Playing YouTube videos in a third party application has never been trivial, even back at the dawn of Windows Phone. Microsoft tried it and got shut down hard by Google. So for the last four years (at least) it's been down to small third party developers reverse engineering YouTube's streams, dodging API changes, and ripping parts of HTML5 pages, as needed. Every few months, YouTube changes something and breaks the clients and then we await fixes. And here credit to Chococode, whose Awesome Tube client has adapted quickly each time. Even if feature development is now officially stopped for Windows 10 Mobile - we still get the fixes!
Last covered here back in February, Twitter keeps on improving its Twitter PWA, most easily accessed on Windows 10 Mobile through the official UWP Store application, even if the code changes are all server-side. Still, Twitter gets smoother and more functional week by week - it's the flagship social network for W10M these days. Here's what's new, updated and fixed!
I've been following the progress of third party Instagram client Winsta UWP for Windows 10 Mobile for a couple of years now, but it's only with the most recent update, v2.6, that notifications have arrived, initially for letting you know that you have an Instagram direct message from someone. As ever, it's a fun ride on the Winsta UWP update track, with new versions at least once a week!
Having written a story about how Instagram was replacing the original app in the Store with a simple web wrapper on a PWA implementation, the next step is obvious and apologies it has taken me a few days to realise and test it, but... never mind the app, never mind third party UWP apps like Winsta, the full Instagram experience is now up on instagram.com. No installation needed, no messing with Store compatibility or landscape mode. Just pure Instagram in (here) an Edge tab. It 'just works'.
Instagram, the popular image sharing service, has just upgraded its Windows 10 (and wider) access by switching to a full PWA, i.e. Progressive Web Application. This replaces the previous (ancient) application in the Windows 10 Store. And yes, the use of PWA means that Windows 10 Mobile can join in the fun - with just a couple of caveats. See below. [Update: another caveat, see the *** section!] [Update 2: see +++ section!]
Last covered here back in November 2019, Twitter keeps on improving its Twitter PWA, most easily accessed on Windows 10 Mobile through the official UWP Store application, even if the code changes are all server-side. Still, Twitter gets smoother and more functional week by week - it's the flagship social network for W10M these days, I'd argue. Here's what's new, updated and fixed!
Office is a staple on Windows phones, of course, and a reason why Lumias have been much loved over the years. But it's worth noting that not only has Microsoft developed the individual Office components into successful standalone applications on other platforms, but as of this week has made available an 'all in one' super-app with all of Office's 'mobile' functionality, plus a number of really useful extras. All behind a single icon!
With the caveat that it's not in the Store in 'packaged' form, the recoding by Google of their Drive cloud service as a PWA (Progressive Web Application) is notable, not least because it makes the service fully accessible to Microsoft's Windows 10 Mobile OS, at least via Monument Browser (what do you mean, you don't have this installed?!) See below for screenshots and thoughts.
After a month's reprieve(!), Windows 10 Mobile really does receive today its very last OS/security update, marking the end of Microsoft's official support, though of course phones aren't going to suddenly stop working. Under the hood here there are kernel and security fixes, for all phones currently running the '1709' branch (potentially most of you, see the upgrade/hack links below). Grab this last (January 2020) update in Settings. Make the most of it, it's the last time you'll ever be seeing those cogs*.
A week ago, we wrote about myTube!'s battle with changing YouTube API key limits, hopefully now under control. And I mentioned the continuing myTube! 4.0 rebuild, still in beta after six months (last covered here). Well, the same API key limits and also changes to YouTube authentication/logins have also affected the 4.0 beta, covered here. But as of yesterday everything seems to be fixed, plus there's enough communication from the developer (Ryken Studios) to warrant bringing everyone up to date - here's the state of the myTube! 'v4 Beta'!
