With all of the things that I do in my browser, the last thing I need is to open yet another tab in an already busy and cluttered browser session. When it comes to YouTube, I personally use the popular video service for four or five different purposes, including embedding interesting video content into my blog, researching information and sometimes just to sit back and watch random and entertaining videos.

To do this, I usually just open up yet another tab in my browser and start doing a YouTube search. However, it would be really useful to have a desktop app to just search YouTube and access everything from the site that I could access from my own YouTube account. Back in 2006, Aibek actually reviewed an app like this called FireAnt, but this and other apps we've covered at MUO are mostly intended to download YouTube videos to the local computer.

There are lots of cool desktop video programs out there, such as Hulu Desktop. But since I spend most of my time pouring through YouTube for cool content, I was really excited to discover Desktube.TV, which is exclusive to only YouTube videos.

YouTube Search From Your Desktop

I've tried a lot of desktop video programs like Miro, mostly for watching Internet TV, but Desktube.tv is one of the first programs I've found that not only focuses on YouTube, but also integrates really well with many of the features you normally access with your YouTube account, such as adding to or browsing your playlists, viewing and adding to your subscriptions and more.

When you install and run Desktube.tv, you'll see a main display that actually looks a bit like the individual channel pages you'll find on YouTube. The main video view screen is on the left, but you can resize this to fill the top half of the window, the entire window or even your entire computer screen.

youtube desktop search

If you want to access all of the features, like playlists and the social networking areas of YouTube, click on any of those personalized features like "Subscriptions" and the program will automatically ask you to log into your YouTube account.

youtube video search

Once you're in, you can access and change any of the playlist videos, subscriptions, and favorites stored on your YouTube account. Browsing through videos is really simple - just use the scroll arrows on the right side of the video list display.

youtube video search

YouTube search functionality is available by typing in your search phrase into the search box next to the DeskTube logo. All of the resulting videos are displayed in the bottom pane, just scroll left or right to browse through all of them.

For any video displayed in the main display pane, you also have access to YouTube's commenting system if you're logged into your account. Just quickly type in your comment and click the "Post" button, and your comment will instantly appear for that video on the YouTube website.

desktop youtube search

The right pane of the video display features all of the information and stats about the video you're watching. In a lot of ways this information is more accessible in DeskTube than it is from the YouTube website itself. With a quick glance, you can see total video and channel views, user rating, the summary and a quick Subscribe button to add this channel to your YouTube account.

desktop youtube search

My favorite feature are the three buttons at the bottom of the right information panel. With the click of a button, you can favorite the video, share it via email or add it to your playlist. Since I use the custom YouTube player on my blog, I update my playlist constantly, and this feature is really useful for that. When you share a video via email, the pop-up screen makes it fast and easy to fire off a cool video to a friend without the need for an email client or a browser.

youtube search

DeskTube.tv is a pretty useful desktop application if you tend to use YouTube a lot and you'd like to free up some space on your browser tab bar. Not only is the application available for Windows, Linux and Mac, but the DeskTube website also promises that there will be a similar mobile app available for the Android and iPhone. That will be a more difficult niche to capture because there are so many mobile YouTube viewers available, but if all of these features are included, it has a pretty good chance of catching on.

So, give DeskTube.tv a try and start using YouTube more often, whether or not you're actively browsing the Internet. Do you know of any other YouTube desktop video players that have the same or better features? Share your thoughts about this application in the comments section below.