You may have heard that a YouTube redesign is in the works, and thanks to the instructions from a Reddit user, you can check out it now yourself!
Step 1: Using the Chrome browser, go to YouTube.com — either when you are not signed in to your account or using a new incognito window.
Step 2: Open the Developer Tools (Ctrl-Shift-I / Option-Command-I) and open up the “Resources” tab.
Step 3: In the list of items in the left-hand column, expand the “Cookies” item by clicking the arrow next to it.
Step 4: Click YouTube and delete the cookie: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE.
Step 5: Go to the “Console” tab in the Developer Tools and paste in the following, exactly as is, and hit enter:
document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=Qa1hUZu3gtk;path=/;domain=.youtube.com";
You should see the same information in red text beneath where you pasted it as in the screenshot below.
Step 6: Reload the page.
Once that’s done, you can see the new YouTube design. The changes are subtle and the new design clearly takes a page from Google’s material design. The buttons are flatter, and the overall design cleaner and more minimal.
The top of the YouTube page has gone from this:
To this:
The menu on the left is gone, with all those items are tucked away behind a hamburger menu, the ‘Upload’ button has been replaced with a smaller icon, and the search bar has also undergone some subtle changes.
The video player itself, however, hasn’t changed.
Once you get beneath the fold on the homepage, where you once saw this:
You’ll see this instead:
If you use the incognito method, if you close the incognito window, you’ll have to go through these steps above each time in order to access the new design.
If you’ve followed the steps in a regular Chrome tab, while logged out you can close the tab and open a new one, and the new design will still be viewable, unless you sign back in to your YouTube account.
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