Grayjay is a new application for Google Android devices to follow video creators on multiple platforms.
Depending on how active you are when it comes to streaming media, you may know that many video creators publish content to different platforms. A basic example is a Twitch streamer who also publishes some footage on YouTube.
Keeping up with just a single creator may require following them on different platforms. Follow more and add more platforms and it can get complicated quickly.
Grayjay set out to fix this. It supports a good number of platforms already. Besides YouTube and Twitch, Grayjay supports PeerTube, Odysee, Kick, Patreon, Rumble, Nebula and SoundCloud. Support for Subscribestar is under development already and there is a good chance that more platforms are added in the future.
The app does not require an account. Since it supports the downloading of videos, it is not available on Google Play. You may download it for Android from the developer website.
One effect of using Grayjay is that you can watch videos without ads. While you can block ads on YouTube and other platforms, it is another benefit of using the app.
Using Grayjay
YouTube is the only source by default. You may change that with a click on Sources and the selection of one or multiple sources. All of these are shown in the main interface. The developer notes that adding more sources may impact loading times, as videos from different platforms need to be loaded.
Tap on any video to play it right then and there in Grayjay. This is useful already, especially since Grayjay supports a queue, custom playlists and watch later functionality. The option to download any video is also provided. The downloads menu lists options to change the quality of the video before downloading it.
The main feature of Grayjay is its follow option. You may subscribe (follow) on any video page or by selecting the channel name. Options to enable notifications and follow only streams or videos are provided.
You need to subscribe to sources individually. There is no option at the moment to select a creator and follow them on all platforms that they publish or stream on.
Still, this is one time process to follow creators on multiple platforms. You may create groups for subscriptions to improve organization. Options include creating groups for individual creators or themed groups based on interests.
The app supports imports and exports of data. This allows you to share subscriptions across multiple devices or migrate subscriptions to new devices.
Verdict
Grayjay appears to be free to use at the moment. The app is open source and you may access the source on Gitlab. There is a “buy” link under “more” in the app that is asking for a payment of €9.99 plus tax. Several developers work fulltime on the app according to the page. The developers hope that enough users find their app useful to pay for it and make it sustainable.
Grayjay works well already. It would benefit from additional features, including the ability to follow a creator on all platforms with just a tap. While that may be difficult to automate, it could maintain a database of developer accounts on various platforms and use crowdsourcing to maintain it.
All in all, it is an interesting app that shows a lot of promise.