Watchtube lets you tune into your favourite videos and even like and subscribe
We’re not sure how many Apple Watch users need this in their lives, but there’s a new Watch app that will now let you watch YouTube videos on your Apple smartwatch.
It’s called WatchTube and is available now on the App Store for free and essentially brings the video platform to your smartwatch so you browse, search, play videos and it can even display captions.
Read this: Best Apple Watch apps to download now
Once you’ve got the app downloaded, it’s pretty much a case of launching it and finding something to watch. It’ll even use the onboard Watch speaker to play the sound or you can pair up with some Bluetooth headphones for a private viewing session.
You can search for playlists and channels and subscribe to your favourite content creators from the app too. It apparently uses an algorithm to shape the curated and generated video content you’ll see when you boot up the app with that process taking place when your Watch is offline.
If you’ve got the latest Apple Watch Series 7, there’s integration with the virtual QWERTY keyboard to help search for videos and it also supports search via dictation and scribbles.
Something you currently can’t do is log into your own YouTube account to watch your own videos. You also can’t view Shorts, but the developer behind it who took 7 months to build it, has set up a Reddit thread covering things that is being worked on. That includes adding an audio only mode that supports HQ audio.
The App Store listing doesn’t have a list of compatible watches, but based on the feedback in that thread owners everyone from Series 3 to the new Watches are finding it useable, which is good news if you’ve been looking for another screen to get your YouTube fix.
Quite how Apple decided to give this one a thumbs up is definitely a surprise to us and we’re sure Google might be keeping a close eye on this app as well too.
An official YouTube Apple Watch app doesn’t currently exist and it’s probably because Google didn’t see much value having one for a small screen. If the downloads start racking up though, it might well change it’s tune.
As mentioned, the WatchTube app is available now and you can download it for free if you want to give it a try. Just make sure your iPhone is running iOS 13 or later if you want to use it.
