YouTube App for Apple TV Receives Major Redesign

[MacRumors]

The YouTube app for the Apple TV received a complete design overhaul today, introducing a new interface that's similar in design to the YouTube app for iOS, YouTube on the desktop, and the YouTube app for other television platforms.

Rather than a single navigation bar at the top that links to sections like Search, Home, and Subscriptions, there's a new universal search bar that's easier to access along with dedicated categories like Recommended, Entertainment, Food, Music, Gaming, Technology, Comedy, and more, which makes it easier to find new content relevant to your interests.

A navigation bar on the left side of the screen provides access to your subscriptions, library, and viewing history, and there's a new, more detailed settings section.

While today's update lists 4K videos as "4K" in the video app, it does not appear that YouTube is supporting 4K content on the Apple TV at this time. When viewing details about a video, maximum available resolution is still listed as 1920 x 1080.

Today's revamped YouTube Apple TV app comes just a few days after YouTube officially introduced its separate YouTube TV app for the Apple TV, allowing YouTube TV subscribers to access live content.

The new YouTube app for Apple TV is available now, and it can be installed by going to the YouTube app in the App Store and choosing "update" if it does not update automatically.

Article Link: YouTube App for Apple TV Receives Major Redesign

 

[sputnikv]

that’s horrible

 

[Dydegu]

Awesome! It definitely needed some love. Can't wait to check it out.

 

[bekiil]

About freakin time!

 

[benji888]

Anything's got to be an improvement!

 

[itsmilo]

That UI looks very .... dated? Like something you would find on an old Nokia Symbian player but maybe its also the dark content in those samples distracting

 

[teezy]

Great, now it looks like the YouTube app on every Smart TV and my PlayStation 4 lol, much needed.

 

[questionmark32]

No 4K? I appreciate the update, but that kinda stinks.

 

[superduperultra]

4K will come later with AV1, this update has been long overdue we should be very thankful.

Good job.

 

[shinyleaf]

This design looks like an Android app by Google.

 

[mariusignorello]

That UI looks very .... dated? Like something you would find on an old Nokia Symbian player but maybe its also the dark content in those samples distracting

Kinda like the cheap barely-functional Smart TV counterpart.

 

[Sheza]

What did the old one look like?

It's looked like this on my Amazon Fire TV for ages.

 

[mariusignorello]

This design looks like an Android app by Google.

Well Google does own YouTube. Apple didn’t make this app.

 

[kendo88]

Ok, but no 4K means I will never use it

 

[bekiil]

Ok, but no 4K means I will never use it

eh? It will never be 4k on the old atv4 or previous. On the ATV 4K however, mine plays 4K youtube videos

 

[GizmoDVD]

eh? It will never be 4k on the old atv4 or previous. On the ATV 4K however, mine plays 4K youtube videos

No, yours does not play 4K on the ATV4K.

Its still 1080p. No 4K.

 

[wolfshades]

I'm happy they've changed it this way. It'll make it much easier to use. And oh by the way, since we're in the mood to complain about the lack of 4K - how about bringing YouTube Red to Canada? It's not like we've been asking,,,,

 

[iapplelove]

Sweet! I’m a heavy YouTube user so this is great news.

 

[69Mustang]

I'm happy they've changed it this way. It'll make it much easier to use. And oh by the way, since we're in the mood to complain about the lack of 4K - how about bringing YouTube Red to Canada? It's not like we've been asking,,,,

Yeah, they should roll out Red to a wider audience. It's definitely a better experience. When I see regular YT I get shocked at how much my normal Red experience differs.

 

[eyeseeyou]

They need a "add to queue" function like the ios to firestick version does.

 

[Mrjoedot]

There were better days when youtube had previous design for iOS, which does not look like Android. Smh

 

[Böhme417]

Netflix needs to be next.

 

[Andydigital]

The dumbasses removed the auto frame rate switching, how do I roll back to the previous app?

 

[CarlJ]

What did the old one look like?

The old one was extremely barebones but fairly speedy - you had to go to an iPhone/iPad/computer to do the simplest of things, like liking/disliking a video or jumping from a video to the creator's channel page. I would literally watch something on the TV and then go to my YouTube watch history in Safari on my MBP to "like" a video.

This version adds most of the needed controls (I'm still not seeing "add to a playlist", or, say, a long-press in the recommended feed for choices like "watch later" and "not interested"). It also feels a bit janky on scrolling, particularly the side scrolling to select from the row of buttons shown when "more options" is chosen under a playing video. They added full video details (creator, date, views - using way more space than needed) under thumbnails and made the thumbnails bigger (frankly, they were big enough before), but this means substantially fewer thumbnails fit on the screen at once (horizontally and vertically), and now there's not-quite-two rows of thumbnails, rather than many - it's a bit like looking at everything through a telescope: you can see one thing very clearly, but have to do a lot of constant scrolling around to see "the world around you" (imagine you were working on a spreadsheet but the app insisted on displaying only 2 rows and 3 columns). Hulu made this same mistake in their redesign - too far in the "viewable from 50ft away" direction, sacrificing field of view, giving the user tunnel vision. It doesn't help that the YouTube app jump scrolls to always keep the top row at the top - makes it feel janky, and you lose the smooth change from one topic/row to another, contributing more to the feeling of loss of context.

In addition, they use the top row of the screen for: a continuously displayed "YouTube" name/logo, and a search bar. But the search bar takes you to a different screen (more loss of context), so they could have just as easily put the YouTube logo (sans name) and the magnifying glass (to get to the separate search page) in the top left corner of the home screen, and used the full vertical height for thumbnails, at least getting a complete two rows in.

They also "helpfully" turned autoplay back on for me, but this can be disabled in the app's settings screen.

I'm glad to have the increased functionality, but there's substantial room for improvement.

 

[NexusUser]

More like Apple still hasn't enabled 4k for YouTube since they refuse to support the royalty free VP9 codec, supporting only HEVC since they make money liscening it out to streaming services. Yet another example of the Apple Tax hard at work.