I spent a lot of time watching YouTube on my TV, so you can imagine my surprise when app researcher Nima Owji shared an early look at X’s upcoming TV app: It looks almost exactly like YouTube.
In a recent video, Owji shows off the new X TV login screen, which instructs you to go to a specific URL to link your TV and X account using a one-time code. After linking your X account, the app proceeds to take you to a home screen with different types of video content, including “Shorts,” which we imagine stands for short videos, the same thing they’re called on YouTube; a For You feed of videos; and trending videos.
In addition, the X TV app, which is web-based, has a search function, identifiable by the magnifying glass on the left vertical menu (reminiscent of YouTube’s search function on TVs). You can also follow specific accounts, such as SpaceX, and activate notifications for their content.
Owji tried out the X app on his smart TV over the weekend and said it appeared to be almost ready. The app researcher said that in his testing, most of the functionalities seemed to work. Like in the X mobile and desktop app, you’ll be able to toggle a video’s speed and image quality.
Some prominent Musk followers, such as DogeDesigner (@cb_doge), pointed out that based on Owji’s findings, it looked like X was considering reviving Vine, the legendary 6-second looping video app that the Internet seems to enjoy mourning. However, the preview Owji shared doesn’t clearly indicate how long the videos in the Shorts feed are.
Owji told Gizmodo that the videos in this section were longer than 6 seconds in his test but didn’t rule out a possibility that Vine-like videos could make a return when the X TV app officially launches.
The Elon Musk-led company purportedly planned to launch the app in mid-March, according to a report in Fortune, although Musk isn’t exactly known for his punctuality. The Fortune report stated that Musk planned to launch an X TV app for Amazon and Samsung smart TVs, also noting that the app looked “identical” to YouTube.
Currently, it’s not known when or if X will launch the X TV app. Musk has indicated that it’s “coming soon.”
Launching a TV app for the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, isn’t new. As Fortune points out, Twitter previously tried to pivot to video at least three other times in recent years, debuting apps for the now-dead Google TV platform and Samsung Smart Hub in 2010 and 2011. In 2016, the company launched video apps for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Xbox One after clinching a $US10 million deal to stream some NFL games on Twitter.