YouTube celebrates anniversary of VCR with silly VHS feature

Google likes to celebrate the birthdays and anniversaries of various people who contributed to the world, as well as technological breakthroughs. For instance, Google is currently celebrating mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler’s 306th birthday today. However, they’re also celebrating the 57th anniversary of the VCR with a new VHS mode in YouTube.

For a limited time (we’re guessing only today), you can experience YouTube videos as if they were actual VHS tapes. All you have to do is enable VHS mode in the bottom-right of the corner and you’ll be treated with the fuzziness and static that were the bane of your existence growing up. And when you pause the video, it’ll pause just like a VHS tape does, complete with the warping.

The feature only works on a select number of YouTube videos, and the streaming service hasn’t said exactly what videos have the feature, but it’s probably a good bet that most of the popular videos have the temporary feature. If you want to experience VHS mode, here’s a video that will get you in quite the nostalgic mood (the feature doesn’t work with embedded videos).

The first VCR was the Ampex VRX-1000, which launched in 1956 at a price of $50,000. It was absolutely huge compared to what VCRs are like now, and VCRs actually didn’t become more compact until several years later, when they began appearing in homes in the mid-1960s. However, while some VCRs are still being used, they’ve been mostly replaced by DVDs and Blu-ray discs.