On Windows 10 computers, arguably the most popular way of watching YouTube is just visiting the YouTube website. However, not everybody likes the fact that YouTube eats up an entire tab in web browsers, and also the viewing experience on a browser might not be the best one for many people.
The solution? You could make use of a desktop app! There are plenty of Windows 10 YouTube apps available on the Microsoft Store – to help you choose, we’ll have a look at 10 of them below.
So without further ado let’s have a look at some of the top apps to watch Youtube on Windows 10.
1. Official YouTube app
The official YouTube app is your best bet if you are fully satisfied with the user interface and functionality of the vanilla YouTube.
The YouTube app has inherited all the features of its big brother, and it also retains its clean user interface (though not everybody likes it).
Once you sign to your account, you get access to your library of videos, playlists, and subscriptions – just like on the mobile app or the web version.
Coming from the YouTube team, the official app is also going to have the freshest updates and early access to new features.
2. myTube!
myTube! is one of the most popular third-party YouTube apps on the market. The key feature of myTube! is that it allows you to continue listening to audio even in the background. This feature doesn’t seem impressive on Windows 10, but on Xbox One, it could make all the difference for gamers.
Moreover, the app can fade the video into the background while you can do other tasks such as browsing other channels etc.
The UI of myTube! is fairly similar to that of the official YouTube app, so you don’t have to learn things anew as well.
myTube! is not free, unlike many other YouTube apps on the market. With that said, it costs a mere $0.99, so if you cannot find a good free YouTube alternative, this may be the one.
3. Awesome Tube
The key feature of Awesome Tube is that it supports audio-only video playback, which allows you to save resources when you don’t need to watch the video.
Another interesting thing about Awesome Tube is that it allows you to download YouTube videos at any quality. YouTube only has this function in its Premium version that costs, depending on where you are, about $10 per month. Not only that, but Premium’s availability around the globe varies.
Although Awesome Tube also isn’t free, it offers a much more affordable experience, at the same time delivering features not available in the official YouTube app – like the audio-only playback.
4. WinTube
WinTube is a fairly lightweight YouTube alternative for Windows 10. To be fair, we don’t like the UI of this app as much as the interface of YouTube and other apps, but it’s light and perhaps even clean.
Feature-wise, the most important perk of WinTube is that it allows you to download YouTube videos – like Awesome Tube.
WinTube also has most of the features of the official YouTube app, such as comments, likes, online watch history, and playlists.
WinTube appears to sync YouTube accounts seamlessly too, so you should have no issues when moving back and forth between mobile/browser YouTube and this app.
5. Liketube
To achieve lightness and excellent responsiveness, Liketube has a very basic user interface. On Windows 10, the user interface is taken straight from the mobile version of the app.
In terms of aesthetics, the Windows 10 version isn’t the best. There is a lot of wasted space on the screen that could have been used to show more videos to the user. However, Liketube is much lighter than the competition.
6. Perfect Tube
Perfect Tube offers a little wider UI customizability than other YouTube apps. It has dark and light modes along with a few color options to turn YouTube into the eye candy that you’ve always wanted. The lack of customization in YouTube is not a big deal, but it’s nice that you have a little more flexibility here.
The player is also clean and light – we like it more than YouTube’s native player. To change video quality, you also don’t need to open up the cogwheel menu – in Perfect Tube, the quality settings are in clear view at the top of the screen.
In terms of functionality, Perfect Tube has all the basics of YouTube-watching. It allows you to synchronize your subscriptions, subscribe to new channels, leave and read comments, like videos, view and manage your history, likes, playlists, and more.
One downside with Perfect Tube is that it only supports up to 1080p videos. If you are used to 1440p or even higher resolutions, this might be underwhelming.
With that said, not everybody uploads higher than 1080p videos, so the lack of support for higher resolutions isn’t a big problem.
7. Pro Tube
If you absolutely want 4K video, then give Pro Tube a shot. Not many people upload in 4K, but if your favorite channels do, then Pro Tube will allow you to uncover the full potential of your 4K monitor or TV.
Pro Tube also provides you with full access to standard YouTube functionality, such as likes, comments, favorites, history, and more. All in all, this app is very similar to Perfect Tube.
Now, given that Pro Tube supports 4K, why would you even want to choose Perfect Tube? Well, the main reason for doing so would be the UI. In Pro Tube, it’s really simple and even unattractive. It is somewhat reminiscent of the original YouTube interface.
We think that Perfect Tube’s player is cleaner and easier to use, so if you don’t care about 4K much, then it might be a better choice.
8. FizzTube
Finally, we have FizzTube.
The highlight of FizzTube is that it allows you to not only watch YouTube videos but also download them or convert them into another format.
Conversion can be especially useful if you are going to watch the video on mobile devices – though to be fair, modern Android and iOS devices support pretty much any video format out of the box.
The interface of FizzTube is simple and is reminiscent of the regular YouTube interface. Along with the UI, FizzTube offers standard features such as account sync, likes, watch history, and more.
Leave a Reply