How to Sort YouTube Videos by Date, Rating and View Count in the New Layout

Google launched a new layout for YouTube early this month, in align with the Google’s new look post Google+. This is the second time YouTube has been changed after the launch of the social network – seems like Google wasn’t convinced with the earlier design. As always, the recent change has got some people their knickers up in a bunch. Some of these are non-issues, like left-aligned layout instead of center aligned and video title appearing below the video player instead of above, but I understand, even these minor changes can be irritating to users who spend hours on the site and those who had committed the site’s layout to muscle memory.

Among the dozens of complaints, there are some valid concern. Previously, when you searched for a video you could click on the Filter button and sort the results by date uploaded, video rating, and view count. These options are no longer available in the new layout.

Actually, it’s possible to get your searches to behave like you want them. Simply add these parameters to the end of the URL in the address bar after you have performed the search.

• To sort by View count add: &search_sort=video_view_count
• To sort by Rating add: &search_sort=video_avg_rating
• To sort by upload date add: &search_sort=video_date_uploaded

For instance, http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=adele&search_sort=video_date_uploaded will display videos for the searched keyword “adele” sorted by date of upload.

Of course, this solution is less than ideal. So here is a userscript for Firefox and Chrome, and an extension for Opera users that fixes this issue.

Firefox users, install the Greasemonkey add-on and then install the following userscript

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/153580

Chrome users, install the TamperMonkey extension and then install the userscript above. TamperMonkey improves Chrome's userscript compatibility allowing you to use Greasemonkey userscripts on Chrome.

Opera users, install the Youtube Sortify extension.

After installing the above userscript and extension on your respective browsers you should see the missing sort options under the Filters as shown below.