Get Google’s New Search Bar Now

A quick and simple hack can give you early access to the new Google navigation bar that the company has been rolling out this week. The new Google navigation bar promises a new drop-down menu of Google apps, better integration of Google+, and a color change from black to white. While Google promises the bar will roll out to most users by the end of the week, all you have to do to get it right now is make a few tweaks to one of your cookies from Google.

You’ll need to install a Chrome Extension called Edit This Cookie, so unfortunately Firefox and IE users will have to sit this one out. (Sorry guys. But hey, maybe this is a good time to try out Google’s browser. Chrome just surpassed Firefox after all.) Then make your way over to Google.com and right click anywhere on the page. Select “Edit Cookies.” which helpfully has a cookie next to it, and you should pull up a page that looks like this:

Select the PREF cookie (the second one down), and you should see a section there called “Value” that’s going to be filled with some seemingly random code. That code is what tells Google if you have access to the new navigation bar or not.

We’re going to change the text in “Value” so Google gives you access. Just delete whatever you have in the value field and replace it with: ID=03fd476a699d6487:U=88e8716486ff1e5d:FF=0:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1322688084:LM=1322688085:S=McEsyvcXKMiVfGds

Then click “Submit Cookie Changes” at the bottom of the page. After reloading the Google homepage, you should have the new Google bar that should make the site look something like this:

Then you can go forth and start lording it over your friends because you have Google’s newest feature. We suggest using the new navigation bar’s integration with Google+. We’d like to thank a Google+ user ourselves — Maximilian Majewski — who originally posted this tip on his Google+ page.