How to enable the new Youtube design layout

A new Youtube design is being tested by Google as per new reports coming, and the new user interface for the video player seems more minimal than ever. The Youtube design gets a small overhaul that emphasizes easy-to-use toggles and a more transparent interface. You can try it out for yourself now, but you do need to follow some instructions and install a third party extension to Chrome. As far as we know, Chrome is the only browser with which you can test out the new Youtube design. The new interface was picked up by Google OS from whom we got the screenshots, too.

The new Youtube design isn’t much to look at, in a good way. The imposing black bar on the bottom of videos is replaced with a transparent bar and various annotation and subtitle toggles are now clearer, bolder and easier to use. The buttons of the Youtube design haven’t changed, nor has the entire site layout, so it seems to be limited to the video player itself. The buttons are bigger, indeed, but otherwise they keep their original design. One of the positive changes that are noticeable is that the bar fades even when you are not in fullscreen mode in a matter of seconds, which is rather neat.

Google OS is calling the new Youtube design an experimental player, and Google has not disclosed any official information about when these changes would take effect. Since it’s experimental, we’re not even sure if this player will take the place of the old one in the future. The feedback about the Youtube design is largely positive and people are loving the transparency that has been added to the video player bar, The bigger, bolder icons aren’t the favorites, but they do blend in well with the new Youtube design and are decidedly easier to use. We’re not sure if these changes will only be available for the standard desktop Youtube player or if they will be rolled out to the Youtube app as well. We’re expecting word from Google on that side of the matter.

If you want to try out this new Youtube design, you’re going to have to make sure that the interface language of your Chrome browser is set to US, otherwise you will not be able to enable the new interface. First off, you will have to change the cookie value for VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE to Q06SngRDTGA. You can do this by installing EditThisCookie, which is an extension for Chrome and you can find it by either searching for it among extensions available or by going through here. Once the extension is installed and you’ve set the browser language to US, you can open Youtube and click the extension. From there, you can just change the value for the cookie mentioned above. It’s not that hard! Go ahead and try out the new Youtube design and let us know whether you like it better than what we have now. Note that for some users, the only feature that enables is the bar fading out, but we’re not sure what that depends on. Give it a go!