I love YouTube. I detest the YouTube app. I loathe it so much, that I’ve opted to remove it from my iPad and use the website instead which—believe it or not—has many benefits:
- Picture-in-picture (PIP)
- Better full screen
- Speed and ad-free
Picture-in-picture (PIP)
Shortcuts allows me to enable PIP—the ability to have video show in a floating window above other apps—multitasking bliss. I have the shortcut near the top of the Share Square for easy access. No doubt this is the shortcut I use the most on my beloved iPad Pro. It takes my iPad a step further, allowing me to have three apps and a video showing all at once.
You can download the shortcut here: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/baec85899f6f49d1a3528a7afdbd0db8
Better full screen
Tapping the scrubber or the full screen icon on YouTube in Safari can be problematic. Therefore, I use another shortcut to enable the native iPad fullscreen interface. This allows me to scrub back and forward easily, AirPlay, and provides a second way to enter PIP. Sure, I can’t adjust the quality, or toggle captions, but for me, this is my preferred method of watching videos when washing the dishes.
You can download the shortcut here: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2698b0c7d01042a783666438b532b2f4
Speed and ad-free
Using 1Blocker (or any content-blocker for iPadOS) removes intrusive ads and stops unwanted tracking resources. From my Mac, I can see that 1Blocker blocked 1,012 resources today, 2,822 this week and 30,498 since its last update. That equates to a huge performance gain on my iPad, in both load times and viewing pleasure.
I love YouTube on my iPad Pro and hopefully you’ll find these tips helpful too.