Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss Ford police vehicles heating up to kill viruses, NASA’s isolation volunteers, a court order forcing grandparents to remove pictures from Facebook, Sony’s image sensor AI, a Face ID update to make it compatible with masks, a smart faucets and hand-washing time, and more.

Nick in Windsor, Ontario listens on AM800 CKLW and is calling via the app and asked: “I have an Amazon Echo Show. Is there an easy way to watch YouTube on it?”

Nick, yes there is, though the fact that you had to ask means Amazon is not making it obvious.

The Echo Show models don’t have a built in YouTube viewer, but if you tell Alexa that you want to watch videos on YouTube it should ask you which browser you want to use to access YouTube.

After you answer it will just open it in a browser window.

While that’s not great and the device would probably benefit from having a more customized YouTube view that was better adapted to its small screen, the truth is that Google has been very lazy with YouTube apps and they basically use a webview for all devices, including TVs now.

No one gets a good YouTube experience customized to fit their devices anymore, so your Echo Show wouldn’t be any worse off than any other device is these days.

Amazon does make some competitor services available on the Echo devices, so it’s interesting that it doesn’t make its ability to play YouTube videos more obvious, they may be a little worried about promoting videos that can only work better in Google’s own smart screens.

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