Google Forces Apple Vision Pro YouTube App Juno Off App Store

YouTube satisfied Apple to take away third-party Imaginative and prescient Professional app Juno from the visionOS App Retailer.

Although it claims it has one “on its roadmap”, Google-owned YouTube at the moment does not have a visionOS app. And whereas iPad apps can be found on the App Retailer on Imaginative and prescient Professional by default, YouTube opted out from making its out there.

In distinction, YouTube has a local app on Meta’s Horizon OS for Quest headsets, and Meta says it is launching a cowatching beta this week.

Since Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional’s launch, a $5 third-party YouTube app had been out there known as Juno. It was developed by the identical developer because the Apollo telephone app for Reddit, one other app just lately killed by the platform proprietor.

Juno supplied a typical visionOS facet menu interface for YouTube’s key pages and commonplace visionOS video participant controls, loading every web page as a webview with customized CSS to model it to match visionOS’s native theme. It even supported system-level options like Siri.

Again in April YouTube emailed Juno’s developer, Christian Selig, claiming “you’ve got violated and proceed to violate the YouTube Phrases of Service and the YouTube API Companies Phrases of Service” by modifying the YouTube net interface, in addition to saying that Juno “strongly alludes to YouTube’s logos and iconography”. The e-mail demanded that Selig replace Juno such that it has “ceased to change the YouTube Service”.

Selig stated he discovered YouTube’s requests “very puzzling”. Juno is successfully an online view beneath the hood, and does not use any YouTube APIs, he says. He additionally factors out that Google’s personal Chrome browser permits extensions to vary the model and theme of internet sites together with YouTube, and YouTube’s own iOS sample suggests utilizing the embed participant approach Juno initially used. Additional, he says Juno doesn’t use any YouTube iconography, bar the YouTube emblem from the corporate’s personal web page that Juno masses.

Selig says he promptly responded to YouTube with these rebuttals, and in June launched an replace to make the app use YouTube’s participant, styled, as an alternative of the embed participant approach. He additionally made Juno conceal the YouTube emblem and added the phrase “unofficial” to the subtitle and outline of Juno on the App Retailer.

These adjustments weren’t sufficient, although. Selig says a couple of months in the past YouTube contacted Apple making the identical claims as the unique e-mail. Apple appears to have taken YouTube at its phrase, and Juno is not out there on the App Retailer.

This is Juno developer Christian Selig’s full statement:

For these not conscious, a couple of months in the past after reaching out to me, YouTube contacted the App Retailer stating that Juno doesn’t adhere to YouTube tips and modifies the web site in a means they don’t approve of, and alludes to their logos and iconography.

I don’t personally agree with this, as Juno is only a net view, and acts as little greater than a browser extension that modifies CSS to make the web site and video participant look extra “visionOS” like. No logos are positioned aside from these already on the web site, and the “for YouTube” suffix is permitted of their branding tips. Juno additionally doesn’t block adverts in any capability, for the curious.

I acknowledged as a lot to YouTube, they wouldn’t actually make clear or budge any, and because of each events not having the ability to come to a conclusion I obtained an e-mail a couple of minutes in the past from Apple that Juno has been faraway from the App Retailer.

Juno was a enjoyable interest undertaking for me to construct. As a developer I needed to get some expertise constructing for the Imaginative and prescient Professional, and as a consumer I needed a pleasant technique to watch YouTube on this cool new gadget. Because of this I actually loved constructing Juno, nevertheless it was at all times one thing I noticed as basically an app I constructed for enjoyable.

Due to that, I’ve zero need to spin this into an enormous struggle (not less than greater than I’ve fought in emails over the previous couple of months) akin to what occurred with Reddit years in the past. That’s form of the other of enjoyable. I hope that’s comprehensible.

For individuals who have Juno, to my information it ought to proceed to work high-quality till/until the YouTube web site updates in some style that breaks stuff. Sorry it needed to finish this fashion, I had some actually cool stuff deliberate for it that I believe would have been a number of enjoyable! It’s been genuinely superior listening to all the sort phrases from Imaginative and prescient Professional customers who’ve beloved the app.

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