A new Youtube app officially developed by Youtube has finally replaced the earlier one that used to be maintained by Apple. The new app, now available in the app store, is focused on users of iPhone and iPod touch. While, the iPad app has not been released yet, Youtube has promised that they are working on it and will be coming out with it soon.
The app does have some new features in comparison to its Android counterpart, such as the new YouTube channel guide, which on swiping from the left will reveal a list of all the subscribed channels. More features include things like Airplay mirroring and being able to share videos on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. People will now even be able to comment on the video and explore related videos while it is still playing. The app includes better search experience which will allow for suggestions and autofill (like Google Instant) when performing a search query, while also allowing you to sort and filter videos according to your needs. However, one feature iPhone users might be missing out on, is the ability to save videos for offline viewing when mobile network or WiFi is not available. This feature was recently added to the android app this summer and is not available in iOS because it requires the app to run in the background.
But another major development during this process has definitely been the ability for Google to monetise the app with ads, the previous versions of which were ad-free and hence thousands of videos were not available due to advertising restrictions. This allowed for a very limited collection of videos to be available from the native app. Now that such an ability is baked in, many videos with original content, like music videos from VEVO will now be available for viewers on the iphone.
For most users who haven’t upgraded to iOS6, both the official Google’s app and the one bundled by Apple will be available. However once iOS6 is rolled out in a few days, the older version of the bundled app will be phased out.
