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I noticed this morning there was a new version of the YouTube app on my Apple TV. I can’t wait to find out how they screwed this one up. My personal long-term

by MBCook 11mo ago

I noticed this morning there was a new version of the YouTube app on my Apple TV. I can’t wait to find out how they screwed this one up. My personal long-term complaint is the length of video titles. Lots of people like to make really long video titles. So right now there is one on my screen titled “The Best Decisions Every Video Game Console Developer Made”. Now if you didn’t know, that is not the whole title. But there’s absolutely no indication of that. The only way you actually know that is either by checking or if the stuff on the screen is clearly not the end of a sentence. So what is the full title? Well if you click and hold on the video, you get a pop-up letting you choose a couple of things such as play or safe to watch later or indicate you’re not interested. And at the top of the pop-up you see more words in the title. In this case you also see “(Part”. Yep. You get ONE extra word. Sometimes not even that. The ONLY way to see the full title is to start watching the video. Obnoxious.

jazzyjackson 11mo ago
Google News has this same truncation problem. I thought it would be an obvious thing to, I don't know, use the `title` attribute so mouseover reveals the rest of the snews...
thaumasiotes 11mo ago
> Now if you didn’t know, that is not the whole title. But there’s absolutely no indication of that. The only way you actually know that is either by checking or if the stuff on the screen is clearly not the end of a sentence. > So what is the full title? Well if you click and hold on the video, you get a pop-up letting you choose a couple of things such as play or safe to watch later or indicate you’re not interested. And at the top of the pop-up you see more words in the title. In this case you also see “(Part”. > Yep. You get ONE extra word. Sometimes not even that. > The ONLY way to see the full title is to start watching the video. I'm looking at youtube right now. There's a video displayed with the title "Word Differences Between 11 Countries! | Europe, Africa, Asia , ..." That "..." is the indicator that the title has been truncated. If you hover the title with your mouse, you can see the entire thing: "Word Differences Between 11 Countries! | Europe, Africa, Asia , America | Why Are They Similar?" Not far away, there's "Alex Honnold Answers Rock Climbing Questions | Tech Support...", which expands to "Alex Honnold Answers Rock Climbing Questions | Tech Support | WIRED". Am I using Apple TV? No. Is it really true that they removed the truncation indicator?
- MBCook 11mo ago
  It’s different on Apple TV.
- thoroughburro 11mo ago
  > Am I using Apple TV? No. Is it really true that they removed the truncation indicator? Yes.
atombender 11mo ago
The YouTube app is easily the worst app on Apple TV. For example, if you pause the video by clicking the main action button brings up an overlay that takes up almost the whole screen, so you can no longer see the content in case you paused to freeze the frame. How do you start it again? By clicking the same button, right? No! By clicking up. For some reason up means back and down means to open some additional UI with related videos and what not. No other app is like this — Plex, Infuse, Apple, Netflix etc. abide by relatively sane UI controls where the action button pauses and unpauses, and up/down don't scroll between weird overlay elements. The YouTube filled with these incredible non-unintuitive UX choices that drive me crazy. I never use it unless I have a clear idea of something I want to watch.
- cmckn 11mo ago
  Agreed the interface is clunky. > you can no longer see the content in case you paused to freeze the frame You can press up on the D-pad to dismiss that overlay, if you want to see the full paused frame. > How do you start it again? By clicking the same button, right? No! By clicking up. Maybe we have different remotes? On the latest model, you play/pause with the same button. One issue I’ve noticed in the app is there seems to be no way to move the cursor “up” to the channel button when the video is in the last 10% of the playback bar. If you rewind it a bit, then you’re able to move the cursor up there. Only in the last few days have Shorts appeared at the top of my home page. I fear it may be the end for me.
- yearolinuxdsktp 11mo ago
  This is intentional on Google’s part. It’s anticompetitive behavior, to make YouTube service’s app shitty on Google’s competitor’s ecosystem. But no government seems to care—-and what will you do, stop watching YouTube?
  - Arainach 11mo ago
    This is nonsense. Among other things, the YouTube app on Apple TV is superior to the one on Android TV. No loud startup sound, the back button exits the app rather than popping up a menu asking "if I'm sure" or if I want to go to a screensaver mode - clean straightforward UI.
chrneu 11mo ago
There are two apps called "DeArrow" and SponsorBlock that basically everyone should be using. DeArrow replaces thumbnails and titles with crowd sourced versions. I can't use youtube without it anymore. Usually the titles get replaced with stuff like "How to build a table" instead of "Watch the world explode as I try to make a table!!!!!!!!!!!!". Same with thumbnails. No longer are they over-saturated close up AI generated garbage images, but usually just a screenshot from the video that shows what's really going on.
- jason_oster 11mo ago
  Neither of these are available on Apple TV. Otherwise, you make a good suggestion; install them where available.
  - ZekeSulastin 11mo ago
    At least for SponsorBlock you can run iSponsorBlockTV[1] on another computer on the same network - in addition to skipping sponsored segments, it also mutes YouTube’s own ads and auto-skips them as soon as it can. [1] https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
    - ngai_aku 11mo ago
      I've been using this for a while. It's certainly better than nothing, but there are limitations. Most notably for me, automatic muting doesn't work when HomePods are the default output[1] [1] https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV/issues/60#issuecomment-1762994606 https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV/issues/60#issue...
    - dontlaugh 11mo ago
      It’s pretty good, I run this on my little server.
    - jason_oster 11mo ago
      Thanks, it looks like a helpful workaround for now. Hoping someday SponsorBlock can be ported to tvOS.
hapticmonkey 11mo ago
Remember when the Youtube app overrode the AppleTV screensavers, to show their own screensavers if Youtube was paused. Any other app, you leave a video paused, the OS screensaver will come on. Those beautiful, aerial screensavers that are better than any screensaver I've ever seen in all my decades of working with computers. So of course the Youtube app had to block them with their own shitty variant. They have no taste and no respect.
- paperpunk 11mo ago
  Your comment is past tense - does that mean they’ve stopped doing this? Please, Lord. I had to set my ATV to go to screensaver in a ridiculously short amount of time to preempt the YouTube one.
  - zimpenfish 11mo ago
    From what I've seen recently, they have stopped - I get Snoopy (current screensaver of choice) every time, no matter what app is running. (Although it's on a 5 minute timer which might be short enough to pre-empt everything else.)
  - electroly 11mo ago
    It was in place for a couple of days, tops, before they reverted it. The backlash was immense and immediate. And with good reason: in addition to the obvious reasons why it sucked, the YouTube screensavers just looked terrible. I couldn't believe how bad they were.
- MBCook 11mo ago
  YES. That was HORRIBLE. Thankfully that only lasted like a day or two. The fact that they would ever think that was possibly an OK thing to do though shows you how brain dead they are.
chrismorgan 11mo ago
> Lots of people like to make really long video titles. So right now there is one on my screen titled “The Best Decisions Every Video Game Console Developer Made”. Even with the missing “ (Part 2!)” added, that’s still only 68 characters. I would probably begrudgingly call this long, but I would definitely not call it “really long”—my threshold for that would be at least 90 characters. If they’re truncating around 60 characters, I’m content to call it unreasonable.
- MBCook 11mo ago
  It’s only “really long“ because it doesn’t fit on my screen. I agree in the abstract it’s a perfectly reasonable title. It should absolutely be readable. But it’s not. Because the app sucks.
synack 11mo ago
Every time you see an ellipsis "..." you know that the designer put form over function. Hiding data from the user is never the right answer. They could use their fancy AI to generate shorter titles.
- Dylan16807 11mo ago
  And if someone puts in a 500 character title, it still can't be truncated? YouTube making up a shorter title would be so much worse...
zimpenfish 11mo ago
> I noticed this morning there was a new version of the YouTube app on my Apple TV. Damn it, I still appear to be on 4.51.08/web_20251117_11_RC00 with no indication that there's a new version. Not looking forward to any updates... > The ONLY way to see the full title is to start watching the video. I sometimes wonder if YouTube is a weird kink cult that gets off on people complaining about the ridiculously user-hostile decisions they make. Because it's either that or they're an evil troll cult that aims to make life just that little bit less pleasant for as many people as possible.
mikkupikku 11mo ago
Long titles that put the important context beyond the fold are a form of clickbaiting, I just refuse to watch those videos entirely. I'm sure most of the videos are fine but I cannot reward bad behavior, and besides, clicking on clickbait will get you even more clickbait in the suggestions.
everdrive 11mo ago
I know no one likes hearing this because it's glib, but there's really no reason to use "apps" whatsoever. They're always worse in some baffling way, and until people start abstaining from them we'll be stuck here.
- paulryanrogers 11mo ago
  They can use features like GPU, USB, NFC, etc trivially; whereas websites and PWAs may not be able to at all.
  - everdrive 11mo ago
    In principle they could have good UIs, but some accident of incentives manages to prevent this. It's better for forgo the features to retain control over your own device.
- MBCook 11mo ago
  And how should I use a web browser on my Apple TV? That’s not an option. And if it was? I wouldn’t want to use it.
  - everdrive 11mo ago
    >on my Apple TV Not sure why you would rely on an AppleTV or any bespoke streaming device. It's effectively a service. If you like it right now, it will be worse in a few weeks, months, or years. Eventually it will be unsupported even though the hardware still works fine. You don't own it an it'll just be made worse by the different incentives of the hardware provide and the media streaming companies.
    - GJim 11mo ago
      Its disappointing to see your factual post being downvoted. If somebody disagrees with the above post, then get off your arse and type a fucking rebuttal. Don't lazily click downvote. 'Drive-by' downvoting so is turning this place into another reddit.... and yes this is true, no matter how cliched a comment the admins consider it to be.
everdev 11mo ago
And yet here I am being told by young devs that these kinds of terrible UX decisions don't matter, or I get mocked for bringing them up. They don't have the cognizance of experience to know why these things matter or can, and they struggle to even conceptualize how things like this can be security holes open for spammers and scammers. If they worked for me, they'd learn fast or wouldn't work for me for long.
westacular 11mo ago
The latest version of YouTube for Apple TV has broken swiping on the remote's trackpad to select videos. (For the older style black Siri Remote, at least.) The direction of your swipe no longer matters. All the app does is interpret wherever your finger _lifts up_ as a _directional tap_ on that side of the trackpad. So you can't do nice smooth accelerated swiping like it works _everywhere else in tvOS_; you can only use the remote as a bad D-pad.

by MBCook 11mo ago

jazzyjackson 11mo ago

Google News has this same truncation problem. I thought it would be an obvious thing to, I don't know, use the `title` attribute so mouseover reveals the rest of the snews...

thaumasiotes 11mo ago

> Now if you didn’t know, that is not the whole title. But there’s absolutely no indication of that. The only way you actually know that is either by checking or if the stuff on the screen is clearly not the end of a sentence. > So what is the full title? Well if you click and hold on the video, you get a pop-up letting you choose a couple of things such as play or safe to watch later or indicate you’re not interested. And at the top of the pop-up you see more words in the title. In this case you also see “(Part”. > Yep. You get ONE extra word. Sometimes not even that. > The ONLY way to see the full title is to start watching the video. I'm looking at youtube right now. There's a video displayed with the title "Word Differences Between 11 Countries! | Europe, Africa, Asia , ..." That "..." is the indicator that the title has been truncated. If you hover the title with your mouse, you can see the entire thing: "Word Differences Between 11 Countries! | Europe, Africa, Asia , America | Why Are They Similar?" Not far away, there's "Alex Honnold Answers Rock Climbing Questions | Tech Support...", which expands to "Alex Honnold Answers Rock Climbing Questions | Tech Support | WIRED". Am I using Apple TV? No. Is it really true that they removed the truncation indicator?

MBCook 11mo ago
It’s different on Apple TV.
thoroughburro 11mo ago
> Am I using Apple TV? No. Is it really true that they removed the truncation indicator? Yes.

atombender 11mo ago

The YouTube app is easily the worst app on Apple TV. For example, if you pause the video by clicking the main action button brings up an overlay that takes up almost the whole screen, so you can no longer see the content in case you paused to freeze the frame. How do you start it again? By clicking the same button, right? No! By clicking up. For some reason up means back and down means to open some additional UI with related videos and what not. No other app is like this — Plex, Infuse, Apple, Netflix etc. abide by relatively sane UI controls where the action button pauses and unpauses, and up/down don't scroll between weird overlay elements. The YouTube filled with these incredible non-unintuitive UX choices that drive me crazy. I never use it unless I have a clear idea of something I want to watch.

cmckn 11mo ago
Agreed the interface is clunky. > you can no longer see the content in case you paused to freeze the frame You can press up on the D-pad to dismiss that overlay, if you want to see the full paused frame. > How do you start it again? By clicking the same button, right? No! By clicking up. Maybe we have different remotes? On the latest model, you play/pause with the same button. One issue I’ve noticed in the app is there seems to be no way to move the cursor “up” to the channel button when the video is in the last 10% of the playback bar. If you rewind it a bit, then you’re able to move the cursor up there. Only in the last few days have Shorts appeared at the top of my home page. I fear it may be the end for me.
yearolinuxdsktp 11mo ago
This is intentional on Google’s part. It’s anticompetitive behavior, to make YouTube service’s app shitty on Google’s competitor’s ecosystem. But no government seems to care—-and what will you do, stop watching YouTube?
- Arainach 11mo ago
  This is nonsense. Among other things, the YouTube app on Apple TV is superior to the one on Android TV. No loud startup sound, the back button exits the app rather than popping up a menu asking "if I'm sure" or if I want to go to a screensaver mode - clean straightforward UI.

chrneu 11mo ago

There are two apps called "DeArrow" and SponsorBlock that basically everyone should be using. DeArrow replaces thumbnails and titles with crowd sourced versions. I can't use youtube without it anymore. Usually the titles get replaced with stuff like "How to build a table" instead of "Watch the world explode as I try to make a table!!!!!!!!!!!!". Same with thumbnails. No longer are they over-saturated close up AI generated garbage images, but usually just a screenshot from the video that shows what's really going on.

jason_oster 11mo ago
Neither of these are available on Apple TV. Otherwise, you make a good suggestion; install them where available.
- ZekeSulastin 11mo ago
  At least for SponsorBlock you can run iSponsorBlockTV[1] on another computer on the same network - in addition to skipping sponsored segments, it also mutes YouTube’s own ads and auto-skips them as soon as it can. [1] https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
  - ngai_aku 11mo ago
    I've been using this for a while. It's certainly better than nothing, but there are limitations. Most notably for me, automatic muting doesn't work when HomePods are the default output[1] [1] https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV/issues/60#issuecomment-1762994606 https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV/issues/60#issue...
  - dontlaugh 11mo ago
    It’s pretty good, I run this on my little server.
  - jason_oster 11mo ago
    Thanks, it looks like a helpful workaround for now. Hoping someday SponsorBlock can be ported to tvOS.

hapticmonkey 11mo ago

Remember when the Youtube app overrode the AppleTV screensavers, to show their own screensavers if Youtube was paused. Any other app, you leave a video paused, the OS screensaver will come on. Those beautiful, aerial screensavers that are better than any screensaver I've ever seen in all my decades of working with computers. So of course the Youtube app had to block them with their own shitty variant. They have no taste and no respect.

paperpunk 11mo ago
Your comment is past tense - does that mean they’ve stopped doing this? Please, Lord. I had to set my ATV to go to screensaver in a ridiculously short amount of time to preempt the YouTube one.
- zimpenfish 11mo ago
  From what I've seen recently, they have stopped - I get Snoopy (current screensaver of choice) every time, no matter what app is running. (Although it's on a 5 minute timer which might be short enough to pre-empt everything else.)
- electroly 11mo ago
  It was in place for a couple of days, tops, before they reverted it. The backlash was immense and immediate. And with good reason: in addition to the obvious reasons why it sucked, the YouTube screensavers just looked terrible. I couldn't believe how bad they were.
MBCook 11mo ago
YES. That was HORRIBLE. Thankfully that only lasted like a day or two. The fact that they would ever think that was possibly an OK thing to do though shows you how brain dead they are.

chrismorgan 11mo ago

> Lots of people like to make really long video titles. So right now there is one on my screen titled “The Best Decisions Every Video Game Console Developer Made”. Even with the missing “ (Part 2!)” added, that’s still only 68 characters. I would probably begrudgingly call this long, but I would definitely not call it “really long”—my threshold for that would be at least 90 characters. If they’re truncating around 60 characters, I’m content to call it unreasonable.

MBCook 11mo ago
It’s only “really long“ because it doesn’t fit on my screen. I agree in the abstract it’s a perfectly reasonable title. It should absolutely be readable. But it’s not. Because the app sucks.

synack 11mo ago

Every time you see an ellipsis "..." you know that the designer put form over function. Hiding data from the user is never the right answer. They could use their fancy AI to generate shorter titles.

Dylan16807 11mo ago
And if someone puts in a 500 character title, it still can't be truncated? YouTube making up a shorter title would be so much worse...

zimpenfish 11mo ago

> I noticed this morning there was a new version of the YouTube app on my Apple TV. Damn it, I still appear to be on 4.51.08/web_20251117_11_RC00 with no indication that there's a new version. Not looking forward to any updates... > The ONLY way to see the full title is to start watching the video. I sometimes wonder if YouTube is a weird kink cult that gets off on people complaining about the ridiculously user-hostile decisions they make. Because it's either that or they're an evil troll cult that aims to make life just that little bit less pleasant for as many people as possible.

mikkupikku 11mo ago

Long titles that put the important context beyond the fold are a form of clickbaiting, I just refuse to watch those videos entirely. I'm sure most of the videos are fine but I cannot reward bad behavior, and besides, clicking on clickbait will get you even more clickbait in the suggestions.

everdrive 11mo ago

I know no one likes hearing this because it's glib, but there's really no reason to use "apps" whatsoever. They're always worse in some baffling way, and until people start abstaining from them we'll be stuck here.

paulryanrogers 11mo ago
They can use features like GPU, USB, NFC, etc trivially; whereas websites and PWAs may not be able to at all.
- everdrive 11mo ago
  In principle they could have good UIs, but some accident of incentives manages to prevent this. It's better for forgo the features to retain control over your own device.
MBCook 11mo ago
And how should I use a web browser on my Apple TV? That’s not an option. And if it was? I wouldn’t want to use it.
- everdrive 11mo ago
  >on my Apple TV Not sure why you would rely on an AppleTV or any bespoke streaming device. It's effectively a service. If you like it right now, it will be worse in a few weeks, months, or years. Eventually it will be unsupported even though the hardware still works fine. You don't own it an it'll just be made worse by the different incentives of the hardware provide and the media streaming companies.
  - GJim 11mo ago
    Its disappointing to see your factual post being downvoted. If somebody disagrees with the above post, then get off your arse and type a fucking rebuttal. Don't lazily click downvote. 'Drive-by' downvoting so is turning this place into another reddit.... and yes this is true, no matter how cliched a comment the admins consider it to be.

everdev 11mo ago

And yet here I am being told by young devs that these kinds of terrible UX decisions don't matter, or I get mocked for bringing them up. They don't have the cognizance of experience to know why these things matter or can, and they struggle to even conceptualize how things like this can be security holes open for spammers and scammers. If they worked for me, they'd learn fast or wouldn't work for me for long.

westacular 11mo ago

The latest version of YouTube for Apple TV has broken swiping on the remote's trackpad to select videos. (For the older style black Siri Remote, at least.) The direction of your swipe no longer matters. All the app does is interpret wherever your finger _lifts up_ as a _directional tap_ on that side of the trackpad. So you can't do nice smooth accelerated swiping like it works _everywhere else in tvOS_; you can only use the remote as a bad D-pad.