Put YouTube on your desktop with YTubePlayer

Put YouTube on your desktop with YTubePlayer:

YTubePlayer is a free desktop client for YouTube that lets you create Playlists of YouTube videos and play and save them without using your internet browser.

This software brings an ad-free, basic YouTube video watching functionality to your desktop, including full-screen video mode, but is largely designed in the manner of a music player. It puts emphasis on creating, playing, and sharing video playlists with other YTubePlayer users, and a mini “toolbar” mode where a console with basic controls floats on the desktop, and which a mainstay of most music players for example. It even supports multimedia keyboard controls.

In my view, desktop clients for YouTube and other online video sharing sites need to bring one thing to the table: a snazzy, stylish, ad-free, video watching experience, with an emphasis on stylish. This, however, is NOT what YTubePlayer tries to do. Rather, YTubePlayer looks at YouTube primarily as a music resource, so ask yourself if you spend a lot of time listening to music on YouTube, and if the answer is yes, then you should rush to download and install this one.

But let me back up a little bit: while creating playlists of YouTube videos may be a wonderful thing if you want to listen to YouTube music, it can also be a great way manage and view videos that you are interested in as well, which is something to consider. Also YTubePlayer supports YouTube RSS feeds, and is a great way to follow these if that’s something you want.

My main criticism of YTubePlayer is the overall look and feel of the interface, which while perfectly adequate, could have been more engaging and/or attractive in my opinion (I have seen some shareware YouTube desktop clients that look yummy, with wall-to-wall thumbnail awesomeness; also another example that comes to mind is Ashampoo ClipFinder, which sports a stylish interface). Moreover, the search function, while perfectly adequate, is somewhat uninspiring. Support for offline downloading of playlists/videos would also have been great. Also note that some YouTube videos will not play on YTubePlayer, because they do not allow embedding outside the YouTube site itself, but that’s hardly the fault of YTubePlayer.

In summary I can say this: if you use listen to a lot of music on YouTube, YTubePlayer is a must have, but even if you don’t, YTubePlayer is still a great way to bring an ad-free YouTube experience to the desktop.

[Thanks go to reader Panzer for the tip about this program].

Version tested: 1.0.334

Compatibility: WinAll, MacOSX

Go to the program page to download (6.44 megs).