YouTube TV now supports Safari for Mac, while website currently works on iPadOS with PiP

Abner Li | Nov 8 2021 - 9:32 pm PT

Officially, watching Google’s cord-cutting service on the web requires Chrome or Firefox, while Chromium-based browsers — like Microsoft Edge — also work. In recent days, YouTube TV has rolled out support for Safari on macOS.

Previously, visiting tv.youtube.com in desktop Safari would just provide instructions on how to set up the service on televisions and a link to the “Supported devices” help article.

With macOS Monterey and Safari 15.1, the YouTube TV website now fully works. You can browse and watch programming at up to 1080p on the base plan. Screenshotting a stream unfortunately does not work, while we haven’t been able to check whether earlier Mac versions are supported.

YouTube TV started rolling out support for Safari on Friday, and it’s now widely available as of Monday. Google has yet to detail this expanded support and still says that it’s “working to bring YouTube TV to more browsers in the future.”

Meanwhile, others have noted that the website also works on iPadOS 15 with the added bonus of picture-in-picture — fullscreen the video player and then swipe home or tap the button in the top-left corner. PiP is something that the iOS app continues to lack, while it’s slowly coming to the main client. It’s unclear if mobile Safari will remain supported as Chrome for iOS (even when requesting the desktop site) does not work. Google wants you to use the native application.

Behind the scenes, this might be due to Apple adding WebM support in Safari earlier this year with macOS Big Sur 11.3.