Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. PeerSeek for Android TV lets you browse and watch PeerTube videos with your remote. It runs on Android TV and Google TV devices with Android 8 or newer, such as the NVIDIA Shield, Chromecast with Google TV, and TVs from Sony, Philips, TCL or Hisense. Samsung (Tizen) and LG (webOS) TVs are not supported. The app is in a closed test on Google Play right now, and anyone can join.

Google Play only lets a new app go public after at least 12 testers have stayed opted in to its closed test for 14 days in a row. Every tester helps, and you get the app before everyone else. Please keep the app installed and stay opted in for those 14 days.

Use the same Google account that is signed in to the Play Store on your TV for every step.

1. Join the testers group: groups.google.com/g/peerseek-testers (opens in new tab). Click Join group. You won't get any emails unless you want them.
2. Opt in to the test: play.google.com/apps/testing/video.peerseek.tv (opens in new tab). Click Become a tester.
3. Install the app from its Google Play page (opens in new tab) in a web browser on your computer or phone. Click Install, pick your TV from the device list, and the app installs on the TV within a few minutes.

While the test runs, searching for PeerSeek in the Play Store on the TV does not find the app, so install it through the web page as in step 3. Updates arrive on the TV automatically.

• Make sure you picked your TV, not your phone, in the device list. The app only runs on TVs.
• Check the Android version under Settings → Device Preferences → About. The app needs Android 8 or newer, so install any system update first.
• Make sure the TV is signed in with the account you joined the group and opted in with.
• Open the Play Store on the TV once, wait a few minutes, then reload the web page.

Wrap words in double quotes to match them as an exact phrase.
Try it: "free software" — finds videos containing that exact phrase rather than videos that simply mention both words separately.

Put a minus sign directly before a word to exclude it from results.
Try it: linux -ubuntu — finds videos about Linux that do not mention Ubuntu.

Use before: and after: followed by a date in YYYY-MM-DD format.
Try it: blender after:2025-01-01 — finds Blender videos published since the start of 2025.

Yes, all modifiers work together in a single query.

Search modifier syntax

Modifier	Syntax	Effect
Exact phrase	"words here"	Matches the exact phrase
Exclude	-word	Removes results containing the word
After date	after:YYYY-MM-DD	Only results published on or after the date
Before date	before:YYYY-MM-DD	Only results published before the date

Try it: "open source" privacy -google after:2024-01-01

PeerSeek is a search engine for PeerTube (opens in new tab), the federated video platform. It crawls hundreds of PeerTube instances, indexes their videos, and lets you search across all of them from one place — no account required.

PeerSeek discovers instances automatically from the PeerTube instance index (opens in new tab). If your instance is not showing up:

• Make sure your instance is registered in the index.
• Make sure your robots.txt does not block PeerSeek crawler traffic. Add an allow entry such as:

  User-agent: PeerSeekCrawler
  Allow: /

Once listed and allowed, it will be picked up by the next crawl cycle (typically within a few hours).

PeerSeek uses a random, anonymous token stored in your browser's local storage to learn from your searches and clicks. Over time, topics, channels, and tags you interact with get a small ranking boost in your home feed and search results. No account, email, or login is involved — the token is a random string that cannot be traced back to you. Inactive personalization profiles are automatically cleaned up after 30 days without use.

Clear your browser's local storage for this site. In most browsers you can do this via Developer Tools → Application → Local Storage, then delete the entry for peerseek.video. Alternatively, clearing all site data for this origin in your browser settings will also remove it. A new anonymous token is generated automatically on your next visit.

Yes. PeerSeek exposes a read-only JSON endpoint. No API key or account is required.

GET https://peerseek.video/v1/search?q=blender

All the search modifiers from above ("exact phrase", -exclude, after:, before:) go inside the q parameter, URL-encoded.

Search API query parameters

Parameter	Description
q	Search query, including modifiers (required for results). A query that is exactly a PeerTube video UUID, shortUUID, or a /w/… watch link resolves that video directly.
sort	relevance (default), date, views, or trending.
category	Filter by category label (see /v1/filters).
language	Filter by language code (e.g. en).
subtitle_language	Filter to videos with subtitles in that language code (e.g. de).
instance	Limit results to a single instance host.
include_nsfw	true to include NSFW results (default false).
include_live	true to include live streams in search results (default true in the UI; omit or false to hide them).
page	Page number, starting at 1.
size	Results per page, 1–100 (default 24).

Example: /v1/search?q="open source" -google after:2024-01-01&sort=date&size=10

A JSON object with the matching videos and paging info:

{
  "videos": [
    {
      "id": "…",
      "title": "…",
      "description": "…",
      "tags": ["…"],
      "thumbnailUrl": "https://…",
      "isLive": false,
      "views": 0,
      "likes": 0,
      "comments": 0,
      "instance": "example.org",
      "channel": "…",
      "channelHandle": "…",
      "account": "…",
      "accountHandle": "…",
      "category": "…",
      "language": "en",
      "captionLanguages": ["en", "de"],
      "durationSeconds": 0,
      "publishedAt": "2025-01-01T00:00:00Z",
      "videoUrl": "https://…"
    }
  ],
  "total": 0,
  "page": 1,
  "size": 24
}

Please crawl responsibly: cache where you can and keep request rates reasonable.