The vast majority of Google’s iOS apps have not been updated since early December. A trio of smaller Google applications saw new versions late last month, while YouTube for iPhone and iPad has just been updated tonight.
After the latest YouTube release (15.49.4) on December 7th, iPhone owners will see version 15.49.6 tonight. The release date is officially February 13, which makes for a very strange weekend update by Google. As usual, the YouTube team continued to use general release notes:
Fixed bugs, improved performance, drank way too much coffee
While it’s normal for tech companies to take a break from work during the winter holidays, updates usually resume in mid-January. Some speculated the lack of releases was due to app nutrition labels, but YouTube filled in the App Privacy section long before this update today.
In fact, the YouTube family (music, TV and studio), except for kids, was updated with the Apple requirement in early February. Google has publicly stated that it will add labels, and the current number is over a dozen apps:
As Google’s iOS apps are updated with new features or to fix bugs, you will see updates to our app page details that include the new app privacy details. These labels represent the maximum categories of data that can be collected, which means that you will use every feature and service available in the app.
The YouTube update comes because iPhone owners encountered the ‘This app is out of date’ message earlier this week when they tried to sign in with a Google account. There was no real security issue and the warning was quickly removed.
Hopefully other Google app updates will follow soon. Notably, the latest version of Chrome for iOS is 24 days late, though feature parity hasn’t been lost given the server-side update nature of most Google services. For example, the Google app got a major redesign of how search results are displayed last month.
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