Pocket Update Brings AirPlay Support, Lets You Watch Saved Videos on Apple TV

I’m a big Pocket user, clipping everything from “long read” tech articles to recipes. I also save videos I intend to watch later, and apparently I’m not alone; according to the company, Pocket users save 2 million videos every week. That explains the latest update to Pocket for iOS, which adds support for Apple’s AirPlay feature. This is the feature that lets you pipe audio and/or video through your Apple TV and onto a bigger screen.

Up to this point, it was possible to use the AirPlay mirroring feature to accomplish the act of “flinging” this content, but this approach had drawbacks. For starters, your iPhone still did a lot of heavy lifting, having to both play the video on the phone as well as transmit the stream over Wi-Fi. This caused the iPhone’s battery to drain rapidly. Mirroring also required that you keep the Pocket app open; after all, whatever is on your screen is what AirPlay shows on your TV.

Thanks to the added AirPlay support, your phone doesn’t have to remain on for content to keep playing. This saves you some battery. The AirPlay feature also works in the background, so once you get a Pocket video playing on your TV, you can actually leave the app and do some other things on your phone.

You can swing over to the Pocket for iOS page to download the app now, or you can visit the Updates tab inside the App Store on your iOS device to get the update. If you update and give the AirPlay feature a shot, be sure to let us know what you think.

[h/t GigaOM]