A Developer Has Ported YouTube Music App to Wear OS 2.0 Smartwatches

Google announced to shut down its music streaming platform Google Play Music last year to replace it with YouTube Music. However, the Mountain View giant received backlash for not releasing a YouTube Music app for its Wear OS platform for smartwatches. It even released a YouTube Music app for Apple’s watchOS. So now, a developer was able to port the Android app of YouTube Music to Wear OS 2.0 with a few tweaks.

Now, it is worth mentioning that although Google released the YouTube Music app for Wear OS later, it is only compatible with Wear OS 3.0, which is currently exclusive to Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 series. So, a majority of the smartwatches that run Wear OS 2.0 did not get the YouTube Music app as such.

Citing this major issue for Wear OS 2.0 users, Romania-based software developer Alexandru Pop tried to port the Android version of the YouTube Music app to Wear OS. And guess what? He was successful. Pop took the smartphone version of the YouTube Music app and scaled it down to match the size of a smartwatch app. Although it lets users play and control songs on YouTube Music, the UI is reportedly pretty unoptimized still.

Also, the developer used a modified version of the YouTube Music app, dubbed YouTube Music Vanced, to port the app. It was to enable users to sign in to their Google accounts on the Wear OS version of the app. It was a necessity as the original YouTube Music app does not allow sign-ins when or if the app has been tampered with. Hence, there remains a question of security related to the Wear OS version of the YouTube Music app.

Nonetheless, if you are tired of waiting for Google to release an official YouTube Music app that will be compatible with Wear OS 2.0, you can check out the YouTube Music app for your Wear OS 2.0-based smartwatch. You can head to Alexandru’s thread on XDA to get step-by-step instructions for installing the app.