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Posts tagged with "youtube"

YouTube 2.0 For iOS Released With Picture-in-Picture, Updated Design

YouTube 2.0

YouTube 2.0

Today, Google has officially launched version 2.0 of its YouTube app on the App Store, bringing a tweaked user interface, new icon, and picture-in-picture to the mobile client.

The big new feature of this version is picture-in-picture for videos, which allows you to keep watching a video while browsing or searching. This has been a popular option of third-party clients such as FoxTube for quite a while, and, in Google’s implementation, the player can be dismissed with a tap on an arrow button or a swipe down directly on the video player. Both on the iPhone and iPad, dismissing the player reveals a delightful animation and transition that quickly sends the video down to the bottom of the screen, where you can tap again to enlarge it, or swipe it away to close it.

Overall, the improved animations of the app are much snappier and responsive than version 1.4, and there are dozens of new transitions, translucency effects, and subtle interface hints that contribute to making navigation faster and fluid.

YouTube 2.0

YouTube 2.0

More importantly, YouTube 2.0 packs a tweaked design – starting from the icon – that suggests Google has been getting its iOS apps ready for the major 7.0 update coming to iOS this Fall. The app gets rid of several textures and graphical elements for a more subdued design with a focus on colors (red for selections, gray for the sidebar, whitespace for navigation and search results), transparency, gestures, and animations. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine Google going one step further with this new design and enhancing with iOS 7-only APIs such as blurs and physics effects once iOS 7 is available. The new app doesn’t mimic the look of Apple’s iOS 7 apps, but it does look like Google’s way of easing users into iOS 7’s (fast-approaching) future.

Based on my initial tests, YouTube 2.0 seems to be a powerful and welcome improvement over the old version. The picture-in-picture player is a great addition, and the app has a cleaner, more responsive interface.

YouTube 2.0 is available on the App Store.

Why I Use FoxTube

FoxTube

FoxTube

After Cody linked to FoxTube for Mac two days ago, I figured I haven’t mentioned why, after nearly a year and a major update, I’m still using FoxTube for iOS alongside the official YouTube app.

FoxTube isn’t the best looking app ever made for iOS; while the 2.0 version improved the overall design, there’s still a lot going on in terms of interface and everything feels a bit cramped, especially on the iPhone. The icon is a literal representation of the app’s name; sometimes, icons in toolbars overlap with navigation buttons. I wish the FoxTube developer could find a way to slim down the interface and make some parts more cohesive, but I understand how that can be difficult when FoxTube does so many things.

FoxTube is a supercharged YouTube client for iOS. I know what you’re thinking: you don’t need another YouTube app after the release of the (free) official client. And that is probably true – as MacStories readers know, I’m a big fan of the new YouTube app (App Store users seem to agree, too). FoxTube, however, is a great complement to the YouTube app that I recommend if you’re looking for more flexibility and customization in certain aspects of the YouTube experience. Read more

FoxTube For Mac→

Almost a year ago we highlighted FoxTube, an alternative YouTube replacement for iOS that filled in a lot of missing gaps. And even though Google’s own YouTube app (iTunes link) has replaced Apple’s and delighted many users, FoxTube is the non-Jailbroken power user’s player of choice, offering extra playback controls, media information on the lock screen, and the ability to play media in the background.

While I’m personally happy browsing YouTube on the web and using Tube Controller to integrate my Mac’s media keys, FoxTube has come to the Mac, giving anyone the power to download videos offline for later viewing, take advantage of advanced media controls, and play media through a convenient mini player. In contrast to many recent app launches for OS X, it’s even available for the latest version of Lion. FoxTube for Mac is $9.99, but you can download a free trial from the developer’s website. Due to restrictions on the App Store, I’d recommend purchasing the app from the developer to get the full set of features.

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iOS YouTube Downloader with Pythonista→

iOS YouTube Downloader with Pythonista

Useful script created by “pudquick” on the Pythonista forums:

Browse to http://m.youtube.com in Mobile Safari, view a video that you like (press Stop if it starts playing, you need to be looking at the page - not the video actually playing), then click on “Bookmarks” and select the bookmarklet that you created.

This will launch my script, which will pull the URL of the page you were looking at as an argument, parse it, figure out the direct download URL for the .mp4 video file, then open iDownloads directly to that URL to start downloading it.

As pudquick says, third-party YouTube clients with a “download” functionality are usually removed from the App Store as Google doesn’t allow downloading video files from the service. However, by using Pythonista to crawl the webpage and find the direct .mp4 link of a video, pudquick managed to put together a handy solution to go from your web browser to Pythonista and then directly to iDownloads to start downloading the .mp4 file.

However, I don’t use iDownloads – I prefer Readdle’s Documents and good.iWare’s GoodReader. Replacing iDownloads with your favorite file manager is very easy: in the penultimate line of the script, replace the iDownloads://URL with the one of the app you want to use (the URL of the .mp4 will be appended to it). Unfortunately, Documents doesn’t seem to be able to download .mp4 files in this way, but I had no problems with GoodReader. Simply use ghttp://to forward the .mp4 file to GoodReader and start downloading it automatically.

Make sure to check out pudquick’s explanation of the script and bookmarklet here. For our previous coverage of Pythonista, check out our tag page and my original review.

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Control YouTube Videos with Your Mac’s Media Keys with Tube Controller

Out of habit I tend to reach for my media keys when playing music and videos. While Rdio has certainly spoiled me with its compatibility I’ve yet to learn that the rest of the world, the web mainly, doesn’t work with the three most useful keys on my keyboard. While trying to pause YouTube videos with the play / pause key can lead to some egregious overdubs, it’s always a little frustrating when it doesn’t just work.

Enter Tube Controller, a free app from the Mac App Store for anyone running Snow Leopard and beyond. Interfacing with Chrome and Safari, Tube Controller sits in the menubar and enables your Mac’s media keys to fast forward, rewind, and pause videos on YouTube. It’s simple and convenient. You can’t hide the menubar icon, but you can tuck it away with Bartender if you’d like.

Tube Controller does a few clever things. Rewinding and fast forwarding YouTube videos is interesting because it always feels like it works perfectly. That is to say in just the right increments. It isn’t an exact amount, but Tube Controller seems rewind and fast forward in roughly 3.5-percent increments based on some quick math and plentiful watching of various length videos. Some more complicated algorithm looks at the duration of the video and slightly adjusts where needed.

The app is also aware of iTunes and what it’s doing. If it’s in the background, Tube Controller will keep eyes on YouTube, letting you play and pause the video even when you’re browsing other tabs or jumping into different apps. Once iTunes comes into the foreground or you close whatever tab your YouTube video is playing in, Tube Controller directs the media keys to control iTunes instead. Apps that implement their own media key solutions like Rdio will override the controls.

Without the Flash Player installed, I’ve found Tube Controller doesn’t work with the YouTube 5 extension I have enabled on Safari. Others, in the app’s review section and on Twitter, have noted that Tube Controller also doesn’t work in a full screen view. I’ve personally had success with Chrome and both its full screen and presentation modes, as well as YouTube’s full screen video player in that browser.

I don’t know why you would watch two YouTube videos at once, but if you do, Tube Controller handles it pretty well. The last video you viewed takes precedence over the other. It doesn’t work on web pages with embedded YouTube videos, however.

Tube Controller offers to launch when you log on and there’s a few other settings such as keeping your Mac awake while YouTube is playing (although I don’t think my Mac has ever gone to sleep while YouTube is playing) and changing the color of the menubar icon from black to red. You can enable and disable its functionality manually if you’d like.

I’m keeping Tube Controller running in the background (it uses up a measly amount of memory) for the convenience of using my media keys with YouTube. It’s certainly recommended if your play / pause reflexes are anything like mine. Download it from the Mac App Store.

Side note: The developer doesn’t have a personal site or a landing page up, but you can check out some of his other work on Bipolar (a game also available on the MAS).

Nasturtium Player→

Nasturtium Player

I first mentioned the public beta of Nasturtium Player back in November 2012. Nasturtium is an interesting take on an “iTunes mini player” mixed with a queuing system and a way to play videos from YouTube within a single interface. I wrote:

The concept of combining local music with YouTube videos resonates with my music workflow. While I tend to listen to music on Rdio, there are some older albums and songs that I need to keep locally either in iTunes or, most recently, Plex with PlexSync; similarly, there are YouTube videos of older demoes or live concerts of my favorite bands that I want to access every once in a while. I like how Nasturtium unifies search of local media and YouTube videos in a single interface.

Nasturtium has been out on the App Store for a few weeks now, and I like the improvements that went into the final version. There are keyboard shortcuts to control playback and playlists, and YouTube videos (while not resizable) now have preview thumbnails. Adding items to the queue is still as easy as hitting Enter, but you can also drag a song (from either iTunes or YouTube search results) into the main playlist interface, or use a “+” button. I particularly appreciate the possibility to collapse headers in search results to filter down results to Tracks or Albums (sorting options are also available).

As usual when trying new apps, it’s the care about small details that stands out to me. I like the thinking process that went into Nasturtium. The amount of minutes “remaining” in a playlist is available in the status bar at the bottom, but you can click it to show total minutes; similarly, while you can click the Play/Pause buttons to trigger playback, you can double-click the Play one to skip a track. As detailed in the app’s Help page, you can search by rating and genre as well simply by typing the information you need. I recommend reading more about the design process of the app here.

Nasturtium Player is $5 on the App Store.

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YouTube for iOS Gets iPhone 5 and AirPlay Support, iPad Version

Following a major update to Gmail for iOS, Google has today also released a new version of its YouTube app, which includes AirPlay and iPhone 5 support, as well as an iPad version that makes the app Universal.

One of the new features is the Guide of channels that you can access by tapping on the YouTube logo in the title bar; tap it, and you’ll go back to the app’s main sidebar, listing your account’s options and Channels. On the iPhone 5, YouTube is now optimized for the taller screen – a glaring omission that has annoyed several iPhone 5 users since the device’s release. Among other improvements – including clickable links in video descriptions and ability to add or remove a video from your playlists – a notable addition is AirPlay support: you can now natively stream videos to any AirPlay-compatible device such as the Apple TV or a Mac running Reflection (which is what I tested).

The iPad version of the app is rather obvious, but still welcome: it packs a sidebar on the left side, and main content on the right side of the screen. When you tap on a video, the right portion becomes the main view hiding the sidebar and displaying suggested videos on the right. Interestingly, you can’t browse and watch videos at the same time, as the sidebar will always be hidden after you click a video’s thumbnail.

For everything else, both the updated iPhone app and iPad version share the same features that I covered in my original review of the app, and today’s changes are definitely improvements worth checking out – it’s especially good to see Google supporting AirPlay right after the 1.0 release. Both on the iPhone and iPad, Google offers a feature in the Settings to open links in Chrome, also available for both platforms on the App Store.

The updated YouTube app is available on the App Store. More screenshots of the iPad app are available below. Read more

Jasmine: Free, Elegant YouTube Client for iPhone and iPad

In my ongoing coverage of YouTube apps for iOS (a rising trend following the removal of the official YouTube app from iOS 6), I have been able to test Jasmine, a new YouTube client developed by Jason Morrissey, creator of Alien Blue.

If you’re looking for a YouTube app that’s elegantly designed, easy to use, and that runs both on the iPhone and iPad, I think Jasmine is your best option for now. And knowing Jason, I believe the app will soon get better with fixes, more features, and improvements to the interface. I’ve been testing Jasmine for the past two weeks, and especially on the iPad, the app has become my go-to client when I want to sit back and watch some videos on YouTube.

Both on the iPhone and iPad, the app has a light gray color scheme with font and menu navigation choices somewhat reminiscent of Morrissey’s work with Alien Blue; the app is fast at moving between sections, and you can tap on the status bar to switch to a “night mode” that makes the entire UI black. On the iPad, the app makes use of a Tweetie-inspired panel navigation, both in portrait and landscape mode; the performances are good, and panels contribute to facilitating the process of instantly seeing whether a video belongs to a playlist or a search query. Speaking of search, one of Jasmine’s nicest touches is the search field, which rotates and expands inline with a cute animation. I’d like to see search suggestions in a future update, though.

In Jasmine – like any other client these days – you can log into your YouTube account, or use the app to just search and browse YouTube content. The main screen/panel features shortcuts for search, browse, favorites, playlists, subscriptions, and recently played videos. The latter is just a local collection of videos you’ve watched on your device – it won’t sync with History on YouTube.com or another instance of Jasmine on another device (idea: iCloud sync could be used to sync videos across devices). The “Subscriptions” section, on the other hand, does synchronize with channels you’ve subscribed to through YouTube’s website (or another app), and lets you watch videos on a single channel basis, as well as a list of “latest videos” from all subscriptions – a useful feature to catch up on every new upload. Furthermore, if you want to discover more channels, you can search, enter a specific username, or check out YouTube recommendations in-app.

As I used Jasmine, I noticed I kept coming back to the “Browse” area. I don’t typically do this on the (cluttered) YouTube website, but I found myself casually checking out YouTube’s Featured and Trending videos a lot more with Jasmine.

Both channels and videos are presented with their own custom page. Videos have a large thumbnail at the top (which you can tap to play), and more actions below, such as comments (you can leave new ones), a link to the uploader’s page, description, ratings, related videos, mark as favorite, add to playlist, and share. Sharing supports the services iOS natively comes with, and is presented through the new iOS 6 share sheet. There is no option to set a specific streaming quality (like in Tube+), but there’s a setting you can turn on to be asked every time which kind of quality you’d like to load a video with (medium, 720p, etc).

If you don’t want to open a video page to share or mark as favorite, you can swipe on a result to bring up an action bar with buttons to share, add to playlists, and star. The same can be accomplished by tapping & holding a video, and I wish this feature also allowed me to quickly open an uploader’s page, like FoxTube does.

There are some things I wish Jasmine did better. For instance, I can’t find a section to catch up on the videos I “saved for later” on YouTube; and speaking of available sections, I think that, on the iPad, the larger screen could allow for an option to save personal shortcuts (say, to a playlist or search) in the sidebar.

On the surface, Jasmine looks extremely simple. But don’t let the app’s clean design and no-clutter approach fool you: Jasmine packs a lot of YouTube functionalities as well as nicely implemented little touches (the pinch-to-close gesture to dismiss panels on the iPad, the custom pull-to-refresh animation) that make for an intuitive and pleasant YouTube experience on iOS. And like I said above, if you own an iPad and have been looking for a great YouTube client, you should check out Jasmine.

Jasmine is free, with an in-app purchase to unlock parental controls and support the development of the app.

Tube+ Is A Clean and Fast YouTube Client for iPhone

With Apple removing the built-in YouTube app from iOS 6 and Google releasing its own (pretty good) official app on the App Store, we should expect a renewed interest in third-party YouTube clients offering alternative features and designs. Tube+ is one of the first apps to hit with the “new wave” of YouTube clients, and I like it.

Developed by Chocomoko, Tube+ is simpler, both in terms of design and functionalities, than YouTube’s own app, or my favorite third-party client to date, FoxTube. You shouldn’t judge Tube+ by its streamlined appearance, however, as the app has access to some features and options that not even the official YouTube app has (for now). You can use Tube+ with or without a YouTube account; if you log in with your credentials, you’ll gain the possibility to check out your subscriptions, favorites, watch later videos. and uploads. If you don’t log in, you’ll still get access to regular search, Featured, Top Rated, Top Favorites, and Most Popular videos. To get the best experience, I obviously recommend logging into the service with your account.

The interface of Tube+ revolves around three tabs: Videos, Search, and Downloads. I’d like to focus on Downloads right away: unlike many other apps that had to remove a similar functionality, Tube+ (still?) allows you to download videos and keep them in a local cache so you can watch them offline. And the best part is, when you hit the download button on a video page, you’ll be asked to choose the “format you prefer” – you can download at 360p, 720p, 1080p, and all the in-between options YouTube provides. Tube+’s offline caching functionality is simple and effective, but you won’t be able to organize downloaded videos in local playlists or folders.

The main tab, Videos, is where you’ll spend most of your time. Here, you have various options to navigate around YouTube content using the top bar, which, similarly to Tweetbot, is actually made of buttons to change sections. The left button, a profile icon, is used to switch between public contents-only or your account; the button on the right lets you choose the default quality of YouTube videos you’ll stream, from 240p and up to 1080p with an “auto” option that loads videos depending on your Internet connection. Last, the main area of the top bar lets you switch between the aforementioned supported YouTube sections, your subscriptions, and videos you’ve liked or saved for later.

What I like about Tube+ is the control it gives me over the quality of videos I stream and download, but, more importantly, its speed and responsiveness. Tube+ is fast: sections load in a snap, video thumbnails load instantaneously when searching. There is a “load more” button to fetch more content from search, and the developers implemented the new iOS 6 pull-to-refresh mechanism to make it easy to check for updates or simply reload a page (note: Tube+ requires iOS 6). Alongside with notable performance, I appreciate the decisions behind the feature set of Tube+: again, it’s not as rich as YouTube or FoxTube, but you can still subscribe to channels and add videos to playlists, share videos with your friends, write comments, like, dislike, and mark a video as favorite.

There are some things I think Tube+ could do better. Firstly, I don’t like how, when sharing on Facebook or iMessage, the app uses its own short URL instead of regular YouTube links. This is particularly inconvenient for services that generate thumbnail previews only for YouTube URLs, like Twitter and Facebook. Second, I’d like to see an option to easily open an uploader’s video page – this is something that FoxTube still gets perfectly right in my opinion.

Overall, Tube+ offers a clean and fast experience – particularly if you use search a lot, you’re going to notice the speed of the app compared to Google’s official YouTube client. Tube+ doesn’t have the same amount of features YouTube and FoxTube have (for instance, there’s no separation of videos and channels in search results), but at $0.99 with offline caching, a good feature set and an elegant design, you should definitely consider Tube+.