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October 26, 2012

A New YouTube UI Experiment

YouTube continues to test new user interfaces. The latest experiment doesn't bring a lot of changes: the sidebar has a new color scheme, YouTube shows more subscriptions at a time, some icons have been removed and the default section is called "now playing".


There are new icons for the "like"/"dislike" buttons, there's a new way to show the navigation sidebar and the "more from" section has been removed.



The homepage looks a lot different if you're not signed in. YouTube shows popular videos from topics like entertainment, sports, news, movies. The topic pages are automatically generated by YouTube.



You can check some screenshots from the previous YouTube experiment.

Here's how you can try the new interface. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+:

1. open youtube.com in a new tab

2. load your browser's developer console:

* Chrome - press Ctrl+Shift+J for Windows/Linux/ChromeOS or Command-Option-J for Mac

* Firefox - press Ctrl+Shift+K for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-K for Mac

* Opera - press Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-I for Mac, then click "Console"

* Safari - check this article

* Internet Explorer - press F12 and select the "Console" tab.

3. paste the following code which changes a YouTube cookie:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=jZNC3DCddAk; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

4. press Enter and close the console.

Update (December 7, 2012): The new interface is available for everyone and you can no longer go back to the old layout.

{ Thanks, Abhishek and Lukáš. }

35 comments:

  1. How do I prevent YouTube from reverting to the standard UI whenever I restart Chrome? I want to keep the new interface and not have to paste the code in each time. I have Chrome set to "Allow local data to be set" but when I restart Chrome it still reverts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Make a Greasemonkey Userscript. Pasting the above lines into the script and setting the script for *.youtube.com/* should run it everytime you visit Youtube. Although you might have to refresh the page to make it take effect.

      I haven't tried this myself yet as I'm away from my PC but it should work.

      Delete
    2. If you could create script would be great :)

      Delete
    3. You can do it like this:
      document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=jZNC3DCddAk; expires=Thu, 2 Aug 2031 20:47:11 UTC; path=/; domain=.youtube.com"; window.location.reload();

      Delete
  2. It's a more rounded and sports a little more chrome than Google's recent redesign efforts, but the new YouTube Cosmic Panda experiment does bring the darker UI elements and polished feel of Google+ to the video sharing service.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mine does not change on Chrome. Anything to do with me being in England?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It works when I sign out. If I sign back in, it does not work.

      Delete
  4. I love that comments on YouTube finally have avatars!

    ReplyDelete
  5. It really does look and function great, but I've got a large 27" screen and it doesn't seem to fit every well... everything is tiny, and justified to the left side of the screen.

    The older interface was centered, which made it a lot easier to look at.

    I hope that Google fixes that issue and allows for more functionality on monitor with bigger real estate!

    ReplyDelete
  6. This does not work for me in either Chrome or FF on Windows Vista x64.

    ReplyDelete
  7. i was more used to older version. though this new version is very user-friendly..

    ReplyDelete
  8. This is pretty bad. Where is the "Switch accounts" button? How do I open my Playlists without loading them in a new page? How do I open a list of other videos by the same user?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hate it, and here's whyOctober 30, 2012 at 5:45 PM

    Don't like it at all apart from the minimalist look.

    I specially hate those recommended channels on the right sidebar. They are completely useless to me and such a waste of screen estate. The channels recommended never seem to change and they are mostly garbage anyway. I subscribe to channels because of their content and not their icon or name so I'd really prefer to see recommended videos/content on there instead as previously.

    You also end up having to click 'watch history' and then 'my viewing history' to be able to see the option to clear history which is 'unnecessarily redundant'. I really miss the ribbon at the top as well which was pretty helpful to get to playlists quickly. Trending videos was another really useful feature to see what's happening or popular right now but that too seems to be gone.

    Mixing recommended videos with subscriptions has to be by far the worst part of it though. Many of the recommended videos end up being content which I've already seen and for them to waste the space occupied by videos from channels I'm actually subscribing to and want to watch is frankly a horrible idea. It reminds me of Digg's pathetic attempts are trying to aggressively force content on to users and I for one am not a fan of it at all.

    Thanks for the JS to revert it back.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yeah... Now i got it, and it's the garbage. All the content as been moves to the left side leaving a big white area at the right, and there are recomended videos in my subscribtion list. Also there is no way to only show uploads from the people you subscribe.

    So... How do i get the old YouTube back? Do i really have to switch to Firefox or IE? Because on those browsers YouTube hasn't changed.

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  11. oh god PUT IT BACK! PLEASE GOOGLE STOP CHANGING THE INTERFACE!

    ReplyDelete
  12. It's a God-awful mess. How do I look at large numbers of comments now? Do I have to click "more" 87 times? Where's the "flag" for spam comments? Is there a way I can NOT needlessly load thumbnails (avatars)?

    ReplyDelete
  13. This is complete bullshit.
    Being un-centered on a bigger screen (even 24") looks horrible. I think they even removed the sorting options from the search.
    The new recommendations shouldn't be even mentioned.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I don't see what the problem is with all of the people disliking this UI. I personally love it.

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  15. I really want the old UI back as I do not care for the "Now Playing" part. When I go to YouTube, I want to see videos from my subscriptions and only my subscriptions. I don't want to see recommendations or things people have shared on Google+!

    ReplyDelete
  16. What the hell are these guys doing at Youtube? Can't they decide what they want? Why are they keep changing interface eventually?

    ReplyDelete
  17. Why is sorting removed? Will sorely miss this if the new UI is implemented in its current form. Also, don;t think the new UI is cool. Like the current skin a lot more. It has a "polished" sense to it - much of it is down to the grey used, I guess.

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  18. I don't really like it, I think it's too bright, need some color separation of the blocks.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Guys... I have 2560 x 1440, my browser always in full-screen mode. So Youtube and G+ somewhere on the left side! It's so uncomfortable! Seriously, your designers work at 1024 x 768 ?!

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  20. I have a problem, the whole page is only on the left side of the web. How do I fix it? :-/

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  21. So to see vids by same user I have to go to a new page? Horrible! Stop using cheesy algorithms to think you know what I want to watch: YOU DON'T! My tastes are rather esoteric and why I like a channel is not based on cross referencing mass tag viewerships.

    Just let me see the vids by the same user IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. 90%+ of what I watched are in numbered series. Google's algorithm can't even list numbers correctly!

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  22. How do I filter by upload date in the new UI?

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  23. Why did you eliminate the option above the playing video to see more videos from the selected user that you could view without leaving the current page?
    I liked that, so I guess that's why it was changed. :0P

    ReplyDelete
  24. Why does it have to be all white??? It's horrible. Just opening the youtube home page makes my eyes hurt. And no options at all? No dark theme or option so my head doesn't pound when browsing? Thank you for making me hate YouTube. I can't justify the guaranteed headaches to use it.

    ReplyDelete
  25. The changes affect the use of youtube on external sites negatively:
    1 Displayed video width on new uploads seems to miss a couple of pixels. 2 Compression creates ugly generated stills.
    3 The option to add the hd-version to the short url is gone.
    I'm considering switching all of our content to vimeo.

    ReplyDelete

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