Most of Google’s iOS apps haven’t been updated since early December. The trio of smaller Google apps saw new versions late last month, while YouTube for the iPhone and iPad was updated this evening.
Following the last YouTube release (15.49.4) on December 7, iPhone owners are watching version 15.49.6 this evening. The release date is officially February 13th, updated by Google in a very strange weekend. As always, the YouTube team continued its practice of using generic release notes:
Fixed bugs, improved performance, drank too much coffee
While it is common for tech companies to stop work during the winter holidays, updates usually resume in mid-January. Some speculated that the lack of releases was due to the app’s nutrition labels, but YouTube filled out the app’s privacy section before the update.
In fact, the YouTube family (music, TV and studio), Save for Kids, was updated with Apple’s requirement in early February. Google has publicly stated its commitment to adding labels and the current count is on more than a dozen apps:
Since Google’s iOS apps have been updated with new features or to fix bugs, you’ll see updates to our Apps page list that includes new app privacy details. These labels represent the maximum categories of data that can be collected – that is, if you use every feature and service available in the application.
The YouTube update comes as iPhone owners posted a “This app is out of date” message earlier this week when trying to sign in with a Google Account. There was no real security problem, and the warning was quickly removed.
Hopefully, Google’s other app updates will follow soon. The latest Chrome for iOS is typically 24 days late, although feature parity was not lost due to the server-side update nature of most Google services. For example, Google Apps last month got a big redesign of how search results are displayed.
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