How To Switch Back To YouTube's Old Page Design
If you are a regular on YouTube you probably know that Google has recently redesigned the page completely, turning pretty much everything up side down. The new design has received quite the criticism, for instance for the centered fixed width layout, or the larger frame at the top of the YouTube home page.
Most YouTube users do not know that there is an option to reset the page to the old layout. This can be achieved by writing a cookie to the local system that tells the video hosting site that the old layout needs to be loaded and not the new page design.
Please note that this may cease to work at any time as YouTube may simply remove the old page design from their servers. Setting the cookie would have no effect then. For now though, it works splendid.
You can revert the YouTube homepage to its former self with the help of a userscript or by writing the cookie directly on the system. The userscript appears to be working in Firefox, with Greasemonkey or Scriptish installed, Google Chrome and Opera. The developer notes that Opera users need to import the script manually in the browser though. Instructions on how to do that are offered on the userscript page.
Take a look at the following two screenshots to see the difference. First the new YouTube page (no idea why the big header is showing up blank)
and then the old YouTube page.
All you need to do is to install the userscript to set the cookie. Please note that the homepage layout will stick even if you uninstall the userscript again. You need to clear the cookie that it writes on your system to get the new YouTube homepage layout again.
As I mentioned before, you can also set the cookie manually.
Open the YouTube website.
In Chrome, press Ctrl-Shift-j to open the Developer Tools
In Firefox, press Ctrl-Shift-k to open the web console
Enter document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=tYJElFX0sZI"; in the console tab and press Enter.
Reload the YouTube page.
If you visit YouTube regularly, which design do you prefer? (Thanks Odio for the tip)
Update: The userscript is no longer available, we have removed the link that pointed to it. The cookie does not work anymore, but you can install a different style to get the old layout back: you may want to check out these YouTube userstyle alternatives.
Hi Martin
The YouTubeCenter userscript/addon for Chrome,Opera, Firefox, Opera, Maxthon & Safari has an option called “Guide Mode” under the “UI” section. The guide mode feature gives you the option to have the guide to be opened or closed every time you go to a video [or any other page where the guide is available].
That’s great to know, thanks!
If it chooses to work. I’m using YTC addon for Firefox and although player features work great (volume and res control, annotations, etc.) the ones that are supposed to affect the site (minitures, guide, etc.) often don’t work at all since Fx 25.
to nonqu
Your problem may not be to do with Firefox version. For example if you disable Bash Playback in YTC you can’t get 1080p resolution, but that’s Youtube & not the script/addon nor version of Firefox. Some features of YTC don’t work on Youtube channels that have chosen to accept Google+ & the new comment system. I’ve found that YTC features work on channels that have retained the old style [for example country flags works on old style channels]
The assumption is we want recommendations? Got it, thanks.
The best way is to use element hiding helper to remove the guide.
If you don’t want to use EHH just add
youtube.com###appbar-guide-menu
youtube.com###alerts
and
youtube.com###masthead-appbar
as custom filters to get rid of “new youtube” annoyances.
+1 for Element Hiding Helper! Best add-on for eliminating Google/YouTube annoyances.
@ nonqu,
I think EHH is part of the Video Download Helper addon if my memory serves me correctly. EHH on it’s own doesn’t appear to be present on the moz addons site in any event.
But I’ve added your suggested filters to UBO and will see how that goes.
Are you logged in? Because I’m not and I never had such problem with that menu. It’s always collapsed for me.
Hi Martin, apropos Youtube…I have this shortcut in my panel (Linux) pointing to script like this:
#!/bin/bash
clip=$(xclip -o)
vlc `echo $clip`
How can I achieve the same in Windows? I was ixquicking for it for few hours and found nothing but clip.exe which works exactly in opposite to what I need so I thought you might be the guy who knows :)
I’m a bit rusty when it comes to Linux. It is used to send the YouTube url to VLC?
yes it is,have a look how it’s done :
hxxp://imgur.com/QeUIKUm,q246Lcy,xd2SB1W#0
I was trying to get the same with nircmd like this :
nircmd regedit “~$clipboard$” replacing regedit with vlc of course but I couldn’t get this to work :(
Have you considered using a browser add-on like Browser View Plus? https://www.ghacks.net/2012/07/26/firefox-open-links-and-media-in-external-browsers-and-players/
Martin the Browser View Plus, extension does not exist anymore.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/playlink/
Martin’s comment is from 2013. The extension was probably available then.
Wow thanks,I knew it you can do it :)
The downside is though it can’t handle playlists.
I just figured it can but the link to playlist has to be taken from here :
hxxps://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/SminkyAnimation/playlists?v=2
Remember when Youtube was the peoples site and content was generated by users which grew the platform and generated massive profits for Google?
Seems all these social media sites claiming to be for the people are really just virtual corporate social internment camps where you must submit to every tyranny and invasion of your privacy, which will be used against you to control your thoughts including being shadow-banned and censored in comment sections without breaking any T&C’s, just to access basic features.
Given this has been applied to my account my leaving Youtube for platforms that still allow free speech and expression and don’t want to indoctrinate you such as Rumble.
Could not have said it better Dan!
Cheers
“Given this has been applied to my account my leaving Youtube for platforms that still allow free speech and expression and don’t want to indoctrinate you such as Rumble.”
Seems you are just replacing center right corporate indoctrination with far right corporate indoctrination.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1940161220964767
“right of free speech” is a privilege that only applies to public spaces (and can solely be restricted by the government via a law).
YouTube (and all other media organizations, including TV, newspapers and magazines) are all PRIVATE, which means there never has been a right for free speech on them, nor is there. So talking about supposed “loss of free speech” is complete factual nonsense.
To properly protect free speech, people should learn what free speech actually is, and what it is NOT. Whining about the loss of free speech where there is or never was one (and even couldn’t be) is the first step into the direction of loosing the right to truly free speech.
@Anonymous (September 3, 2023 at 12:29 pm) : everything is relative, i.e. I won’t get arrested in most countries for handling a blank paper sheet as a vector of protest as I would in Russia at this time.
There is freedom of speech, of expressing ourselves, even if censorship does appear occasionally
I’d rather emphasize on the reasons of censorship in free worlds;
Freedom of expression, freedom of thoughts, rights and duties
In our free worlds censorship may appear when ourselves bypass what is considered as a civilized way of saying our truth, basically when lack of respect is obvious. Censorship may nevertheless appear even when things are said and shown in a totally respectful way, i.e. nudity in art (Anglo-Saxon puritanism) and surprisingly far less with hate speech (Anglo-Saxon paradox when freedom is victorious everywhere except in the face of puritanism).
Freedom of thoughts : dictatorship imposes, democracy suggests and happens to suggest so extensively, in such a perfidious way that weak minds may base their reasoning on the fact that because something is said without being imposed makes this thing valuable. Others will deny as systematically. Few will think to themselves “I don’t know, I need more information, I need fact checking to start having an opinion”.
Rights and duties. perhaps I should have started by that because it includes all of the above. We emphasize on our rights and forget our duties, we emphasize on our right to express ourselves and forget to do it respectfully. In fact the we tend to consider ourselves as thee center of the world : we think and behave accordingly : me, me and me.
Again, everything is relative, isn’t it. My belief is that many clashes start with misunderstandings and that misunderstandings rise from a lack of consideration for others, and that includes reading them, listening to them carefully rather than with one ear while we consider what fist we’ll use to fight back their arguments. Life is NOT a battle, natively if I dare say so. I don’t believe in obligations, but i do believe in our consciousness and should we let it prevail then all the coding tied to morality and legislation would become obsolete : it is humanity which dresses its enforcement when individuals are unable to behave in terms of peace, respect, brotherhood. That starts with myself and bypassing myself to consider humanity as all except me is political, not spiritualistic : I believe we change the world by changing ourselves.
Thank you for the information!
Interesting article Martin, although the Maths for the number comments mysteriously seems a little out. This should be comment 37 according to the speech bubble at the top, although there appears to be only 18 comments visible – what happened to the rest? Are you censoring comments? Do you get paid for this? Yes, I have emptied the cache etc. Could you explain why this is please?
76 comments but yet I only see 19 (mine included). Hmm… strange. Anyways, I can’t STAND YouTube ads anymore or liberal communist DailyMail with all the ads plastered on their home page.
It should be a federal crime to force more than 1 five second ad in a video.
“I can’t STAND YouTube ads anymore or liberal communist DailyMail with all the ads plastered on their home page.”
Not sure if you are being sarcastic.
“Daily Mail is seen as Britain’s most right-wing newspaper. Britain’s most read newspaper is described by 44% of Brits as “very right-wing”, far ahead of any other paper. In total, 81% considered the paper to be right-wing to one degree or another.”
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/03/07/how-left-or-right-wing-are-uks-newspapers
it doesn’t work
Works for me… After the three strike warning, disable ublock, add the filter. reload the page, an ad might be played. Enable ublock again
This is fantastic! I don’t want your recommendations Google and this warning message (?) is confirmation I’ve done the right thing. Sling your ads and nonsense to someone else. I choose what I want to watch, not you!
Your instructions were as clear as mud.
Your comment can be read two ways.
2 ways how? I’m quite certain he’s being sarcastic since mud is not clear.
Seems like Google is pushing their limits once again, they want people as brain dead as possible by shoving their ads down our throats.
Oh, and your ad filter code isn’t working at all.
People should also keep in mind that some extension such as youtube enhancer which may have their own basic adblocking methods may be the cause if not one of the causes of the problems also so keep that in mind and disable that portion of the extension and then see what happens if that doesn’t help then leave that option disabled and purge the uBo cache as the article states and then update the filter lists and apply. Open up or refresh your youtube page to see if it happens again.
I don’t call upon YouTube to watch its videos but rather rely on two front-ends :
Piped [https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped]
Piped-Material [https://github.com/mmjee/Piped-Material]
I’ve been using the former ever since YouTube and its fantasies nearly drove me mad; I’ve discovered the latter a few days ago.
Piped-Material is IMO superior to Piped, but it doesn’t handle IFramed videos (in fact it won’t handle videos embedded even in its own pages). On the other hand Piped instances since recently seem to have problems with live streaming.
From there on, I call upon Piped-Material for all non-IFramed and live streaming videos.
For IFramed live streaming I use Piped-Material together with a dedicated UBO filter:
||youtube.com^$3p,frame,redirect=click2load.html,domain=localhost|wn.com
localhost because I have a personal local html which provides iframed embedded videos (for news sites),
wn.com because its live news page links to embedded YouTube (live streaming).
Basically simple with adequate redirecting filters.
I just couldn’t stand all the fuss elaborated by YouTube, its anti-antiad hysterical policy, its amazing and tremendous volume of code dedicated to tracking and advertisement : too much.
@Tom Hawack–In your previous post, seemingly moments ago, you ramble on about rights, duties, obligations, etc. Essentially, we are discussing the Dharma, which is a Universal Principle handed down from time immemorial. It doesn’t belong to any particular religion, especially not Abrahamic religions, so . . . I am baffled.
Yet, you fully participate in two methods of bypassing Google and YouTube Terms of Service which is an agreement made between viewers, content providers, and Google. If you follow the Dharma, which is impartial to any religious creed/affiliation, the Dharma you adamantly support in all respects, why are you violating one of the basic principles? Right action.
I should think instead you would simply abandon YouTube and try Vimeo or some other media outlet–nude if you prefer.
Is this you: One who has “a lack of consideration for others”–regardless of company size, monopolistic policies or whatever else one wants to throw on the heap.
It’s you who claims to desire global change in attitude and action, but you exempt yourself from being the one to make the change.
àVioletMoon, your question relies on the hypothesis that I’d be following the “Dharma”, which is your assumption only. Aiming the same stars is not corollary of being acquainted to. Life is a haven of nuances, I say this because you may have forgotten it given your questionable link.
Anyway, to carry on with a possible contradiction between words and actions, I do not clearly understand in what bypassing a company’s Terms of Service with which we have no contract (I am not registered, be it free or paid) would be morally or legally a violation. Lastly I sincerely encounter no consciousness issue when the only side-step is to avoid a company”s flagrant incursion in one’s privacy. The benefit is not to gain but only to avoid being harmed. There is no profit.
The “methods” as you qualify them are initiated by legal code issued by legal entities : uBlock Origin, Piped, Piped-Material, all in the hall of fame of defending one’s rights to visit the Web peacefully.
> ” I should think instead you would simply abandon YouTube and try Vimeo or some other media outlet–nude if you prefer”. I’ll manage my thoughts by myself and would hope you as well. I do visit Vimeo (great videos by the way) as well as DailyMotion once in a while. Vimeo is fine cuisine and YouTube a planetary video supermarket where you’ll find the best and the worst but where you’ll find almost everything.
Globally I understand your comment as one’s aim to disguise a moral judgement with the means of a rationally exposed contradiction. Who are we to judge? I’ll deny both if you don’t mind and concerning the latter I”m afraid your demonstration is invalid fotr the above mentioned reasons.
I feel sorry whenever a comment replies not to a content but to its author. You could have brought your contribution to thoughts. That’s the major difference between critics and creators, teachers and authors, when the former strive to analyze what others achieve, with more or less talent, but achieve throughout quests, quests of the world, not quests of their neighbor’s psyche.
This said, Iwas replying to the article’s question as well as to a comment regarding freedom of speech. Finding a link between those two comments is not meaningful as i see it.
YouTube is becoming a dunghill, every day tons of garbage and manure are deposited with no control. Some years ago everything had a criteria to be ordered and classfied, now everything is mixed all around, like crap, and new recommendations are the most annoying pile of crap ever. I have downloaded all the songs and videos that I liked the most, and sincerely I am getting off from Youtube as faster as I barely can. Five years ago I spent four hours in Youtube as daily basis, however now I only spent half an hour each three or four days. I prefer Netflix instead. Please fix the comments.
Most of the “Youtube problems” are people who want to use adblockers, while having an account and watching videos like if they couldn’t do it in a Private window or something like that…
When you use an account, it is easier for Youtube to give you ads, block your adblocker and force you to watch ads and all that.
Seems like uBlock has been having to keep fixing this ads issue in Youtube anyway, getting new ways of trying to work around it, but a lot of the work goes into being able to watch videos while logged in without getting your account ‘blocked’.
I have never seen a youtube ad, but I don’t have a Google account and wouldn’t be logging myself to Youtube even if I had one.
At least it is better to deal with this than Twitch ads which are embedded, and impossible to block, unless you use proxies you have to trust or you use the Scriptlets/Userscripts that lower resolution to 360p when ads happen, but sometimes break and sometimes give black screens when loading channels, and using it when logged in (again) may case more issues as well… even if you log in and then log out, some issues keep happening unless you clear some data.
Well, that’s what these powerful big corporations will do, even if adblockers are not used by many people, maybe the rise of Brave, the only one with a decent adblocker to block all these crap and avoid anti-adblockers and support most uBlock features natively, made them want to try better ways to block things, since that means only Adguard, uBlock, Brave and maybe Adblock Plus, will be able to bypass their methods.
This is why, for years now, I have read this blog almost daily, for this type of information.
Firefox and Youtube are a big part of my digital life and so anything to do with either of them is of concern to me and I suspect a great many others.
I have just disabled the two “adblock(er) for Youtube” extensions that I installed recently, due to a few ads appearing recently and will fall back to just using origin and take a closer look at it’s configuration.
Open settings, flush cache, update…how easy was that, good work Martin, et al.
By the way, UblockOrigin has more active filters in Firefox than in Chrome/Edge. Just look and do compare the numbers and you will see at least 5K more active filters in Ublock default ones (those who belongs specifically to Ublock). In my opinion, UblockOrigin seems to work better in Firefox and Firefox ESR than in any other Chromium based browser, in terms of capability and speed.
It may be 5k different “by default”, but you can enable all of the non-language filters and get approx the same numbers. On Brave, I have all non-language filters enabled and it shows 323,889 network filters + 229,359 cosmetic. (some of these being my own)
On Firefox, I have 324,066 network filters and 229,264 cosmetic. (some of these being my own)
That said, uBo does work better in Firefox. Brave makes up for it with it’s own built-in ad blocker having CNAME uncloaking like the Firefox uBo does.
Hmmm, I use uBO, and rarely-if-ever purge its caches, but never see ads on YouTube.
A few possible reasons why… first, also I use NoScript, and just allow YT itself, not Google/Gstatic/YTImage. I don’t recommend NoScript for non-geeks, it’s a PITA, but I’m used to it and wouldn’t surf without it.
Second, I have a bunch of extra filterlists on uBO. Like, ummm, 40+ of them.
Third, I use the “Enhancer for YouTube” FF extension, with the “block ads” option checked. It’s a very useful add-on for other YT options, as well.
Not sure which of these is doing the trick. YMMV.
@ Martin,
Your instructions don’t work I’m afraid. I tried doing what you suggested and then loaded this video which is about the Gimli Glider, but still get the Nord VPN ad at the beginning of the video: https://youtu.be/LSzusVHYkoc (the ad also appears about halfway through as well).
I also tried it on Invidiuous (yewtu.be), but that doesn’t help either. Here’s the link to the same video on that: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=LSzusVHYkoc
I even changed my VPN (Mullvad) location a couple of times, but to no avail. I’ll try the recommended addons next to see what transpires from using those.
This is because the ad is part of the video, not separate, at least for the first video that I checked out. Can you confirm?
Yes, that looks like the reason. I suppose they make money from persuading users to sign up to a Nord VPN plan.
@ Michael Fisher,
Are you the developer of YTC by any chance? Only reason I’m asking is because it doesn’t show up in a search on the moz addons site. There’s only Youtube Control Center (dev = InBasic) and Youtube Video Center (dev = Baris Dern). https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=YouTubeCenter
Or should I be looking on Github or somewhere like it instead?
@ Martin,
When I tried to respond to Michael Fisher the page switches to an entirely different subject from 2013 i.e. this one: https://www.ghacks.net/2013/11/25/fix-youtube-guide-button-displaying-menu-every-time/?unapproved=4573139&moderation-hash=618d7ac6780c0bee0fd2684ca81f2ad5#comment-4573139
What’s going on??
Users have to be very attentive now on the ghacks site. I was complaining just now about not being able to post a reply to the first comment in the list written by Michael Fisher. But on closer inspection I notice that his comment dates from “November 25, 2013 at 2:01 pm” even though the article dates from September 3, 2023.
Fortunately, Martin deleted it already. But in general I think users read what a user has written rather than the date it appeared and that’s going to lead to confusion more often than not I think.
Did you know that the first article published on Ghacks was “Affiliate link shortcode test” written by Fran Rosa, dated May 22, 1900
[https://www.ghacks.net/1900/05/22/affiliate-link-shortcode-test/]?
1900, yes sir. Should be added to the Guinness Book of Records.
Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.
As ghacks.net avid subscribers know, for more than three weeks now, the association between articles and Comments has been messed up, so the situation continues where I can no longer locate the comments I posted.
Therefore, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
>> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme
The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
>> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
How to display only articles by a specific author:
Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033
@ owl,
Fantastic! Your UBO filter to ensure that only articles written by Martin, Ashwin and Mike Turcott appear on the ghacks site works like a dream!
Thank you very much!
I’m wondering if it’s possible or worthwhile to mirror the articles on (for example) a wordpress website and then create an extension that can append those comments to the corresponding articles here basically replacing the comments section with the ones from the wordpress website. We may not even need to mirror the articles but just find a way for the extension to insert a new comments system for the corresponding articles.
I honestly do not see SOFTONIC bothering to do anything. The last I checked the other websites that they purchased such as filehippo has fallen by the wayside and are pushing out old versions of WinRAR which is particularly dangerous and being exploited right now.
I’m sorry but if this situation does not get any better soon then we may have to take matters into our own hands.
I don’t have a smart TV. In fact, I don’t even own a digital TV. I do have an analogue telly, but can’t use it to watch any kind of programs in the Netherlands since only digital TVs are supported. But my prized analogue telly is ideal for watching DVDs which I’m an avid user of.
But Youtube’s proposal as per Martin’s article reminds me of the time I used to watch Dutch TV programs which, like Youtube is proposing, were constantly interrupted with ads. There was never any warning of when ads were going to appear and they just interrupted whatever was playing at the time for about 15 minutes. I eventually got sick of the whole damn thing and terminated my subscription back in 2012.
Since there’s no way I’m going to splash out on a digital TV I won’t be signing up to Youtube TV either.
Article Title: YouTube wants to show you less but longer ads
Article Address: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/07/youtube-wants-to-show-you-less-but-longer-ads/
@TeIV
You might be able to buy a digital set top box to add to your TV if you really want access to digital TV. I know they used to be sold quite a while ago.
@TelV,
> I don’t have a smart TV. In fact, I don’t even own a digital TV. I do have an analogue telly, but can’t use it to watch any kind of programs in the Netherlands since only digital TVs are supported. But my prized analogue telly is ideal for watching DVDs which I’m an avid user of.
Well!
I also don’t own a digital TV. And I do not like digital devices.
At my house, the HV32D4000, a final digital high-definition TV that uses a cathode ray tube and was sold by Toshiba 20 years ago, is still functioning well.
The “accuracy of hue and realistic texture (realistic three-dimensional effect)” that are unique to cathode ray tubes are outstanding, and we still feel that they are overwhelmingly superior to the latest digital products. I don’t like digital images that have unnatural hues and are flat and flat.
This is the same for amps and speakers, and “analog machines are feels comfortable”.
The sound is connected to the network audio player “marantz NA8005” from a TV, etc., and is output to external audio speakers from the “LEPY 2020A+” class-T amplifier equipped with Tripath TA2020 Audio Amplifier using BELDEN speaker cable 8460 18GA.
Audiovisuals can be enjoyed in the main room, which was designed with a concert hall in mind, so the acoustics are just like the great hall of the Musikverein in Vienna, which is very pleasant (having said that, my family mainly enjoy Internet radio “Classic FM”).
“YouTube wants to show you less but longer ads” should read “YouTube wants to show you fewer but longer ads”
@ Jeff Stone,
How good is your knowledge of the German language?
For a native German speaker I think Martin’s knowledge of the English language is more than adequate for the articles he writes. You just need to make allowances for the odd occasion when he makes a grammatical error.
“YouTube has said that it is taking more measures against ad blockers to ensure that its content creators are compensated for their work.”
That’s funny, I noticed that they still run ads on videos that haven’t been or can’t be monetized.
Hey Martin,
Any chance that the annoying mix up of comments from multiple articles will be fixed?
It’s been two months and the issue has not been fixed. Probably because comments are not important to Softonic.
I entered this comment to the article from September 26, 2023, titled: “Google is putting an end to its YouTube Premium Lite plans”.
And after I press submit, the page will refresh and my comment will appear in a different article.
As expected, my comment appears in an article from 2013. And this reply will appear in both articles and others not related.
The issue appears to be complicated. I can assure you that comments are important to Softonic and that engineers are working on a fix. I’m sorry that it is taking this long.
Thanks a lot. But how does this work in Opera ?
Thanks in advance and kind regards.