YouTube Testing New Interface For Homepage, Video Pages, Try It Now

Google seems experimenting again with a new design for the World’s most popular video portal, YouTube. Here’s how to get that new YouTube homepage and video page design, to see for yourself.

Google appears to be working on YouTube’s homepage and video pages to make it look like the design of Google+ social network. The left sidebar lists all your subscriptions along with the number of recent videos from each subscription. A search box is also added to help you find a subscription. The suggested channels are displayed below your subscriptions in the scrolling list. The sidebar no longer lists popular YouTube categories.

The experimental video page is now displayed in lighter background color. The video title and the channel information is now displayed below the video. The uploader’s/channel’s name and subscribe button are now displayed prominently beneath that. The new design makes the buttons less obvious. In fact, most of the buttons on the page are turned into links with icons instead. YouTube now displays more information about the video by default.

Video thumbnails are bigger now and takes up more space. YouTube now displays a small “watched” label over the thumbnail after playing a video. The new experimental home page design was revealed few days back. Today, Google Operating System revealed that YouTube is also testing a new user interface for its video pages.

Below you can see the experimental homepage interface.

youtube-experimental-homepage

And here’s the experimental video page interface.

youtube-experimental-video-page

How to get the new YouTube experimental interface?

If you want to get that new Youtube home page or video page design, you need to do the following:

  • Open youtube.com in your favorite browser and load the browser’s developer console. To load the developer console, follow the instructions below:
    • In Google Chrome, press Shift-Ctrl-J
    • In Firefox, press Shift-Ctrl-K
    • In Opera, press Ctrl-Shift-I, and switch to the Console tab
    • In Internet Explorer, press F12 to open the web developer toolbar, and switch to the Console tab
    • To open Safari’s Web Inspector, follow the instructions here.

To activate new YouTube homepage interface

Paste the following in the console and press Enter:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=nH7tBenIlCs; path=/;
domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

To go back to the old homepage interface, again open console, paste the following and press Enter:

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

To activate new YouTube video page interface

Paste the following in the console and press Enter:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=CuSA6Z9VUog; path=/;
domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

To go back to the old homepage interface, again open console, paste the following and press Enter:

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

In all these cases, the console should return undefined and reload the YouTube page you are on.

What do you think about the new YouTube experiments? Let us know through comments below.

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