YouTube has finally come to Apple Vision Pro. YouTube for Vision OS is a free, standalone app that lets users log into their existing YouTube accounts through their Vision headsets and stream videos like they would expect to, including standard videos, 180° videos, 360° videos, and YouTube Shorts. Vision Pro M5 users can stream 8K videos, and premium YouTube members can download videos directly to their headsets, a must for long flights.
Google, YouTube’s parent company, has apparently been working on the app for a while. In 2024, a spokesperson confirmed that a standalone Vision Pro app was “on our roadmap,” but until today, the only way Vision users could watch YouTube on their headsets was through the Safari web browser.
The new YouTube app is designed to fit into Vision’s spatial computing environments. “Rather than just responding to different screen sizes, we needed something that responds to different spaces, volumes and use cases,” YouTube’s senior UX designer Brendan Polley told Apple. “We built an entirely new design system that isolated core elements—comments, the play button, ‘like’ and ‘dislike’—to fit any layout.”
What do you think so far?
Having downloaded the app, it works exactly as intended. If you’re looking for something that demonstrates Vision Pro’s immersive video capabilities, you should check out the just-released 360° videos from the Milano Cortina winter Olympics on NBC’s channel. Immersive luge is terrifying!
