Removing the new YouTube Search Box

Tim Wintle - December 4th, 2008
YouTube added a new search box to the youtube embedded player today.

Update: YouTube appear to have listened to users’ comments, and made a second update in a day – the search box now only displays when you hover over the video.

Here’s what it looks like:

YouTube Preview Image

Understandably, many people might want to remove this “feature” – so here’s how:
(The YouTube api has been updated to mention this, so it appears to be a supported method)

  1. In your embed code, find the url for the flash player (it is in there twice if you are using the standard YouTube embed code)
  2. Add the parameter showsearch=0 (by adding “&showsearch=0″ to the url)
  3. There is no step three – the video shouldn’t be showing the search box any more.

The video should now look like this:

YouTube Preview Image

Code:

<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”425″ height=”344″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true” /><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always” /><param name=”src” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/4Cq4O_z5Blo&hl=en&fs=1&showsearch=0″ /><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”425″ height=”344″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/4Cq4O_z5Blo&hl=en&fs=1&showsearch=0″ allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”></embed></object>

I’m sure some people will find that useful when they look at their blogs today …

Tim W

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7 Responses to “Removing the new YouTube Search Box”

  1. [...] The Utube Blog – Hide and Remove YouTube Video Search Box, por Hongjun’s Technology Edge – Removing the new YouTube Search Box, por We Are Team Rubber – YouTube Adds Search Bar to Embedded Videos – More Interactivity and [...]

  2. Hey, hey… Would you mind posting exactly what the coding looks like in order to pull this off? I’m unsure as to where I should insert the showsearch code within the html.

    Thanks, man

  3. timw says:

    @Brad:
    Sure, I’ve updated the post to include the full embed code.

    Basically you want to look for the src url – i.e.

    src=”[url]”

    (it’s in there twice)

  4. Doug McIsaac says:

    I got tired of changing it manually so I had a script written to change the code and posted it on a website for everyone to use for free.
    http://www.removethesearchbar.com

    Doug

  5. Koveras Anchev says:

    Does anyone know how to get rid of the search suggestions as well?

  6. River Boy says:

    Dude who the crap do you get rid of search suggestions? They removed the option!! -_-

  7. Rudy says:

    Once you’ve created a custom player to play a play list… can you still remove the search bar… and how?

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