Vertical Forest

Ending Development of YouTube5

Saturday, August 22nd, 2015

I am sad to announce that I am ending development of YouTube5. Really this happened months ago, but it’s taken me until now to admit to myself that it is no longer a priority for me, and I am not going to regain the motivation to work on it. YouTube now fully supports HTML5 on all of its videos, so YouTube5 is no longer necessary to avoid Flash. Eliminating Flash was the primary reason I created YouTube5 to begin with, and its other features are not compelling enough for my needs to be worth the time to maintain it. I stopped using YouTube5 on my own computer about a year ago, and haven’t really missed it.

I’m sorry that it has taken me so long to announce this, and I apologize to all those who have been waiting for updates or fixes. YouTube5 is open source, so if anyone wishes to fork it and continue development, feel free. I will gladly link to a new site if someone wishes to take over maintenance.

Thank you to all of you who used YouTube5 over the years and offered feedback and suggestions! It’s been a great experience developing it.