The new Juno app brings the YouTube experience to Vision Pro, featuring native playback controls and the ability to resize the video to take over your living room.
Crafted by developer Christian Selig, the creator of the discontinued Apollo Reddit client, the $5 app lets Vision Pro owners enjoy YouTube natively instead of using a browser. You can download Juno for YouTube from the App Store.
Google won’t provide native apps for Apple’s $3500 headset or permit users to run their existing iPad apps on the visionOS platform. Even though Vision Pro users can use such services through the Safari browser, this results in a lesser experience than would a dedicated visionOS app built with spatial computing in mind.
YouTube comes to Vision Pro thanks to the Juno app
Juno isn’t an iPad app that runs in a window within your space like the more than one million “compatible apps” on the App Store. This is an actual native app with a proper spatial interface, including translucency and realistic shadows.
Christian’s blog details Juno’s features, like its video player that can be resized to take over your living room. It also automatically dims your environment around the video to fully immerse you in the experience.
You can toggle captions, increase or decrease playback speed, access sharing, etc. To scrub through the video, simply pinch-drag. “Juno even supports detecting aspect ratios of the videos and will resize the window automatically, so ultra-wide 21:9 movie trailers are respected, as are nostalgic 4:3 uploads,” he explained.
The browsing interface is similar to the YouTube website, but Christian has optimized it for eye tracking. In fact, Juno uses the YouTube website itself but themes it differently through CSS and JavaScript.
YouTube in your space
Such an approach results in a familiar look so you can easily access your home feed, browse video recommendations, access your subscriptions and playlists, etc.
Juno auto-selects video quality based on window size, up to 4K. However, you cannot manually adjust video quality. Comments aren’t supported either.
However, Christian is already considering building those features into Juno if early adopters prove interested. More immersive environments and the ability to watch multiple videos simultaneously are also considered.
What about ads?
If you subscribe to YouTube Premium, Juno will let you watch YouTube without ads. Regular users will have to sit through video ads, unfortunately.
Vision Pro goes on sale today. Apple has said there will be 600 native apps and games for the mixed-reality headset at launch. By comparison, the iPhone’s App Store launched in 2008 with 500 native apps and games.