Minitube Streams YouTube Videos Right to Your Desktop -- No Flash Required

YouTube is a great service but its cluttered user interface leaves a lot to be desired. Minitube is a solid open source YouTube viewing client that gives users a way to search and watch videos without all the visual distractions.

Once installed, just fire up the app and type in a keyword. Minitube pulls up a list of all relevant URLs along with thumbnail images and plays them one after the other. Handy controls at the top of the screen let you quickly pause, play or skip videos. There's even a button to toggle HD on and off.

My only quibble with Minitube in the inability to delete recent keyword searches. Other than that, it's a terrific app that eliminates the need to poke around YouTube's Web site and navigate through a sea of ads, comments, and related videos you may not care about.

Minitube is for Linux and Mac OS X only, and does not require Flash to work. "A few people tried to build Minitube on Windows but the results were not releaseable. This is mainly due to the weakness/instability of Phonon on Windows. Let’s wait for Qt 4.6," writes its developer.