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Parents rejoice: Google launches YouTube Kids on iOS and Android
Google Inc.’s video giant YouTube has today officially launched YouTube Kids, an iOS and Android app that, as the name may suggest, presents a kid-friendly version of YouTube.
Rumors of the apps first surfaced last week, but YouTube made it official today in a blog post that explained how the new app was “built from the ground up with little ones in mind.”
YouTube explains that the new app “makes it safer and easier for children to find videos on topics they want to explore.”
Pitched at concerned parents, the post claims that they can now “rest a little easier knowing that videos in the YouTube Kids app are narrowed down to content appropriate for kids.”
Within the app, users (kids with their parents, or without their parents as the case may be) can browse channels and playlists in four categories: Shows, Music, Learning and Explore. App users can search for videos of particular interest to the family, with an inclusion of educationally focused material, such as how to build a model volcano, math tutorials, the world of trains—and in YouTube’s words “everything in between.”
Featured content comes from DreamWorks TV, Jim Henson TV, Mother Goose Club, Talking Tom and Friends and others (Thomas the Tank Engine), as well as offering access to series from existing (presumably not always commercial) YouTube channels.
The app comes with parental controls, including a time to limit a kids screen time, sound settings, which are said to turn off background music and sound effects, and search settings to limit what children can search for.
Although YouTube advises that both the iOS and Android apps have only been released in their respective U.S. stores, SiliconANGLE can confirm that at least the Android app currently is available from outside the United States.
There’s nothing remarkable in describing the release as a win/win all round. YouTube, and by extension Google will get kudos from parents for offering a kid friendly version of YouTube, and likewise for parents, particularly of young kids, it will immediately offer a filtered delivery system that works nicely with their children…and in 2015 there’s not a lot of parents with smallish kids (say 3-4 and up) who haven’t discovered YouTube yet.
To download YouTube kids: for Apple users click here, for Android users click here.
Image credit: Google/ YouTube
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