Monday, 6 July 2015

You Can Now Watch YouTube Videos On Your Android Wear Smartwatch

A YouTube app for the Android Wear watch has finally been released. There are few reasons to watch a video that will eat up your battery on a tiny display — but now, you at least you have the ability to do so.

The app is not an official YouTube app — it was developed by Appfour with support for the Chromecast, and it comes with a search feature.

While watching YouTube videos on your smartwatch may be a little pointless, the idea that you could look up a clip on your watch and beam it over to your TV using the Chromecast is a pretty good one. Basically, your watch could double as a YouTube remote for your TV.
The app also has voice control features, which allow users to run the entire app through speech — making it an even better remote option. In addition to searching for videos, users can pause, resume, seek and even change volume using only voice commands.

If you do indeed want to watch videos on your watch, the app supports Bluetooth headphones, which you will need because most smartwatches don't have speakers. Keep in mind that if you're going to look at YouTube videos on your watch, you should be prepared for it to run out of battery very quickly.

It however seems that the app wasn't actually intended for viewing YouTube videos on the watch. More purposefully, it serves as a way of controlling videos being streamed through Chromecast. Being able to control all devices connected to our home networks straight from our smartphones is becoming more important. That's set to expand to smartwatches as time goes on. Even Apple demoed opening and closing a garage door when it first announced the Apple Watch.

We might eventually see a Google-made YouTube app, especially as users become more interested in controlling videos on their TV through other devices.

The YouTube Android Wear watch is available from the Google Play Store and can be found here. The app is fairly big for an Android Wear app, so make sure to be patient while it's installing. The app is compatible with all Android Wear devices.

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