‘Play: A Fantastic Utility for Saving and Organizing YouTube Videos for Later’
John Voorhees, reviewing a wonderful new app on MacStories:
Play is an excellent example of how purpose-built apps often outshine more general solutions. There are many ways to save a YouTube video for later, from a bare URL pasted in a text file to a bookmarking or read later app. YouTube has its own solution, too, with its Watch Later playlist. Each solution I’ve tried in the past works to a degree, but by focusing solely on the experience of saving YouTube links for watching later, Play outshines them all.
I’ve been beta testing Play from Marcos Tanaka (developer of other great media management apps like MusicHarbor and MusicSmart) for the past few months, and it’s my favorite new app in recent memory! It’s helped me keep track of the videos I want to watch and actually come back to watch them, so much better than anything else. I love that you can tap on a thumbnail straight from the widget, and it immediately starts playing in the YouTube app. Then it’s marked as watched, with no need to manually manage the queue, as you do with YouTube’s Watch Later playlist.
Play also inspired a shortcut that I’ve been using to streamline my save-for-later flow. Now, anything I share from around the web is evaluated by Shortcuts and then funneled off to the right app. YouTube links get sent to Play, articles to Reeder, and Amazon links to my task manager. I’m even starting to move my YouTube channel subscriptions back to RSS, now that it’s so easy to save things for later just from the video’s URL. That means I have one less app to keep up with. It’s been working great, and it’s all thanks to Play.
Give it a try for just $1.99 as a universal app on the App Store.