Export every video on a YouTube channel

A channel's Videos tab has no export button, and playlist tools turn it away because it is not a playlist. Every channel also has a playlist of everything it has uploaded, though, and once you have its address the same tools work on the whole channel.

Find the uploads playlist

Every channel ID starts with UC. Change those two letters to UU and you have the ID of a playlist that holds everything the channel has posted, newest first. To get the channel ID:

1. Add /about to the channel's address, for example youtube.com/@numberphile/about. A panel with the channel's details opens.
2. Click Share channel, then Copy channel ID. It looks like UCoxcjq-8xIDTYp3uz647V5A.
3. Paste it after youtube.com/playlist?list= and change the UC at the start to UU.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUoxcjq-8xIDTYp3uz647V5A

That page is called Uploads from Numberphile, and when I checked it held 826 videos, the same number the channel page shows. Shorts are in it too. For the regular videos only, use UULF in place of UU; on the same channel that list had 820.

yt-dlp

yt-dlp lists a channel tab the same way it lists a playlist, without downloading anything:

yt-dlp --flat-playlist --print "%(title)s;%(url)s" "https://www.youtube.com/@numberphile/videos" > channel.txt

Use /shorts or /streams in place of /videos for the other tabs. The caveats are the same as for a playlist: a semicolon in a title spills into the next column, and YouTube rate-limits the tool now and then.

The YouTube Data API

The channels.list call gives you the uploads playlist ID, and it accepts the handle directly:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=contentDetails&forHandle=@numberphile&key=YOUR_KEY

The ID is in contentDetails.relatedPlaylists.uploads. Read it with playlistItems.list as described in the playlist guide: 50 rows a call, one unit of the daily quota each, and a full date and time in every row.

Google Takeout, for your own channel

If the channel is yours, the YouTube section of Google Takeout includes your video metadata: a CSV of your uploads with each video's ID, title, length, privacy and the times it was created and published. Leave the videos themselves out of the export unless you want every file, which can be very large. If the channel belongs to a Brand Account, switch to that account before you start.

With Playlist Exporter for YouTube

My extension does not read the Videos tab either; its popup asks for a playlist there. On the uploads playlist it works as it does on any other, reading the rows from your tab 100 at a time.

1. Open the UU or UULF address from the first section.
2. Click the extension's icon. The popup shows the playlist's name and how many videos it has.
3. Pick CSV, or Excel with Pro. A small box on the page counts the rows as they load, and then the file downloads.

Without Pro it saves the newest 200 videos as a CSV file, or copies their links. With Pro it saves all of them; the 826-video list above came out as 826 rows. The dates are the ones YouTube shows on the playlist page, such as 2 days ago or 3 years ago, so for exact publish times use the Data API, or Takeout for your own channel.

Updated 18 October 2026.