Display The Inbox On The YouTube Frontpage

With YouTube's redesign now live on the site and with no turning back opportunity anymore, it is time to realize that the changes have not all be for the better. If you are not logged in or an active YouTube user you can probably live with the new frontpage design and all, but if you are an active user who gets lots of messages and stuff you'd probably like a way to reach those messages more easily.

You see, YouTube made the decision to move the easily accessible inbox from the front page behind the account name in the top right corner of the screen. To reach the YouTube inbox, you need to first click on the name and then on Inbox to be taken there. Once there you still may need to select a different entry, e.g. comments instead of personal messages which means yet another click before you land there.

The free userscript YouTube startpage inbox changes this by adding the inbox and all of its links back to YouTube's homepage.

Once installed, you will see direct links to all inbox entries on the homepage again. The script adds them to the right sisdebar just above the recommended video section there. The links point to personal messages, shared with you, comments, contact suggestions and video responses. Each entry lists the number of unread messages which makes the feature that more convenient as you can now see directly if you have new messages or notifications waiting for you in your inbox.

The inbox at the top lists the total of unread messages and notifications.

Please note that the inbox is only displayed on the frontpage and not on other pages of YouTube.

The script has been tested in the Firefox web browser with the Scriptish extension. It likely works in other browsers such as Google Chrome as well.

Update: The userscript is no longer working on the latest version of YouTube. What you can use instead is YouTube Better Startpage which puts the focus on your subscriptions so that you see them on the site when it loads. Note that it may be a bit cpu / memory intensive on load depending on how many subscriptions you have.

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