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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