Why you should always use YouTube's Privacy-Enhanced Mode

Martin Brinkmann
May 23, 2018
Updated • Sep 11, 2020
Music and Video
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22

YouTube launched a new feature on the site recently that it called Privacy-Enhanced Mode. You find the option when you open the embed options on the site to embed video code on third-party websites.

YouTube videos can be embedded on third-party sites like mine directly so that visitors to my site can play the videos without having to click through to YouTube first.

Privacy-Enhanced Mode is a new option that YouTube added to the embed preferences that improves privacy when embedding videos on third-party sites.

When enabled, YouTube won't store information about visitors to pages on your site that have YouTube videos embedded on them unless visitors interact with those videos. Think of it as click-to-play; unless you click, YouTube promises that it won't store information about you.

The mode was added in the wake of the European Union's launch of GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation, on May 25, 2018.

Default YouTube video embeds set cookies on user systems as soon as they open web pages with embedded YouTube videos. Google may use the cookie to deliver targeted advertisement, add information to the user's profile, or track the user.

YouTube Privacy-Enhanced Mode

youtube privacy enhanced mode

Privacy-Enhanced Mode is disabled by default when you open the embed options and needs to be enabled manually.

Here is what happens when you check the box:

The default YouTube embed code without privacy-enhanced mode enabled looks like this:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tYYYciJrfns" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The YouTube embed code for videos with privacy-enhanced mode looks like this:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/tYYYciJrfns" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The core difference is that YouTube uses a new URL to deliver the video to the site. Instead of using the main domain youtube.com, it uses youtube-nocookie.com.

Whenever you see a video that uses the nocookie domain, it is set up with the privacy-enhanced mode.

Since enabling privacy-enhanced mode for a video is just a change of the URL, it is relatively easy for webmasters to replace all embedded YouTube videos on their sites with the new code as you simply need to replace https://www.youtube.com/embed/ with https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/.

How that is done depends on the site and the technology that you use.  If you have access to phpMyAdmin, you could run the following command on the wp_posts table if you use WordPress.

Note: Create a backup of the table before you run the command.

update wp_posts set post_content = replace(
post_content, 'https://www.youtube.com/embed',
'https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed');

You may also want to run the following command if you embedded videos using HTTP instead of HTTPS (usually the case if you started to embed videos many years ago.

update wp_posts set post_content = replace(
post_content, 'http://www.youtube.com/embed',
'https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed');

The embedded video still works afterward and users benefit from this as it blocks YouTube from collecting data unless they interact with the video on the page.

I have replaced the URL of all YouTube videos embedded with the privacy version on Ghacks.

Summary
Why you should always use YouTube's Privacy-Enhanced Mode
Article Name
Why you should always use YouTube's Privacy-Enhanced Mode
Description
YouTube launched a new feature on the site recently that it called Privacy-Enhanced Mode. You find the option when you open the embed options on the site to embed video code on third-party websites.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on August 1, 2010 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?

  2. Mike J said on August 1, 2010 at 2:58 pm
    Reply

    Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.

    1. Martin said on August 1, 2010 at 3:39 pm
      Reply

      Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.

      1. Mike J said on August 2, 2010 at 2:30 pm
        Reply

        huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
        Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.

  3. myo said on August 1, 2010 at 5:52 pm
    Reply

    yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.

  4. Kishore said on August 13, 2010 at 2:55 pm
    Reply

    Error:
    Buidling font Cache pop-up

    Solution:

    Open VLC player.

    On Menu Bar:

    Tools
    Preferences

    (at bottom – left side)
    Show settings — ALL

    Open: Video
    Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
    Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”

    Save
    Exit

    Re-open – done.
    Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts

    Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc

    1. Martin said on August 13, 2010 at 3:10 pm
      Reply

      Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.

  5. javier said on August 14, 2010 at 1:50 pm
    Reply

    @Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
    I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.

    Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?

    I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…

    /thanks
    /j

  6. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,

  7. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:39 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.

    No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure

  8. Ted said on October 22, 2010 at 3:57 am
    Reply

    Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me

  9. Evan said on December 8, 2013 at 1:48 am
    Reply

    I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).

  10. Mike Williams said on September 6, 2023 at 1:26 pm
    Reply

    Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?

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