different images from a video when you hover over the progress bar) through a remote runner instead of the PeerTube server.
Others, however, are much more visible!
For example, this is the case with the improvements made to the system for importing videos and channels from other platforms.
It is now possible to manually rerun a failed import. Also, in the case of a channel synchronization, PeerTube will try to run again a failed import after some time (at the next verification for synchronization, which interval, being 1h by default, is configurable by the platform’s admin).
Finally, information about the status of a video import is now available in the video management page.
Another new improvement is that we have redesigned the appearance of notifications to better match PeerTube’s overall theme!
A complete list of all changes made in this version is available in the dedicated changelog.
The year 2025 was marked by numerous advancements for the PeerTube project as a whole.
In total, we will have released four versions of PeerTube, all of which adhere to the guiding principle of making PeerTube easier for organizations to use.
Indeed, thanks to an NLnet grant, we were able to incorporate important features for this type of audience into the updates.
Keeping this in mind, we improved PeerTube’s design this year and made it easier to customize. Previous versions included the ability to translate PeerTube emails, a redesigned the “About” and “Video Management” pages, and an improved interface for easier batch batch action management (e.g. deleting videos)!
We also added — and this was the big feature in version 7.3! — a configuration wizard to help admins set up their platform according to their profile (institution, community, or individual).
Among other major improvements this year, we can also mention a new moderation tool that allows you to monitor certain words, making it much easier to track comments on your videos or platform!
Finally, thanks to a previous NLnet grant, but also because it was important to us: we completely redesigned the management of sensitive content.
We have long known that people’s sensitivity to a subject varies greatly and that the old system was too simplistic to truly meet the needs of video creators and their audiences.
That’s why we collaborated with La Coopérative des Internets to design system that is more complex (but not more complicated) yet more true to reality!
This recognition reinforces our confidence in the choices (both technical and political) we have made to ensure that PeerTube is a project that serves everyone.
When platforms like YouTube seem to continue to enshittify daily, more and more organizations (particularly medias outlets and institutions) are contacting us to make PeerTube their backup or even primary solution for hosting their videos.
We’re really proud to see that PeerTube truly meets the needs of all these organizations allowing them to create a video platform that they control and that respects their viewers.
First, regarding the mobile app, we aim to finalize the features promised during the crowdfunding campaign , including background video playback, live streaming, and TV apps.
If all goes well, background video playback should be available in early 2026!
Spoiler alert: The app’s video maker mode will be available in a few days… 🤫
Regarding the PeerTube project as a whole, we would like to improve the experience for newcomers by reducing the effort required to find their first PeerTube platform!
The project is still in the planning stages and we still have a lot of work before it can happen. However, our ambitions could have a serious impact on the PeerTube ecosystem and we can’t wait to get started!
Early next year, we will publish the PeerTube project’s traditional roadmap. There, you will find more details about our vision for PeerTube in 2026. We are shaping this vision based on your ideas, so please feel free to share your suggestions on our dedicated platform!
To keep up with all our news (roadmap announcements, new projects, upcoming updates, etc.), you can subscribe to our social media channels and our newsletter.
PeerTube is developed by Framasoft, a french non-profit association raising awareness about digital issues. Framasoft is currently running a fundraising campaign to finance the year 2026.
At the time of writing, there are just over three weeks left to reach our goal of €250,000. However, we have only raised 24% of this target so far.
So if you appreciate PeerTube and would like to support its development, please consider making a donation (66% tax deductible for French residents) and help build a bright future for PeerTube!
Crooked deals with waste are just as lucrative to drug deals – only easier to conceal. An investigation by CORRECTIV.Europe shows how two companies from Germany and Czechia are making hundreds of thousands of tonnes of debris disappear just behind the border.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has designated CORRECTIV as an “undesirable foreign organization.” With this move, the Russian state is placing our journalistic work under blanket threat of punishment—while simultaneously demonstrating that our reporting is effective. Independent investigations are to be made impossible in Russia.
Without machines from abroad, Russia’s weapons factories would grind to a halt. This analysis of Russian import data shows German and European companies supplied goods with potential dual-use applications over 28,000 times in the lead-up to the invasion. How this has impacted the war is often overlooked.
Not much interesting was happening the past few weeks, so this is a multi-week recap. Highlights: release candidates planned for GIMP, Ardour, and FreeCAD; new releases of LSP plugins, new technical preview of Audacity 4.0.
The team is getting ready for the first release candidate of v3.2. This means some interesting features in the works are being postponed till v3.4. One such example is vector masks. Some patches may still come through, though, such as merging paths.
Some neat minor new features merged recently:
Exporting patterns of fill and stroke in vector layers.
The project has been slowly arriving at the first release candidate of version 1.1. There are fewer than 10 release blockers lately, so we may still see the final release in 2025.
At the moment, there are over 300 pull requests, both open and in draft. A huge part of those are scheduled for inclusion in v1.2, which means a busy post-release time.
The Ardour team is getting really close to the first release candidate of v9.0. Upcoming changes include things like much-requested pianoroll windows (see below on the screenshot), a bottom panel editing area for regions and cue clips, cue recording, and various UX/UI improvements.
Most recently, Paul added MIDI note brushing (coming to v9.0, and Robin has been working on a reimplementation of mix tools from Mixbus (probably coming to v9.1 or so).
This is mainly a bugfix update for another recent release, where Vladimir Sadovnikov implemented a Ring-Modulated sidechain plugin series (regular and multiband), A/B preset switching support, integrated loudness metering for Referencer plugin series, and other great new features and improvements.
This is a very exciting and yet not very well-known project that simplifies using global audio effects on Linux, among other things. Wellington Wallace et al. released this new version with a port from GTK4 to Qt/QNL-based user interface.
Other changes include:
Built-in tray icon and menu.
Better echo cancellation.
Various preset improvements.
The last used plugin or tab is now restored when the window is reopened.
For the full list of changes, please see here. The recommended way to install it is from Flathub.
