Watching YouTube apps on the Nokia Lumia

YouTube is one of the wonders of the digital world. If something has been filmed, whether it is a music video, a political speech or a home movie then the chances are it’s available to watch on YouTube.
The numbers alone are enough to make your head pop. According to YouTube’s own statistics:

Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
Over 4 billion hours of video are watch each month
72 hours of video are uploaded every hour
Mobile devices have played a big hand in these numbers as well. Over 20% of all YouTube’s views are from mobile devices and three hours of video is uploaded to the video-sharing site from mobile devices every minute.

YouTube on your Lumia

Your Nokia Lumia smartphones, with their fantastic screens, are an ideal way of watching YouTube when you are on the move – or even when you’re just sitting around the house!

There is an official YouTube app in the Windows Phone Marketplace for your Nokia Lumia but it is little more than a link to the mobile web version of YouTube. It works well enough and it’s fine for watching videos but it’s just not very exciting, is it?

You are left with the feeling that the app could be so much more. Thankfully, that’s where the independent developers come in. Here’s a pick of some of the third party YouTube apps for your Lumia. Happy watching.

easyTube, £.079p

This is a paid for app, but you can also try it out without any limitations on its features but you will see ads.

easyTube has a slick interface, supports your YouTube account and there is also integration with social networks so you share clips with friends. Perhaps best of all is that you can download clips to your Lumia and arrange them in different folders.

You can also record your own videos within the app and then upload them to YouTube.

Metrotube, FREE

Metrotube is everything you wanted the official YouTube app to be. It is a beautiful app that chimes perfectly with the Windows Phone interface.

Once you’ve logged in with your YouTube account you could be mistaken for thinking that this is the official YouTube app. You can watch your favourites, your subscription videos or your playlists – all of which you can also pin to your start screen.

Sometimes an app just works and you don’t need tonnes of fancy features to be impressed by it. Metrotube is such an example. There’s no downloading or uploading, but for just watching YouTube, it is a delight.

PrimeTube, FREE

PrimeTube is a cross between Metrotube and easyTube. It has the great Windows Phone-style interface of the former with some of the added functionality of the latter.

Again, this app serves you better if you do have a YouTube account so you can access all your favourites and subscriptions. Particularly useful is that your subscription videos get their own screen (most viewed and trending are the others) when the app starts up.

You can also record and upload videos, although you can’t download them. You can pin videos, playlists and authors, with live tile support, to the start screen.

Tube Pro, FREE

Tube Pro is another app that supports recording and uploading of your own videos to YouTube. You can also download videos to your Lumia.

There are a few nice features that set it apart, such as different themes and backgrounds and the location function, which shows you the videos in your area. If you are listening to a music video or concert recording then the app will play the audio underneath the lock screen.

Udownldr, FREE

I like this app purely on the basis that it doesn’t feature the word ‘tube’ in its title. As its name suggests, Udownldr has been developed in mind to make it easy for you to download, as well as watch, YouTube videos.

MP3 Tube, FREE

This is a YouTube downloading app with a difference. It downloads YouTube videos and converts them into MP3 audio files. Dare I suggest that this could work quite well for music videos?

Within the app, you listen to the MP3 and create a playlist of your downloaded files. You can also edit your MP3 files to create ringtones for your Lumia.

MegaTube, FREE

MegaTube does not currently support your YouTube account login or video uploading, but the developer says these will come with future updates.

What MegaTube does allow you to do is search, watch and download videos. Perhaps the one thing that sets this apart is the choice of feeds – you can see the most shared, most popular, most recent, most discussed, trending videos etc.

Reading the comments or browsing through the author information while you are watching a video also works well on this app.

phoneTUBE, FREE

This app takes a somewhat niche approach to the abundance of content available on YouTube. It has selected the full-length movies that are available on the site and essentially created a free film service for your Lumia.

It’s a good idea in principle but you may become frustrated at the limited choice on offer, although the developer has promised to keep his list updated.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, then you might want to give Crackle a try.