Google straight-up ruined its model new YouTube expertise for older Chromecasts

Final yr, Google rolled out an up to date app-like expertise for YouTube on Chromecast. Sadly for everybody that owns one, Google has damaged the flexibility for this app to sign up to your Google account. This implies you’ll be able to’t see your customized suggestions in it or browse issues like your playlists or classes, and if you happen to use the flamboyant new app expertise to pick out movies, you’ll be compelled to look at advertisements even if you happen to pay Google a subscription to take away them. Briefly, the brand new YouTube app on an older Chromecast is now a substandard expertise, and Google’s even telling prospects who complain that the change was “intentional.”

You may bear in mind when the “full app” expertise rolled out late final yr, delivering an Android TV-like YouTube app for older Chromecast gadgets. This included the flexibility to navigate across the app with a distant or utilizing your telephone to pick out movies, supplementing the previous cast-only system that required you to pick out a video on one other system.

It was a polarizing change, as some favored the simplicity of the older cast-only system and interface, which was freed from superfluous particulars and distraction — all it may do was act as a receiver for content material you despatched to it. Prefer it or hate it, the brand new model appears to be like just like the YouTube app on different platforms, with a extra fully-featured remote-driven interface that is extra visually busy with suggestions and choices.

No matter your emotions relating to the brand new app, it labored as designed for the final six months or so. However just lately, we have seen studies that the app is not permitting prospects to sign up. This may sound like a minor annoyance, however it causes larger issues.

Not with the ability to sign up implies that everybody utilizing the on-device “app” expertise for YouTube on an older Chromecast is principally utilizing a generic free account. Which means they’re lacking any customization or suggestions that may be tied to their viewing historical past. And in the event that they use the app to pick out content material, it means they must view YouTube’s advertisements even when they pay Google a subscription to have them eliminated.

I ought to stress that if you happen to solid content material the old school approach from the YouTube app to a Chromecast, that also works because it did earlier than, and people with a premium subscription will not see any advertisements if you happen to play content material in that approach. However if you happen to like and use the brand new app, it is damaged. Worse, in keeping with the YouTube Twitter account, this variation is by design.

In simply over six months, Google deliberately broke and downgraded its model new YouTube expertise for its older Chromecasts. That must be some sort of report.

Testing this variation was a surprisingly obnoxious expertise. Lots of you is probably not conscious of this, however you’ll be able to’t really arrange a Chromecast from a Pixel anymore. We have reached out to Google to verify explicitly why that’s (if I have been to guess, I wager it is as a result of Google’s nonetheless throwing a match and refusing to license Sonos’s patents), however if you happen to attempt to arrange a Chromecast from a Pixel, and even simply join one which’s been dwelling in a field and off Wi-Fi for some time, you will get a not-particularly-verbose error that factors you to a wildly unhelpful help web page, which solely tells you in a roundabout technique to attempt to use a telephone apart from a Pixel to do the job as a substitute. Utilizing every other non-Google telephone works high quality and as anticipated, however Pixels fail with maybe the least descriptive error you will ever see.

Google-loyal prospects with each a Pixel and a Chromecast do not simply get screwed; Google will not even be sincere about what’s occurring.

I’ve to imagine Google is being dumb and obscure right here as a result of it would not wish to acknowledge that the problem is solely its fault, and the very last thing it needs to inform a two-times-loyal buyer is that they’d have fewer issues with a telephone from a unique firm.

Even with out these points, the brand new YouTube app is actually a reasonably poor expertise in my testing. I hadn’t had the chance to make use of this new model because the function landed in December (my Chromecast was retired earlier than that occurred), however even on my Chromecast Extremely it is substandard, and I can not think about what it may be like on an older or much less highly effective mannequin. Navigating utilizing your telephone as a distant is laggy at occasions to the purpose you may double-up on inputs, and tapping the Chromecast icon within the app once more to open the distant will kill the casting session if you happen to’re a bit too quick or impatient. When my Z Fold3 sits too lengthy, the software-based distant for the YouTube app stops working. And with out account-based sync, the subscription and library tabs within the app are completely superfluous and unusable.

Although you’ll be able to’t sign up, in my testing, you’ll be able to nonetheless save settings like autoplay and restricted mode preferences, although one in all our tipsters claims that the settings aren’t retained long-term, and autoplay can sit back in randomly.

Mixed with taking away the flexibility to sign up and all that associated performance, the brand new YouTube app for older Chromecasts is critically missing in fundamental and anticipated options. Frankly, I can not imagine Google or YouTube take into account this affordable to ship to probably paying prospects. We spent a couple of minutes making an attempt to give you a gaggle noun for “a humiliation,” and I finally needed to decide on “a Google of embarrassments,” as in: “Utilizing a Pixel to arrange and take a look at the straight-up ruined YouTube app on Chromecasts is only a Google of embarrassments.”

We have reached out to Google relating to each the change to sign-in on the app and the brand new restriction in utilizing a Pixel to arrange a Chromecast, however the firm didn’t instantly reply to both inquiry. Within the meantime, there are a number of potential workarounds.

Clients with YouTube Premium that do not wish to endure by means of advertisements can basically ignore the brand new app and proceed to solid content material from their telephone as they did earlier than it existed. A group specialist on Google’s assist boards (a title given to “Google companions who lend their experience to assist preserve our communities”) says that the YouTube workforce is conscious of this problem and dealing to resolve it. Nevertheless, the identical response claims that signing in “is not supported since we launched [the app] and it hasn’t modified since then,” disagreeing with buyer studies, so it isn’t clear how authoritative this declare is. Some prospects that had beforehand signed in utilizing the app on a number of accounts report success logging again in after switching between them, although which will range.

In the event you grew to love the app and wish the total expertise again, you’ll be able to all the time improve to one thing like a Chromecast with Google TV, which helps the Android TV model of the YouTube app. And if this little episode has you feeling a bit cautious about selecting up further Google {hardware}, there are a number of different nice streaming gadgets on the market.