How to Watch YouTube Videos on Your Apple Watch

Younger readers of this article may not relate much to what I’m about to say, but when I was a kid, I dreamed of a watch through which I could communicate with people as if it were a phone or, among many other things, watch television. What was more typical of science fiction, such as Knight Rider or Dick Tracy, is now an everyday thing.

And we partly owe this to the Apple Watch, the smartwatch from the apple brand that lets us do a multitude of those things we dreamed of and even more that we couldn’t even imagine back then. However, at that time we still couldn’t watch the equivalent of TV: YouTube videos. Now, though, there is a way to watch these videos directly on our smartwatch without needing an iPhone nearby.

To do so, we’ll first need to download from the watchOS App Store an app called WatchTube that does exactly that: lets us watch any YouTube video on our Apple Watch. Once installed, and in a simple and intuitive way, we’ll be ready to start watching our favorite videos.

Despite the small screen compared to an iPhone or an iPad and the many options offered by YouTube itself, the WatchTube interface is not uncomfortable or complex at all. The content is organized into several sections (Home, Search, Library and Settings) that we can configure to our liking, and we’ll even be able to save our favorites or subscribe to the channels we choose. Its creators promise that soon we’ll be able to enjoy an “Audio Only” option to listen to songs from the platform without our Apple Watch screen being on.

The downside is that WatchTube only works locally, meaning everything runs on our Apple Watch and we can’t sync with our YouTube account. At least it offers the alternative of creating a QR code for a specific video so we can share it or access it from another device.