Export YouTube Data via Google Takeout

What YouTube stores about you

A YouTube export covers more than watch history. It is a complete record of how you used YouTube. What you watched, what you searched for, what you subscribed to, what you created, and what you said in comments. Most of this is not surfaced anywhere in the YouTube interface, so the Takeout archive is often the first time people see the full picture.

• Watch history: every video you have watched, with timestamps and which channel published it
• Search history: every query you have typed into YouTube search
• Subscriptions: channels you have subscribed to, with subscription dates where available
• Playlists: all your created playlists and their contents
• Comments you have posted on other videos
• Live chat messages you have sent during live streams
• Uploaded videos: your own video files plus a metadata file with titles, descriptions, and view counts
• Your channel profile assets: banner and avatar images
• Captions and subtitle tracks you have uploaded
• YouTube messages archive: legacy DMs from before YouTube deprecated direct messaging

The Brand Account trap

If your YouTube channel is owned by a Brand Account rather than your personal Google Account, your uploaded videos will not appear in an export run from your personal Google Account sign-in. You need to switch to the Brand Account first, then run the export. Google's own help page calls this out, but only after the export is already running.

A surprising number of older channels: especially those created for a hobby, a side project, or an organisation. Sit on Brand Accounts without the owner realising. The first sign is usually an empty uploads folder in the archive. This is fixable; you just have to know to check.

• Sign in to the Google account that owns the channel, not your everyday personal one
• At takeout.google.com, click the profile avatar in the top-right and switch to the Brand Account
• Run the export again. Uploads, comments, and live chat messages will then be present
• If you are not sure whether your channel is on a Brand Account, open YouTube Studio and check the channel name and avatar shown there

How to request the YouTube export

1. Go to takeout.google.com and sign in to the account that owns the channel, or the Brand Account if that is the one.
2. Click "Deselect all" to start from a clean slate.
3. Tick "YouTube and YouTube Music". It is still one combined product as of late 2026.
4. Click "All YouTube data included" to drill into the sub-categories.
5. Toggle each category on or off: for a complete export, leave everything on.
6. Click "OK" to return to the main product list.
7. Click "Next step".
8. Choose delivery method: download link via email is the default and works for everyone; Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Box are also options.
9. Choose export type: one-time is simplest; scheduled exports recur every 2 months for a year.
10. Pick ZIP for maximum compatibility unless you specifically want TGZ.
11. Set maximum archive size: 50 GB avoids most splitting but produces very large single files.
12. Click "Create export".
13. Wait for the email notification: minutes for small accounts, hours or days for large libraries.
14. Download every archive part before the link expires.

What is inside the YouTube portion of the archive

The YouTube files live under a top-level folder named "Takeout/YouTube and YouTube Music/". The contents are split into a handful of subfolders plus standalone files. None of these are password-protected. The archive itself is plain, so plan to store it somewhere encrypted if the contents are sensitive.

• history/watch-history.json: every video you have watched, as structured JSON with timestamps, video IDs, channel IDs, and titles
• history/watch-history.html: the same watch log rendered as a readable web page, useful for skimming
• history/search-history.json: every YouTube search query with timestamps
• subscriptions/subscriptions.csv: list of channels you are subscribed to (read the caveat about this file below)
• playlists/playlists.json: your created playlists and the video IDs in each
• comments/: comments you have posted on other videos, in HTML and/or JSON
• live chat messages/: JSON files of messages you sent during live streams
• chats/: legacy YouTube direct messages archive (DMs were deprecated, but the archive remains)
• uploads/: folder containing your actual uploaded video files plus a videos.json metadata file
• profile/: your channel banner and avatar images (banner.jpg, avatar.jpg, etc.)
• captions/: any subtitle tracks you have uploaded, in .srt or .vtt format

About the uploads folder

This is the part most people do not expect. Your uploaded video files are bundled into the Takeout archive. You do not have to download them separately from YouTube Studio. The catch is that older uploads are re-encoded when they come back.

If your originals matter: for example you uploaded a 4K master, a ProRes file, or anything in a non-standard codec. Keep those files yourself. The Takeout copy is convenient but is not always a byte-perfect return.

• Videos uploaded in the last ~6 months come back in their original format
• Older uploads come back as MP4 files with H.264 video and AAC audio
• The re-encoded MP4 is typically capped at around 1080p. Even if the original was 4K
• Newer Shorts may arrive as .webm rather than .mp4, depending on the original container
• Each video file is paired with a metadata entry in videos.json (title, description, tags, view count, publish date)
• Verify the uploads folder is non-empty after download. The Brand Account trap is the usual reason for an empty result
• Per-video downloads from YouTube Studio are also available (click the 3-dot menu next to a video > Download) but cap at 1080p "processed" quality and require phone-number identity verification

Reading the watch-history file

watch-history.json is a JSON array. Each entry is a single viewing event with a small set of fields. Title, time, and channel URL are the most useful for human reading; the structured fields are useful if you import the file into a script or spreadsheet.

• title: the video title at the time it was watched (titles can change after export)
• time: ISO 8601 timestamp of the viewing
• titleUrl: the watch URL of the video (works even if the title has since changed)
• subtitles: an array with the channel name and channel URL
• products and activityControls: internal Google fields, generally ignorable
• The HTML version (watch-history.html) is friendlier for skimming. Open it in any browser
• For deeper analysis, import the JSON into a spreadsheet via Excel > Data > Get Data > From File > From JSON, then expand the array

The subscriptions CSV: verify it is there

subscriptions.csv goes missing from Takeout archives sometimes, even when you ticked subscriptions. This has been reported for years and was still happening in 2025. Check for it straight after downloading rather than finding out next year.

• Look for subscriptions/subscriptions.csv inside the archive
• If the file is missing, run a fresh Takeout export with only "YouTube and YouTube Music" selected. This sometimes resolves it
• If you have access to the YouTube Data API v3 (subscriptions.list), you can pull the same data programmatically as a fallback
• Subscriptions can also be exported as OPML inside Takeout, which can be imported into most podcast apps as a backup copy

What is NOT included in the YouTube Takeout

Takeout covers the YouTube consumer data well. It does not cover YouTube Studio analytics, revenue data, or comments posted by other people on your videos. Those require separate flows.

• YouTube Studio analytics: view counts over time, watch time, traffic sources, audience demographics, revenue. Are not in Takeout
• To get analytics: YouTube Studio > Analytics > Advanced Mode > Export CSV (per video, or per report)
• Comments posted by other people on your videos are not included. Only your own outbound comments
• YouTube Premium billing and subscription records live in your general Google account data, not the YouTube portion of Takeout
• Watch-history is a snapshot at export time: if you clear history between exports, the data is gone
• YouTube Music library downloads have a known issue (Feb 2025 onward) where some MP3 ID3 tags are stripped. Keep your own tag metadata if it matters

How long it takes

Google does not publish a fixed SLA. Small accounts get their archive within minutes. Channels with thousands of uploaded videos or years of watch history can take hours, occasionally days. The archive expires about 7 days after creation and can be downloaded a maximum of 5 times. So plan to download promptly and keep all parts if the export was split.

• Minutes for small accounts (a few hundred videos, a few thousand watch events)
• Hours for typical accounts (thousands of videos, years of history)
• Days for very large channels (tens of thousands of uploads or extensive watch history)
• Watch for the email: it can take several hours to arrive after the archive is ready
• Download every archive part before any of them expire
• If the export fails, try a smaller archive size cap or fewer products selected

Where to store it

• The watch-history files are small and worth keeping. They are a record of interests over years
• Upload folders can be enormous (hundreds of GB for active channels). Store these on an external SSD or large cloud drive
• Keep at least one off-site copy in encrypted cloud storage
• Store the full archive in a folder named youtube-2026-09
• Off-site copy: pCloud (pCloud) for the upload folders; ProtonDrive (ProtonDrive) for sensitive history files

Related guides

• Download All Your Google Data: Complete Takeout Guide (2026)
• Back Up Your Data Exports: Storage, Encryption & Organisation (2026)
• Getting Started with Digital Takeout Day (2026)

FAQ