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Comment by hapticmonkey | Hacker News Reader

The AppleTV YouTube app is so bad that I’m convinced nobody responsible for it owns a TV.

It even forces its own built in screensavers to run instead of the OS one if the app is left paused. Who approves that?!

What Steve Jobs said about Microsoft in the 90s applies to Google today: They have no taste.

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This is because of YouTube‘s obsession to build cross-platform, lowest-common-denominator apps, resulting in mediocre experiences across all the platforms they support, and rarely excellent on any single platform.

Their Apple TV app is basically a web view which doesn’t conform to any of AppleTV’s UI principles. Same as their YouTube TV app. It’s sad.

> It even forces its own built in screensavers to run instead of the OS one if the app is left paused

Eh? YouTube is my most-used app on Apple TV by a country mile and I’ve never seen this, I get the tvOS screensavers. Is it because I have YouTube Premium maybe?

I agree though, it is a garbage app. Everything on a TV, from the built-in apps to Roku boxes to Apple TV use basically the same app (certainly the same layout) and it’s really quite bad.

N=1 obviously but I use the YouTube app a lot on my Apple tv and think it works fine? I don’t get anything besides the native screensaver and they even added the option to browse comments natively.

Only bug seems to be a black screen for a second when I close the app (maybe a bug with suspend?).

Are you running with your AppleTV set to Dolby by default? The black screen is switching between SDR (maybe HDR) YouTube and Dolby Vision Home Screen.

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