Customer Reviews

YouTube

The official YouTube app is great and works very well on the Amazon Fire TV. I had often tried YouTube on my Apple TV and sometimes it was slow to load or not particularly good quality (even when set to the highest resolution possible). As as an owner of Roku 2, that device does not support YouTube. So currently, I think the Amazon Fire TV is now the best device on the market for viewing YouTube content on your television.

If you have an existing YouTube account, you can simply sign in and all your videos, playlists, and preferences will automatically be added to the app. If you don't yet have an account, I'd suggest making one because it makes things a lot easier. The Voice feature of the Fire TV does NOT work within the YouTube App. Personally, I still search for videos of interest online using my laptop and then add them to a playlist - this prevents me from actually having to do the searching with the TV remote (which is far more time consuming).

One thing that can be improved upon is the layout of the app. It isn't the easiest to navigate or search for videos, and it looks a bit cluttered compared to other popular apps like Netflix.

I got this for my Amazon Fire TV. It does a good job of playing. It provides reasonable search functions.

But... I'm spoiled by voice search and that isn't available in this version. Only the slow click-a-letter-at-a-time on-screen typing. Oh so miserable!

I think the menu layout could be improved as well as use/feel better matching the Amazon Fire TV interface.

The quality of video playback seems pretty good to me and I'm very pleased with that. The issue to me is getting to the video I want to play that isn't ideal for the Amazon Fire TV platform.

As a first release it's just OK. I'm hoping that updated versions will improve the app with Amazon Fire TV integration and layout. This is a key app for a set-top box and it really needs to be better. I'm hoping that YouTube & Amazon will improve it soon.

Fire TV 's users and buyers beware: This Youtube App for Fire TV has experienced a change just recently of the search function that makes it a lot worse, and in most case , useless to users of Amazon Fire TV . What happened is the Search box, and the search screen, when one starts typing in a few keywords for the search, got reduced to 1/4 of the original size and got "minimized" to the corner of the TV screen. This makes it IMPOSSIBLE for users to see and continue with the search function (unless you stand 3-4 feet from the TV screen, you can't see the contents of the search box and alphabets because the whole screen has been "minimized"). The search function of this Fire TV YouTube app used to be very good, until this ridiculous change (or is it a new release's bug?) was made just recently to this new version of Fire TV YouTube. I guess unless Amazon could work with Google to fix this problem soon, I'm going back to Roku 3 box (which still has the good YouTube search screen/function) .

This app works great on our Fire TV. Love being able to sit on the couch in jammies and watch my subscriptions on crafting. :p It allows me to sign in and actually see my subscriptions and such. It is laid out well and we really like it.

Great YouTube video. Easy to use and navigate the menus. Search works well and anticipates what you are searching for which helps save time with fewer key inputs.

I was used to using the youtube channel on my Roku and this is basically the exact same thing. It linked to my account and paired to my phone without any problems. The video playback has been great (subject to internet congestion) and I think that I've only seen one commercial (something that I'm sure they'll "fix" once more people start watching youtube on devices like Roku and Amazon Fire TV).

Being the same as the Roku youtube channel, I have the same complaints with it and one new one specific to the app on the Amazon Fire TV. The most grievous of which is that you can't access the playlists of the people that you subscribe to. It only displays the videos that they post in order, starting with the most recent. So if you want to watch a video that your favorite youtuber posted 4 months ago, you either have a lot of scrolling to do or you have to use the search function. If you want to watch a complete playlist from your favorite youtuber, your only real option is to pair a device such as your phone to this app, find the desired playlist with your phone, and push it to your TV. I would really love to see a way to select a youtube channel and be presented with separate tabs for recent uploads, playlists, etc.

A second, more minor complaint is that there's no easy way to "like" a video. Yes, it can be done, but requires a lot of button pressing (down, back, scroll left, select "more options", scroll right, select "like"). Press the wrong button at the wrong time and you're likely to skip out of the video and have to restart it. It would be nice to have an easier way to do this. Even better, a specific "like" button on the Amazon Fire remote. I'm not holding my breath.

A complaint specific to the Amazon Fire TV is that the voice search function of the Fire TV doesn't work with youtube. I would like to see that implemented in this app. And since that's a selling feature of the Amazon Fire TV that they've highlighted in their advertising, it makes sense for them to include youtube at some point (and Netflix as well), although it would probably fall to Google and not Amazon to include this feature.

All in all, the youtube app is pretty good and well worth your money. (It's free)

I installed the YouTube app on my Amazon Fire TV device, and it's OK, but I have one major complaint that forced me to reduce it from five stars to three stars.

The app allows you to search on your smartphone or other device, even your computer, then send your results to the SmartTV device to watch on the big screen.

BUT ... the next time you return to the app, you have to enter a new set of numbers to make the remote search work again.

It would be nice if Amazon would allow you to use the voice search button in the YouTube app.

The YouTube app for Fire TV works great on its own, but you also get the ability to broadcast YouTube videos from your phone or laptop! And it works without a hitch every time! The built-in navigation works well too, making getting the video you want easy. Unfortunately, the app doesn't incorporate the Fire TV voice search, hopefully that's coming in the near future. Good stuff!

This version of YouTube is pretty good. It makes an effort to give you that lean back TV experience with a queue system.

It has a nice casting to integration that works with the YouTube on your mobile device and complements the queue up video feature.

The down side is it is missing some features from the website or that you might find in the tablet or mobile phone version. It is difficult to thumbs up a video before it completes.

Also, accessing your subscriptions, subscribing, are glitch-y. You might discover a new "creator" and wish to subscribe; there is a 50/50 chance it will work or not.

Not sure how they decide which subscriptions you can view. It would be excellent if they gave you access to everything you have. Display it Netflix style with the most recent videos but allow you to dig into the channel for access to all the videos.

There is no watch later add ability, something I really miss.

Watching live events is not supported... new stuff, but sucked when a live event is displayed and when you try to watch it, you get an error stating it is not supported. Dangle carrot much Google? Maybe you can display and grey out it in the list instead of letting us click on it, with a caption of not supported. It would be great if that is coming soon.

Next, noting that this is not supported on any YouTube, so my rating does not reflect this, but it would be great to have a resume video. Keep track of videos I was watching and allow me to resume or start from beginning.

Overall, glad to have it. Saves time from booting up the PC, and gives a nice TV experience.

My main beef in using the YouTube app on the Amazon Fire TV device is it's missing a "history" function, unless I'm doing something wrong. On Apple TV, the YouTube app keeps a record of the last 30 or so things you've watched, so if you want to go back and look at something you've watched recently, or want to finish watching something you saw only part of, you can't do it easily without having to perform a monumental search for it. This app does keep a record of recent searches (and only 10 of them at that) but not of things you've watched. This is a real pain for me because often I'll look for 10 or 15 videos I want to watch, will click on to them and watch a few seconds, and these (at least on AppleTV) will be saved as recent watches and this is an easy way of making a list of things you want to watch. You can't do it on this version of the YouTube app.

I don't care much about the voice search function. My version has it, but I don't use it. I feel like an idiot talking to a remote control. Maybe I'm just old and not used to such things, but maybe it's something I don't want to get used to. In order to search on YouTube without the voice search or the ridiculously clunky hunt and peck letter-by-letter search entry (AppleTV also does a better job of implementing this, though it's still a pain to use), I link up my iPad to the Amazon TV and type in searches, and this works well.

It's the lack of a real history function that sinks this for me. When/if they add it, I'll upgrade my rating to 5 stars because everything else here works swell.