The full desktop version of YouTube is not available via Safari for iOS by default. On your iPhone or iPad, you must complete a few things to gain access to the desktop site. This tutorial outlines the necessary steps needed to take advantage of the YouTube desktop version features on iOS.
Firstly, you need to enable Javascript in Safari for most of the YouTube features to work. To do this, use the following guide.
- Go to the Home screen and select “Settings”
- Find “Safari”
- Then, go to “Advanced“.
- From there, switch “JavaScript” to “On“(Green).
- Access YouTube Full Site on Safari
YouTube Desktop Version on iPhone/iPad
A rather quick way to access the full YouTube site on any iOS device is by going to www.youtube.com/?app=desktop. This method takes you to the desktop version of the website no matter which browser you use. However, if it does not work, you can also try the following.
Open YouTube.com Desktop Via Safari
- Open the Safari app, type “youtube.com“, then press “Go”.
- The mobile version of YouTube displays by default. Then, tap the menu button located in the upper-left corner of the screen.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the menu, then tap “Desktop”.
However, if you use iOS 9 or later, these steps are a bit different. Use the following steps for iPhones and iPads running iOS 9 and up.
- Go to YouTube.com in the Safari web browser.
- Tap and hold the circle with arrows icon in the upper-left corner.
- Select “Request Desktop Site”.
Are you using iOS 8? Then, the above steps won’t work for you either. To ge the YouTube desktop site on iOS 8, follow the guidelines below:
- Open the Safari app, type “youtube.com“, then press “Go“.
- Tap the URL in the address bar to highlight it and bring up the Bookmarks menu.
- Just below the address bar, swipe down to reveal the “Request Desktop Site” option. Select it.
Use Chrome To Open YouTube Full Site on iOS
- Firstly, download and install Google Chrome for iOS.
- Then, launch the browser.
- Click or tap the “Menu” button in the upper-right corner, then choose “New Incognito Tab.”
- In the Incognito Chrome tab, visit any other website other than YouTube.
- Select the “Menu” button in the upper-right corner, then choose “Request Desktop Site.”
- Now visit youtube.com in the Incognito tab. The desktop version of YouTube should display.
Please note that if you have the YouTube Mobile App on your iPhone or iPad that these tips might not work. You must decide whether you want to uninstall the app or stick to the mobile version.
For more useful tutorials check out, iMessage Waiting For Activation? Activate iMessage Now!, Clear Search History | Delete Spotlight Search and How to Configure iPhone Text Message Forwarding.
How To Change User Agent
This trick allows users to modify the User Agent of the Safari web browser on the Apple iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch without having to jailbreak the device. You might also like, Download Torrents on iOS (iPhone, iPad). By doing this, users always access the Twitter desktop site instead of the mobile version.
- Firstly, connect and sync your iOS device with iTunes on your computer.
- Then, download and install iBackupBot on your computer. The free version will work for our purposes.
- Disable automatic syncing in iTunes by going to “Edit” > “Preferences” > “Devices” and check “Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically.“
- Close iTunes and launch “iBackupBot.“
- Connect your device to the computer using the USB cable. iBackupBot should detect the device.
- Select the latest backup you have on the left side.
- Expand “User App Files” > “com.apple.mobilesafari” > “Library” > “Preferences“.
- Open the “com.apple.mobilesafari.plist” file. Click “Cancel” on the dialog that appears afterward.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the file and insert this line right above the line that says </dict><key>UserAgent</key><string>Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/40.0.2214.115 Safari/535.11</string>Replace the text between the <string> tags with whatever UAString you like. Be sure to click the Save disc icon, then close the file.
- Lastly, check the box next to “Library/Preferences/com.apple.mobilesafari.plist, then click the “Restore” button.
The device will go through the restore process. Once finished it should have successfully changed the user agent in Safari. Open Safari, and you will be able to view the full desktop versions of web pages. You can also visit WhatIsMyUserAgent to check the changes.
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