YouTube is planning to build an Apple Vision Pro app.
Watching traditional media on a giant virtual screen is a key focus of Apple Vision Pro. You can choose between watching in your real room (optionally darkened), a fully virtual environment, or a blend of both.
While iPad apps are available on the App Store on Vision Pro by default, YouTube specifically opted out from making its available.
In fact, Google has done this for all its iPad apps. Netflix and Spotify also opted out. Some tech industry analysts have speculated that the reason could be an unwillingness to support Apple after years of fierce debate on the iOS & iPadOS platform fees, which demand a 30% cut of subscriptions for the first year and then 15% thereafter.
You can already watch YouTube on Vision Pro in the Safari web browser or via a $5 third-party client called Juno, made by the developer of Apollo for Reddit, but neither of these options supports the wealth of 360-degree video content on the platform.
YouTube now tells The Verge that a Vision Pro app is “on our roadmap”. The company didn’t get back to The Verge when asked about whether this will include 360-degree video support.
YouTube already has an immersive app on Meta Quest and ByteDance’s Pico 4.
