For some reason I was back in Chrome today, and I searched Google, without meaning to, for:

get channel id for a youtube channel

Here’s what I got:


✨ AI Overview Learn more … To find a YouTube channel’s ID, you can: Use the YouTube account settings Sign in to YouTube, select your profile picture, then Settings, and then Advanced settings. You must be signed in as the channel’s primary owner to see this information.

That’s great, but I am not the channel’s primary owner, and surely the majority of the time the person seeking an answer to this question will not be, also.

Use the channel’s URL Click on the channel’s name under any of its videos, and then look at the URL of that page. The handle will appear at the end of the link, preceded by the @ sign.

?

That is not the channel ID.

Use the page source code View the page source code of any video from the channel, and look for the “channelid” keyword.

I felt a little stingy at this point, because this sounds like a real solution.

I opened the source for the channel page, and searched the source code for channelid, and found nothing.

Then, while typing this complaint, I noticed that I was supposed to do that from a random video’s page, so I opened one of the videos, did that, and found nothing.

A YouTube channel can have multiple URLs that direct viewers to the channel homepage. These URLs can look different, but they all point to the same channel.

Irrelevant information. How do I find the channel ID?

Generative AI is experimental. 👍 👎

Thanks Google! I know.

Sign in to YouTube. Settings . From the left menu, select Advanced settings. You’ll see your channel’s user and channel IDs.

Find your YouTube user & channel IDs - Google Help

Yes! I know. However, this isn’t my channel. I want to find someone else’s channel’s ID.

❓About featured snippets • 💬 Feedback

I have some doubts whether you would accept my feedback, if I decided to give it. Why is this here?

Learn what words mean as you search Select words to get definitions & translations without leaving the page (Got it)

Thanks! That’s really useful to know. Do you know how I can get a channel ID though?

People also ask

  • How do I get a YouTube Content ID?
  • Does YouTube have the ID channel?
  • How do I get my YouTube channel name?
  • How to find YouTube channel gmail id?

Fascinating!

Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com › questions › how-can-i-get-a… An easy answer is, your YouTube Channel ID is UC + {YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID}. To be sure of your YouTube Channel ID or your YouTube account ID, access the advanced … 23 answers Top answer: To obtain the channel id you can view the source code of the channel page and find … How can I get YouTube channel ID using channel name URL? Feb 7, 2023 Is there any way to get youtube channel ID … - Stack Overflow Sep 14, 2023 How to get a youtube channelid from the channels link … Jan 11, 2023 I can’t get channel id using YouTube Data API v3 Mar 25, 2023 More results from stackoverflow.com

I clicked on Stack Overflow, closed several popups. The top answer wasn’t useful. I did find a couple of answers down:

"To obtain the channel id you can view the source code of the channel page and find either data-channel-external-id=“UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg” or “externalId”:“UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg”.

UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg will be the channel ID you are looking for.

I tried that, and it didn’t work.

Back to Google:

Comment Picker https://commentpicker.com › Tools › YouTube YouTube Channel ID Finder is a free tool to help you find a YouTube channel ID, along with other related channel information and statistics.

And it worked! I get 2 free channel ID queries per day. Fortunately I only needed the one. But it worked! It only took several minutes of scrolling past multiple screens of things that didn’t work.


Now let’s compare that to DDG.

Videos for get channel id for a youtube channel 1:28 How to Find YouTube Channel ID - 2024 263K views YouTube1yr

I skipped this as I didn’t want a video.

https://www.streamweasels.com › tools › youtube-channel-id-and-user-id-convertor YouTube Channel ID Finder - YouTube Username to ID Convertor Simply enter any YouTube username or handle below and click Convert Username to ID. This tools makes use of the YouTube API to make the conversion. You can check out our other API tools here. Select YouTube handle, username or legacy: YouTube handles are now considered the default for Y

And there we go! It works.


When did it get this bad?

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
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      30 days ago

      I’ll click on the link you sent me, and start reading carefully, trying to find the answer. Here’s how it went. I am not faking or deliberately trying any wrong things here. I’m just grabbing the most central solution it’s presenting me on any given page, and trying it.

      Here’s the progress:

      or those who come across this after the latest Data API revision (31st January, 2024), they provided the forHandle query parameter to get data of a handle/username. You can refer to this answer for details here: stackoverflow.com/a/78074066/2665606 – Saqib Ahmed Commented Feb 29 at 10:01

      Cool. I click on that question.

      YouTube released a revision on 31st January 2024 to add a forHandle parameter in the channel list API that does exactly what OP asks.

      You can call the channel list API with forHandle to get the channel ID and the upload playlist for that user/handle that you can subsequently use to fetch the videos.

      GET https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels

      Query parameters:

      forHandle=FolkartTr OR @FolkartTr OR %40FolkartTr (this allows the ‘@’ sign as well as URL encoding of it) key=<your API key> part=contentDetails

      Cool.

      $ wget -O - https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels\?forHandle=Lindybeige
      --2024-10-01 01:19:52--  https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?forHandle=Lindybeige
      Resolving www.googleapis.com (www.googleapis.com)... 2a00:1450:4009:822::200a, 2a00:1450:4009:826::200a, 2a00:1450:4009:823::200a, ...
      Connecting to www.googleapis.com (www.googleapis.com)|2a00:1450:4009:822::200a|:443... connected.
      HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
      2024-10-01 01:19:52 ERROR 403: Forbidden.
      

      Oh. I need an API key. Okay, that one’s useless.

      I read another answer.

      If I understood correctly, your problem is that you can’t do anything from such a c/ channel id with the Channels: list of the YouTube Data API v3. If you’re just looking for the channel id linked to this id then because as YouTube Data API v3 doesn’t work for this, I would recommend you to use my open-source YouTube operational API, indeed by requesting https://yt.lemnoslife.com/channels?cId=FolkartTr you’ll receive a JSON with id equals to the channel id linked to the provided cId value.

      That means nothing to me.

      I hit back. We’re back at the original page you linked me to:

      To obtain the channel id you can view the source code of the channel page and find either data-channel-external-id=“UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg” or “externalId”:“UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg”.

      UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg will be the channel ID you are looking for.

      Already covered. It doesn’t work.

      An easy answer is, your YouTube Channel ID is UC + {YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID}. To be sure of your YouTube Channel ID or your YouTube account ID, access the advanced settings at your settings page

      And if you want to know the YouTube Channel ID for any channel, you could use the solution @mjlescano gave.

      https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?key={YOUR_API_KEY}&forUsername={USER_NAME}&part=id If this could be of any help, some user marked it was solved in another topic right here.

      Are you getting sick of reading these? So am I! I want to remind that DDG gave me the answer at the top of the page, as a tool that would solve the problem for me.

      At any channel page with “user” url for example http://www.youtube.com/user/klauskkpm, without API call, from YouTube UI, click a video of the channel (in its “VIDEOS” tab) and click the channel name on the video. Then you can get to the page with its “channel” url for example https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfjTOrCPnAblTngWAzpnlMA.

      Edit:

      Above is not working any more. But we can open Developer Tools (cmd + option + I) and try to find the URL there. Search by channel_id for some channels, it will show you, but NOT for all the channels.

      By the way, if this is your own channel – you can go here https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/channels/list and make request with part snippet and mine true.

      Oh, I found this answer. Thank you, just works!

      Edit:

      Just in case you need UC channel id of any channel by the “YouTube handle”, you can also use ‘API Explorer’ on the right of this page https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/channels/list and enter forHandle with your ‘API key’ (let me share screenshots below)

      Sure, let’s try the Cmd+Option+I solution.

      Hey! Look at that. www.youtube.com wants to use my microphone. I can:

      • Allow while visiting this site
      • Allow this time
      • Never allow

      I think we’re done here. For all I know I would have been able to find it in the network tab of developer tools while searching for the channel, but I think the point is made. I didn’t say that the answer didn’t exist anywhere on SO, I said that the things I was trying because either Google or SO were telling me they were the answer were not working.

      Edit: I reread your comment and got confused. For me, the screenshot you’re showing has 26 points, and shows up below all of the answers that I showed above, which have 259, 79, 32, and 30 points respectively. How many points does it have on your page, to show as the second highest answer? I didn’t deliberately stop reading right before the answer. I absolutely made a sincere effort to find the answer on that page, documenting my progress as I went.

      • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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        30 days ago

        Oops, the answer I mentioned was 2nd only if you sorted by “recent votes count more”… Weird how that’s not the default already.

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
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          30 days ago

          The mystery is solved. People are trying to provide good answers to strangers for free because they are good and helpful. Google’s senseless reorganization of things is causing them not to function anymore. And then, Stack Overflow’s bad configuration is defeating those good people’s efforts to provide them to me.

          I think we’ve learned that SO has succumbed to the same organizational syphilis that Google contracted a few years earlier.

    • edgemaster72@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      Weirdly channel pages don’t seem to have that About tab for me, had to click More… on the channel description to get a popup thing where you could then share the channel and get Channel ID as described in your steps