YouTube App Drops Support for Older Apple Devices

YouTube has updated its iOS and iPadOS app to version 20.22.1, raising the minimum OS requirement to iOS 16 and iPadOS 16. This ends official support for several older Apple devices, including the iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus, original SE, iPod touch 7, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini 4, which cannot upgrade past iOS 15 or iPadOS 15. Users on these devices can continue using older app versions for now, but will miss out on new features and updates, with eventual loss of functionality expected. Affected users can still access YouTube through web browsers, though the experience is less polished than the app. The update, announced just before Apple's WWDC event, mirrors a wider trend among major apps to phase out support for aging hardware. Many of the impacted devices are nearly a decade old, underlining Apple's comparatively long device support cycle.