How to Restore the Old YouTube Layout

The User Interface design of YouTube has changed numerous times in the past few years. YouTube has undergone a variety of UI appearance changes as compared to other Google sites or apps. With every change, a new feature gets added and implemented. Many users love the added feature, whereas others don’t. For instance, a new change with a bigger thumbnail size may be liked by many yet become annoying for some users. In such scenarios, there’s always the option to restore to the old YouTube layout.

Are you not happy with the new interface and want to revert to the earlier one? We bring to you a perfect guide that will help you to restore the old YouTube layout.

How to Restore the Old YouTube Layout

How to Restore the Old YouTube Layout

Officially, Google does allow any troubleshooting methods to restore the old version of its sites. The below-mentioned steps may prove to be useful for a few versions of YouTube. But as of 2021, these steps don’t seem to work for most users. 

Don’t worry, there is another way to tackle this problem. You can use the Try Improve YouTube Chrome extension as it’s a more viable alternative. Though it does not fully restore the old YouTube site on your device, it does help you convert the User Interface of YouTube to a less complicated & more user-friendly layout.

Restore the Old YouTube Layout Using Chrome Extension

Now let’s see how to restore the old YouTube layout using Chrome developer tools: 

1. Launch the YouTube website by clicking here. The Home page of YouTube will be displayed on the screen.

2. Here, press and hold Control + Shift + I keys simultaneously. A pop-up window will appear on the screen.

3. In the top menu, you will see several options like Sources, Network, Performance, Memory, Application, Security, etc. Here, click on Application as depicted below.

Here, click on Application | How to Restore the Old YouTube Layout

4. Now, click on the option titled, Cookies in the new menu.

Now, click on an option titled, Cookies in the left menu.

5. Double click on Cookies to expand it and select https://www.youtube.com/.

6. Now, several options like Name, Value, Domain, Path, Size, etc., will be displayed on the list on the right-hand side. Search for PREF under the Name column.

7. Look for the Value table in the same row and double click on it as shown below.

Look for the Value table in the same row and double click on it.

8. Double-clicking on the Value of PREF will enable you to edit the field. Replace the field with f6=8.

Note: Replacing the value field might sometimes change the language preferences.

9. Now, close this window and reload the YouTube page.

You will see your old YouTube layout on the screen.

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We hope that this guide was helpful and that you were able to restore the old YouTube layout. If you have any queries/comments regarding this article, then feel free to drop them in the comments section.

16 thoughts on “How to Restore the Old YouTube Layout”

      1. I tried to replace the value field with f6=8 but it doesn’t work. Youtube changed some icons today, thumb etc and I don’t like. It’s strange because on my second channel, it didn’t change.

  1. Follow all of the steps but in Step 3 click on Storage instead of Application.
    You will find Cookies there.

    It worked for me on September 4, 2021

  2. Whenever I change the field to f6=8, close all the window and open one with YouTube again, value of PREF automatically becomes f6=8&tz=Asia.Seoul (original value was tz=Asia.Seoul) and continues to show the awful new layout. Unless I am missing something, it looks like this way no longer works either.

  3. Avatar photo
    Software Arrogance

    It’s all about software arrogance with the MANAGERS and EXECUTIVES at google. Change for no reason. Breaking familiarity for 500 million people FOR NO REASON. They are hypocrites. They deserve to have all the controls in their homes and cars rearranged for no reason. Buttons that were on the left now on the right. What absolute ******

    1. Yeah, Google’s employees have to do something in order not to be fired, even that change is unnecessary. For me (or almost all people) the new layout is less customizable, less attractive, and it’s so ugly.

  4. In Firefox

    Open about:config
    In the config search bar add; General.useragent.override.https://www.youtube.com/
    Click String Then click + to add it
    Add the sting; Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:50.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/50.0 Googlebot/2.1

    This should only affect Youtube and not any other pages

  5. As of 04/10/24 the YT layout in videos is absolute trash. Videos underneath and comments off to the side.

    Tried this solution and sadly it didn’t work for me.

  6. Having tried various fixes to revert back to the old YT nothing has worked. I now haven’t used YT for a week and exploring other options, being a musician this has destroyed much of my viewing and research of international music, what was going on in the research and development when they rolled out this latest upgrade, it’s horrendous.

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