Bigscreen is putting Meta to shame again, as the VR hangout app just got a serious bump in functionality for Quest users and PC VR users alike. Now VR’s favorite social viewing app includes native YouTube support, so you can watch anything on YouTube with friends and strangers.

Bigscreen has now added the version of YouTube you’d expect to find on a console or smart TVs, directly integrated into the VR hangout app. The update is out now for all supported headsets, including Meta Quest and all SteamVR and WindowsMR headsets.

This means you can use all YouTube features you’d expect, including logging in to your standard account or YouTube Premium account for ad-free viewing, watching YouTube TV for live sports and TV, and even renting movies through YouTube. Just like everything on Bigscreen, there aren’t any sharing limitations so you can easily pop on whatever you want: a TV show, rented movie, or live sport for friends and strangers.

For PC VR headsets, this also essentially means you don’t need to use the desktop mirroring function since YouTube is now baked in like all of the app’s other channels.

Following an update in December, this also means you’ll be able to share that screen with up to 15 people per room. Previous updates also brought improved spatial audio, new environments, and better remote desktop capability, which allows Quest users to stream their PC into their virtual room to share with friends.

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Bigscreen says it has plenty more in the pipeline too. In the next few months, the studio says it’s looking forward to launching “a huge improvement to our Social VR platform with a new friends system, Bluetooth keyboard/gamepad support for Remote Desktop, and more,” Bigscreen CEO Darshan Shankar told Road to VR.

Bigscreen is available for free on all major headsets except for PSVR. There’s still no ETA on when to expect the app on PSVR although the developers have said in the past that its optimizations on Quest have essentially laid the foundation for PSVR in the future.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Cless

    To be fair… the only laughingstock here is youtube itself, without a VR app for years, or an abandoned one, which is even worse.

    • ViRGiN

      Google was never really pro VR, while Big Screen is all about video business. It’s like the only app that could TRULY benefit from hand tracking, but it’s unsupported.

      The developers of BS are full of bs, a complete wimps. What a toxic community.

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  • Arturs Gerskovics

    Thats cool from BigScreen!

  • Guest

    Oh great, another third layer of ads that are already smothering YouTube already to make it almost unusable!

  • Mateusz Pawluczuk

    Another great Bigscreen update

  • Anonmon

    So, literally what VRChat’s had for eons but infinitely worse because it’s the horrid “Force you to sign in, all of the ads all of the time and zero comments” version you’re stuck with on console or “Smart” TV’s. If I’m going to not be able to see the comments or actually SEE any of the youtube stuff beyond the actual video if I want to watch stuff with friends, the least we could do is cut out the obnoxious advertisement without the friction.

    Don’t get me wrong, for streaming your desktop to other players in a big theater or communal environment, Bigscreen’s great. But for literally everything else it does, either Virtual Desktop or VRChat does it either far better or with more jank but less bs.

  • Chaven Yenketswamy

    Will be great if there was some good VR videos. My overall experience of the quality of VR with YouTube has been very poor.

  • DjArcas

    So y’all are rocking 500 dollar headsets and 2000 dollar PCs, but are still not paying for Youtube Premium? Ok…

  • Justin

    When will they allow Macs to have the same capabilities as PC’s.

  • KindaSmooth

    Now what we need is Adblock for YouTube and Bigscreen.. There’s ads and then there’s spamming. Don’t know if it can be done but the free ones available for pc. Something has to be possible.

  • Chris

    Very good Bigscreen, I love your app, but please add the ability to browse headset files locally and play with full codec support including mkv audio, all I could find to do that on Q2 was Moonplayer – which is good, but primitive . I love the Bigscreen environments, they really add to the immersion.