Say "Yo" To Your Friends From Your Wrist

Say "yo" right from your wrist. The Yo iPhone app is coming to an Apple Watch near you. The app that lets you send a Yo to friends or get a Yo from accounts you've subscribed to will be available on the new watches, but you'll still need your phone to fully use it. It will be available right when the watch launches April 24.

According to Mashable, Yo founder Or Arbel announced the Apple Watch app during a panel at SXSW Interactive, explaining that it will allow other app developers to bring their notifications to the watch without building their own separate watch app. Moving beyond the original Yo, the app will send a short notification, including a headline, thumbnail photo, and the Yo account it came from to the watch. If you want to see more though, you have to tap the notification to open Yo on the iPhone.

Yo on the Apple Watch will still send normal Yo notifications to friends, too, but it will be cooler coming straight from your wrist. "You can still use Yo just like you do on the phone," Arbel said at SXSW, though it won't have full functionality without the phone.

The app started as a pretty useless tool that only sent Yos to friends, which let's face it, we can easily send in a text, but it amped up its game by adding subscriptions to different sources, including Buzzfeed, MTV, and the Huffington Post. Now it's a one-stop-shop for notifications — instead of having to download every individual app, you can get notifications from 150 sources straight from Yo. Choose which Yo accounts you subscribe to carefully, though, because you don't want to be bombarded with Yo notifications on your wrist 24/7. The app also allows you to Yo your location to outside accounts that can recommend bars and restaurants near you, but it's unclear whether or not that will be available on the watch.

With the slew of Apple Watch apps already advertised, it was starting to seem like everyone could ditch their iPhones at home and just wear Apple Watches in April, eliminating the hassle of actually having to carry a phone around and avoiding the inevitable times phones get lost, but Yo is one example of why you'll need both. Getting a notification without being able to open the full story could get frustrating really quick if you don't have your phone with you.

Images: Yo