Juno was a Vision Pro app by indie developer Christian Selig that let users watch YouTube in the immersive environment with gesture controls.

Indie developer Christian Selig — best known for his now-shuttered Apollo app for Reddit — launched Juno shortly after the Vision Pro's February 2024 arrival, both to learn the platform and to give users something to do on a headset short of native apps.

Google was not receptive to a third-party YouTube client: it contacted Selig and later Apple, claiming Juno violated YouTube guidelines by modifying its site in a way it 'doesn't approve of', and cited its trademarks and iconography. Apple responded by removing the app from the App Store.

Juno was gone from the App Store by 2024-10-02, with Selig announcing the shutdown the day before. He chose not to fight — calling Juno more of a 'fun hobby project' — and the app keeps working for existing users unless YouTube's changes break it. He is focusing on his iOS app Pixel Pals.

The platform gap was real enough that a solo developer shipped the missing YouTube experience within weeks of launch.

Platform owners, not client developers, decide how their content may be presented — Google's complaint to Apple was enough to end the app.

Selig's decision not to fight shows the economics: a hobby-scale app cannot fund a trademark dispute with two platform giants.

A solo dev can fill a platform's biggest gap faster than its owner, but a web-view client lives on borrowed ground — one trademark letter ends it.

As of 2024-10-02 Juno is pulled from the App Store but keeps working for existing users; Selig is focused on Pixel Pals, his iOS app descended from an Apollo feature.

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The sources

  1. Juno, the YouTube app for Vision Pro, pulled from App Store techcrunch.com