YouTube featured an April Fools prank on the site on April 1 of every year from 2008 to 2016:
Pranks
- 2008: All the links to the videos on the main page were redirected to Rick Astley's music video "Never Gonna Give You Up", a prank known as "Rickrolling".
- 2009: When clicking on a video on the main page, the whole page turned upside down. YouTube claimed that this was a new layout. As it gave instructions on how viewers could use it like turning a computer upside down.
- 2010: YouTube temporarily released a "TEXTp" mode, which translated the colors in the videos to random upper case letters. YouTube claimed in a message that this was done in order to reduce bandwidth costs by $1 per second.
- 2011: The site celebrated its "100th anniversary" with a "1911 button" and a range of sepia-toned silent, early 1900s-style films, including "Flugelhorn Feline", a parody of Keyboard Cat.
- 2012: Clicking on the image of a DVD next to the site logo led to a video about "The YouTube Collection", an option to order every YouTube video for home delivery on DVD, videocassette, Laserdisc, or Betamax tapes. The spoof promotional video promised "It's the complete YouTube experience completely offline."
- 2013: YouTube teamed up with newspaper satire company The Onion to claim that the video sharing website was launched as a contest which had finally come to an end, and would announce a winner of the contest when the site went back up in 2023. A video of two presenters announcing the nominees streamed live for twelve hours.
- 2014: YouTube announced that it was starting viral video trends, and users were allowed to submit ideas for trends or memes. Some of the trends included "Clocking", "Kissing Dad", and "Glub Glub Water Dance".
- 2015: When searching a song, there would be a message saying 'Did you mean Darude - Sandstorm by Darude'. Also, there was an "add music" button on every video which, if clicked, would actually play Sandstorm.
- 2016: YouTube teams up with rapper Snoop Dogg to launch "Snoopavision", a feature where you can watch videos in 360 degrees through the eyes of Snoop Dogg. However, all videos will have Snoopavision on a certain year far from now, such as a video with Snoopavision to be launched in 2081.
