Play 2.0 just got released with a new channels feature.

• It’s behind a subscription, but you can try it for seven days.

I started using Play as a replacement for YouTube’s Watch Later list (and for other sites too, like Vimeo).

• YouTube is an attention magnet, and I want to avoid it when possible.

• Using the Watch Later feature makes this more hard.

• Play keeps me out of the YouTube app, mostly…

I also follow YouTube channels using RSS from Reeder instead of the YouTube app.

• This way, I have an integrated workflow of browsing videos, blog posts, Mastodon posts, etc.

• I’m also trying to give minimal data to Google through YouTube other than my watch history.

  • I have watch history turned off, but I’m sure Google still tracks it.

• Because of this workflow, it seems redundant to use Play to subscribe to the same list of YouTube channels.

I added my list of channels to Play anyway to test the Channels feature.

• It was a bit annoying since Play has no Shortcuts integration for managing channels or OPML import.

I don’t have a conclusion on the usefulness of this feature for me yet, but I’ll test it in the following week, and we will see if I keep the subscription or not.