Another YouTube redesign? Enable it right now
I stopped counting the redesigns and design changes that Google made on its properties in the second half of 2011 when they started to be launched in a much faster interval. It is almost as if Google decided that the rapid release process of the Chrome browser somehow also made sense design-wise on sites such as Youtube, the Google Search engine or Google+.
A YouTube redesign is making the rounds right now that is once again changing the look and feel of the video hosting site significantly. This time though, it is more about the color scheme than it is about actual interface related changes. Before I'm going to show you how to enable and disable the design right now, I'd like to show you a screenshot of how the redesigned YouTube homepage will look like should you enable it.
What you will notice immediately is that Google has done away with the black bar on the left menu, and the gray bar on the right. Everything is now displayed on a white background, and colors are only used sparingly across the frontpage. It resembles Google+'s interface, even though that looks a tad different still.
To enable the new interface in Firefox or Chrome do the following:
- Load youtube.com in the web browser
- In Chrome, press Ctrl-Shift-J
- In Firefox, press Ctrl-Shift-K
- This opens the developer console in the browser of choice
- Paste
document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=nH7tBenIlCs;path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();
- in one row and hit enter
- Reload the YouTube web page afterwards.
If everything turned out ok, you should see the new white YouTube homepage. Some users have reported that they started seeing the homepage automatically today, which indicates that Google is actively testing the new design.
The easiest way to go back to the old design is to clear all cookies that YouTube has set on your computer. In Firefox, you can do that with a click on Firefox > Options, switching to Privacy and a click on show cookies there in the interface. Enter YouTube in the search form, and locate the cookie beginning with VISITOR_Info1. Select it and click the remove cookie button afterwards.
In Google Chrome open the following address chrome://chrome/settings/cookies, search for YouTube, find the VISITOR cookie, click on it, and then on the remove button to remove it.
Closing Words
I do like the white frontpage design, more so than the black design. But I do like minimalistic designs anyway, as you can see here on Ghacks as well. What's your take on the new design? Do you like it? (via Caschy, via Google Watch Blog)
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I had to change the quotation marks, otherwise it said SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL. I don’t like the new design :-(
Keule try again, the code should work now.
Thanks for the tip Martin. The redesign looks great.
BTW. The quotation marks in the code have been stylized in this post and people should replace them with ”
document.cookie=”VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=nH7tBenIlCs;
path=/; domain=.youtube.com”;window.location.reload();
Thanks for letting me know, I have modified the code, should work now.
Umm, I don’t get it? Firefox just tells me SyntaxError: illegal character, and no change in YouTube’s homepage.
This is what I’m pasting:
document.cookie=â€VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=nH7tBenIlCs;
path=/; domain=.youtube.comâ€;window.location.reload();
Sabre, try again, I had to modify the code.
help! it doesnt work
i get either illegal character or unterminated string literal
WordPress has automatically modified the code. I have corrected the issue, should work now.
The code works perfectly in opera 12
but im not a regular youtube visitor so i dont really care about the changes in YT design.
nice design i guess.
You need to manually replace all the quotations marks ” and it will work.
Thanks. Works fine with Chrome beta.
just copy-pasted your modified script in firefox, new design loaded no problem.
minimal white design is ok, but the option to go into a nightime mode (dark background & white text) would be nice for tired eyes.
Noticed on the old design all columns scrolled together on page, but on the new design just the left column container remained fixed (bit like an old frameset layout) whilst middle and right columns scroll all the way.
Once you have scrolled to the bottom of page, a back to top link instead of home link might be nice too, although if they keep side menu fixed, why didn’t they keep the masthead fixed also?
In Opera: R-Click > Inspect element > Console > paste
One thing I still find mighty annoying in YT is when you try to find all parts of multi-parts videos.
The poster should link them together but since very few do YT (owned by a search engine!) could make it easier to find all parts.
Fix that instead of keep changing the interface.
for me , it changed automatically, but there’s only one thing i dont understand.. my autofill (ajax) is not working when i search YT. It comes with the new design. Does anyone know why?
You know if you just click “see all” at the bottom of the home page left side panel it automatically goes to the same format as the code tweak (which btw worked when I tried it with Opera 12 RClick -> inspect element -> console).
The code worked for me yesterday, but today my youtube page went back to the original black sidebar. i didn’t delete any cookies yesterday and i’m not sure why the code doesn’t work anymore. i’m using google chrome on a macbook. please help?
The cookie worked for me yesterday but today youtube was back to the original black and gray. i didn’t delete the new cookie but when i try to paste the cookie now, the code is undefined. i’m using google chrome on a mac, please help?
How can you say the home page went back to the grey and black screen, when yesterday my page was find now its fucked up with this blank white shit of a page. Tired of them fucking changing shit. I’ll be happy when Vidigo.US/ goes live so I can finally leave youtube, this is bullshit!!!
omg thank you so much for this. I downloaded the newest version of FF and it some how changed to the ‘redesigned’ version.. Maybe I did it by accident or the new FF does it automatically…. I hated it so much. The new design makes it harder to search for what I want. Thanks to you I could get rid of that shit!!! You rock!!!!!
NOT WORKING PLEASE HELP I ALWAYS GET SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL
This doesn’t work for me although it seems so great and would definitely like to use it.