Juno is an unofficial third-party app that offers many of the same features you would expect from a native YouTube app. With Juno, users can watch videos, navigate through them using pinch gestures, and maintain the original aspect ratios. While browsing YouTube’s catalog is supported, users cannot view video comments. Additionally, Juno is designed to display YouTube ads in order to comply with Google’s policies.
The app delivers a fully native visionOS UI by utilizing YouTube’s embed API, which allows videos to be embedded in external webpages. When accessing YouTube’s video catalog, Juno provides a modified version of the YouTube website. The app is also able to detect YouTube Premium subscribers and refrain from displaying ads to them. It is important to note that the app does not use private or internal APIs in its development.
It is worth mentioning that YouTube, along with other major services like Spotify and Netflix, does not offer a native app for Apple’s new $3,499 headset at this time. Google’s official response has been to encourage users to utilize playback in Apple’s Safari browser, resulting in a subpar viewing experience. While developers have the option to repurpose their existing iPad apps for the Vision Pro, major developers such as Google have chosen not to take this approach.
In conclusion, Juno offers a more optimized viewing experience compared to the website, although it may not feel like a perfectly native visionOS app. Despite this, it provides a significant improvement over using Safari for YouTube playback.
