Google is forcing Apple Vision Pro's Juno YouTube app from the App Store

YouTube convinced Apple to remove the third-party Vision Pro app Juno from the visionOS App Store.

Although it claims it has one “on its roadmap,” Google-owned YouTube does not currently have a visionOS app. And while iPad apps are available by default in the App Store on Vision Pro, YouTube has declined to make these apps available.

In contrast, YouTube has a native app on Meta's Horizon OS for Quest headsets, and Meta says it's launching a co-watching beta this week.

Since the launch of Apple Vision Pro, a $5 third-party YouTube app called Juno has been available. It was developed by the same developer as the Apollo phone app for Reddit, another app that was recently discontinued by the platform owner.

Juno provided a standard visionOS side menu interface for YouTube's core pages and standard visionOS video player controls, loading each page as a web view with custom CSS to match visionOS' native theme. It even supported system-level features like Siri.

Back in April, YouTube sent an email to Juno developer Christian Selig claiming that “you have violated and continue to violate the YouTube Terms of Service and the YouTube API Services Terms of Service” by using the YouTube web interface and said Juno “refers heavily to it.” on YouTube’s brands and iconography.” The email asked Selig to update Juno so that it “stopped modifying the YouTube service.”

Selig said he found YouTube's requests “very puzzling.” Juno is effectively a web view under the hood and doesn't use YouTube APIs, he says. He also points out that Google's own Chrome browser allows extensions to change the style and theme of websites, including YouTube, and YouTube's own iOS example suggests using the embed player technique originally used by Juno . Additionally, he says Juno does not use YouTube iconography, except for the YouTube logo on the company's own page that Juno loads.

Selig says he immediately responded to YouTube with these rebuttals and released an update in June to let the app use YouTube's player instead of the embed player technique. He also made Juno hide the YouTube logo and added the word “unofficial” to Juno's caption and description in the App Store.

However, these changes were not enough. Selig says YouTube contacted Apple several months ago and made the same claims as in the original email. Apple appears to have taken YouTube at its word and Juno is no longer available in the App Store.

Here is the full statement from Juno developer Christian Selig:

For those who don't know, after YouTube contacted me a few months ago, they contacted the App Store and told them that Juno was not following YouTube's policies and was changing the site in a way that was harmful to them does not agree, and alludes to their trademarks and iconography.

I personally disagree with this as Juno is just a web view and acts as little more than a browser extension that modifies CSS to make the website and video player look more like “visionOS”. No logos other than those already placed on the site will be placed and the addition of “for YouTube” is permitted in the branding guidelines. For those curious, Juno also doesn't block any advertising.

I said this to YouTube, they didn't really want to clarify or give in to anything, and since both parties couldn't come to a conclusion, a few minutes ago I received an email from Apple that Juno had been removed from the app store.

Juno was a fun hobby project for me. As a developer I wanted to get some experience building the Vision Pro and as a user I wanted a nice way to watch YouTube on this cool new device. So I really enjoyed developing Juno, but for me it was always an app that I basically created just for fun.

For this reason, I have absolutely no desire to turn this into a massive battle (at least more than I've fought in emails over the past few months), similar to what happened on Reddit years ago. This is sort of the opposite of fun. I hope that's understandable.

For those who have Juno, as far as I know it should continue to work fine until the YouTube website updates in some way that breaks things. Sorry it had to end like this, I had some really cool stuff planned that I thought would have been a lot of fun! It was really great to hear all the kind words from Vision Pro users who loved the app.

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