Google’s Fuchsia OS may still be mostly under wraps but the company appears to be working on a dedicated YouTube Player for it. That’s based on recent reports and a commit reportedly sighted in the Fuchsia Gerrit code review. The reference made, in this case, seems to point to code for managing the syncing of YouTube-based card or applet – called “stories” in Fuchsia – across multiple Fuchsia devices. More directly, the comment linked to code for a “youtube_player” and more specifically to a “youtube_state_entity_codec.” Simultaneously, it also may have simply been meant as a means to encourage further work on the Tic-Tac-Toe demo game, which is the board it was technically shared on. Based on the comment shared along with the YouTube code, it was intended to be used as an example of how “wrong” things can go while coding for Fuchsia.
In the meantime, the code seems to have been buried in the search giant’s company-specific portion of the code, “fuchsia-vendor-google,” instead of at the “Topaz” level. That may indicate that it wouldn’t be available, at least initially, for all fuchsia devices but would be intended for Google’s own devices running the OS. Topaz serves as the base level layer of the operating system which manufacturers, referred to as “vendors,” build on top of. In this case, the vendor is Google. At the same time, the page associated with that code now returns a 404 error, suggesting it has been taken down. It isn’t at all unlikely that it simply wasn’t ready for public viewing yet. YouTube is among Google’s most popular services and it wouldn’t make much sense for it to be provided only for the search giant’s own hardware.
At very least, the commit shows that Fuchsia OS is still in development but still very much in the early stages. Some test variants have cropped up periodically, including at least one example which could run in any browser and was effectively non-functional. With that said, Googlers also appear to be taking their time in adjusting to development for the platform and learning where mistakes are prone to happen during development. That’s promising since it should equate to a more full experience when the OS finally does launch.