How to Find Unlisted YouTube Videos Without a Link

A guide to tracking down hard-to-find videos on YouTube

Written by Cory Stillman

Last Updated: January 30, 2024 Fact Checked

When a YouTube video's privacy is set to "unlisted," you can't find the video by searching or browsing YouTube—only people who have a link to the video can watch it. And as of July 2021, all unlisted YouTube videos uploaded prior to 2017 were set to private, which has drastically decreased the amount of available unlisted YouTube videos. Though you can't find a particular unlisted YouTube video without its link, you can discover other unlisted videos by browsing playlists, or by using an archive site like Unlisted Videos. If you're looking for your own unlisted videos, you're in luck—they're easy to find in the YouTube Studio editor.

Things You Should Know

Visit https://www.unlistedvideos.com/ to search or browse for unlisted YouTube videos.
An unlisted YouTube video must have been uploaded to Unlisted Videos in order for it to appear on the site.
To find unlisted videos from a specific account, visit the user's channel and select the "Playlists" tab. They may have added unlisted videos to their playlists.

Question 1 of 3:

How can I find other people's unlisted videos?

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Unlisted videos won't appear in search results on YouTube or in Google. The only exception is if someone shared that unlisted video somewhere public, such as on Twitter, in a blog post, or on a forum. But there are still some options for coming across unlisted videos:
- Visit https://www.unlistedvideos.com/. Unlisted Videos is a massive archive of unlisted YouTube videos, including many from 2016 and earlier. You can search or browse through more than 600,000 unlisted YouTube videos on this site.
  - Enter a search term into the text box atop the website's homepage to find a specific video. You can also click the "All Videos" or "Random Video" button to browse the site's catalogue.
- Browse people's YouTube playlists. People often add their unlisted videos to their own playlists, which makes them easier to find even though they aren't searchable in YouTube or through Google. You can see a person's public playlists by visiting their channel in YouTube and selecting the Playlists tab.

Question 2 of 3:

Why are so many unlisted videos now private?

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YouTube switched all unlisted videos uploaded before January 2017 to private. If you had any older unlisted videos bookmarked, or had them embedded on websites or in presentations, they probably stopped working back in July 2021.^{[1]
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- The owner of the video can switch it back to unlisted (or make it public) to restore others' access to the video. But if the owner hasn't done that, the video will remain private forever (or until they do change it).

Question 3 of 3:

How can I find my own unlisted videos?

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Your unlisted videos are easy to find in YouTube Studio. Here's how to find them:
- Log in to YouTube Studio.
- Click the Content tab.
- Click the funnel icon at the top of the video list and select Visibility.
- Choose Unlisted as the visibility type.
- Since any unlisted videos you uploaded before 2017 were marked as private in July 2021, you can find those by selecting Private from the visibility folder instead.