Leanback with YouTube in Windows Media Center with the Help of PipTube

I have never been a huge YouTube user, but every so often I come across something worth checking out and sharing with the family. For general YouTube browsing in Windows Media Center, I have generally relied on MacroTube, but one feature it lacks is the ability to login into your Google account and access your Watch Later playlist. I recently upgraded our main HTPC and had been casting about for an easy way to add YouTube Leanback, YouTube’s newer and more remote friendly 10 foot user interface webpage, to WMC when I came across PipTube.

This is a very simple plugin that lets you access YouTube leanback from within MediaCenter. It pretty much just opens youtube.com/leanback in a media center browser window.

I made this plugin because I wanted to be able to access my own YouTube playlists from media center so that I could save videos on my pc or phone and watch them later on my TV.

The leanback interface is easily navigated with the up, down, left, and right buttons. Ok can be used to make selections or play/pause a movie.

PipTube’s Github

YouTube Leanback has some interface quirks that PipTube cannot help with surrounding the use of the Back button on the standard WMC remote control, but otherwise provides a clean, simple method of adding YouTube Leanback to WMC.