Easy YouTube upgrades the YouTube app on jailbroken devices with VLC-inspired gestures

Not only is YouTube one of the most popular ways that iPhone and iPad users enjoy video consumption on the go, but the YouTube app also happens to be one of the top-downloaded apps from the App Store overall. Despite its popularity, however, the YouTube app certainly fosters wiggle room for improvement, and the jailbreak community has taken notice of this fact.

Meet Easy YouTube, a newly released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer miro92 that brings two of the VLC media player’s most popular in-frame gestures for adjusting the display brightness and volume levels to the official YouTube app.

After installing Easy YouTube, users will be able to take advantage of the following new features in the YouTube app:

  • Drag your finger left or right on the tap half of the screen to adjust your display brightness
  • Drag your finger left or right on the bottom half of the screen to adjust your volume level

Easy YouTube also adds a dedicated preference pane to the Settings app post installation where users can configure a few useful options to their liking:

Here, you can:

  • Toggle Easy YouTube on or off on demand
  • Choose a feedback type:
    • Taptic Engine
    • Haptic Engine
  • If you selected Taptic, then you can choose a Taptic feedback type:
    • None
    • Light
    • Medium
    • Heavy
    • Soft Rigid

The developer includes a button at the top right of the preference pane to force-close YouTube, as this will be required to save your changes.

Personally, I’m rather impressed with the Easy YouTube tweak. Although changing the volume level is as easy as pressing a button on the side of my iPhone, there are times (such as when using an integrated kickstand in an iPhone case) when using those buttons feels inconvenient. This is more the case when being compelled to interrupt my video to open Control Center to change the display brightness level. In either case, Easy YouTube solves both problems rather pleasantly.

Those interested in trying the Easy YouTube tweak can download it for free from miro92’s repository via their favorite package manager. The tweak supports jailbroken iPhones and iPads with the official YouTube app installed. Please note that third-party YouTube apps aren’t supported.

If you aren’t already using miro92’s repository, then you can add it your package manager of choice with the following URL:

https://miro92.com/repo

Do you like the idea of having VLC-style display brightness and volume level gestures in the YouTube app? Let us know in the comments section below.