Dave Smith/Business InsiderYouTube completely redesigned its app for the Apple TV earlier this year.
YouTube’s Apple TV app was updated to be more in line with Google’s design language — called “Material Design” — which has been in place since 2014. Most Android apps, including all of Google’s key apps like Docs, Drive, and Sheets, have Material Design applied, and in February of this year, it finally hit the YouTube app on Apple TV.
Unfortunately, the resulting experience is a muddled mess.
Here are my main gripes with the YouTube app on Apple TV:
The YouTube app also doesn’t support voice control, which is one of the Apple TV’s most useful features, so you’re forced to rely on the remote’s touchpad.
Dave Smith/Business Insider
Not everyone likes the touchpad on the Apple TV remote; I personally find it too slick and inconsistent. That’s why I prefer to use the Siri button on the remote to control the Apple TV with my voice. I can say “fast forward five minutes” or “rewind 30 seconds,” or even “what did (s)he just say?” The last one will rewind your content and activate closed captions for about 15 seconds. It all works like a charm.
Unfortunately, the YouTube app for Apple TV doesn’t support voice control. That means you’re forced to use the touchpad to do just about anything, including rewinding or fast-forwarding.
By ignoring Apple’s video player API for the Apple TV, controlling the YouTube app is more painful and tedious than it needs to be.
Dave Smith/Business Insider
Apple’s video player API for the Apple TV, which Netflix uses for its own Apple TV app, is great for controlling playback.
Just tap the Apple TV remote’s touchpad to see the video timeline, swipe left or right to rewind or fast-forward — it has inertial scrolling, like an iPhone, so your movements are pretty precise — and click to play. Alternatively, you can also use your voice to control playback. Both options work well.
But the YouTube app ignores these functions, which means you have to rely on the remote control’s touchpad to rewind and fast-forward — but since YouTube’s app doesn’t support inertial scrolling, you’ll have to swipe repeatedly to move across the timeline. Here’s the complete five-step process for the YouTube app:
- Touch the remote to activate playback controls
- Swipe up to access the timeline
- Swipe left to rewind, or right to fast-forward (and skip over your content repeatedly)
- Swipe back down to the play button once you’ve landed on the sweet spot
- Press play
YouTube’s UI might work fine on other devices like the PlayStation 4, where the DualShock 4’s directional pad can better navigate the interface, but it’s not a good system on the Apple TV, and inferior to Apple’s built-in player, which only takes 1-3 steps to do just about anything.
