Is there a way to add a button to the iPhone Home Screen that links to a specific YouTube video and have it open with the YouTube app and not a browser?
My google fu has failed me.
Never mind, don’t want to try a solution I can’t test, and I don’t have an iPhone to test with anymore.
So I can only test this in the beta of iOS 26 Tahoe, still a little freaky environment so I can’t know for sure. If the reason it’s failing for me is that the workflow is bad or if it’s just busted in the beta.
Here’s what I tried.
- Open your video in Safari
- Go to the share icon
- Go down to “Add to Home Screen” in “more”
- In there is a toggle to open that YouTube link in the app.
- Click ‘add’
That correctly places an icon on your home screen that will launch the YouTube app, but despite the fact that the URL is correct for the specific video, I am not seeing it actually load that content. It just goes to the default start screen. I also attempted it with the switch for launching in the app turned off, but same problem although this time it opens the YouTube home screen in Safari.
But it doesn’t hurt to give this a shot and maybe it will work on a more stable version of the OS.
I don’t have a toggle for opening the app when adding to the Home Screen.
Nothing like this? Maybe an addition in iOS 26.
Mine looks like this:
Image
If you untoggle that switch, does it work right? I notice it says “web app”, which is what I don’t want.
I guess you have to be a charter member to imbed images.
No one, not even charter members, can embed images. If you put a link to the image itself on a separate line, it should appear in your post.
In my efforts to try to get it to work, either as a web app or as a trigger to open the native YouTube app, it doesn’t do what you want. It does not seem to recognize the video in the link. It just goes to the default page.
This method below works for me in iOS 18. Basically, you’re just making a shortcut of the URL and it opens directly to the specific video in the YouTube app (although you might get an ad first).
Copy the YouTube link.
Open the Shortcuts app.
Tap the “+” button at the top right.
In the “Search Actions” field, type “open urls”.
Tap “Open URLs”.
Where it says “Open URL,” Tap the light blue “URL.”
Paste the YouTube link.
Tap the dropdown arrow at the top of the screen that comes after “Open URLs.”
Tap “Add to Home Screen.”
Edit the shortcut with whatever name, color, photo you want.
Tap “Add” at the top right.
Move the shortcut to wherever you want on the home screen.
Tap the short cut.
That worked! Thank you!