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Have you ever wondered how to find out what a private video was on YouTube? Let’s say you are browsing YouTube checking out your favorite videos. You then bump into an interesting playlist where you notice some missing videos. The videos show as deleted and you cannot tell what the video title was.
So how do you find out what a deleted or private video was on youtube? In this article, we will use two methods to attempt and get the details of the video as mentioned below:
1. Making Use of Wayback Machine
According to Wikipedia, the Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go “back in time” and see how websites looked in the past.
This is a very useful tool that will assist us in achieving our goal of how to find out what a private video was on YouTube.
WayBack Machine is not only an important resource to use for YouTube videos, but also very effective in getting to know how websites looked like in the past for example, if you’d like to know how Google.com looked like 20 years ago, just visit WayBack Machine on your Web Browser and type in Google.com then use the inbuilt Calendar in the website to navigate to an older date then view Google’s page. The Tool will show you what the website looked like on the date you have selected. This not only works for Google but also for any other website you may have in mind.
So let’s continue with our quest. To trace what a private video was on YouTube, here are quick steps using the WayBack Machine.
- Open the Playlist on YouTube where the Deleted video appears.
- Right-click the title [Deleted video] or the image. From the popup menu select “Copy link”.
- Open WayBack Machine on your favorite Web Browser eg Google Chrome, Firefox, etc.
- Paste the URL then press Enter.
- Go to the date where a hyperlink appears indicating that there is data about the video, then click the URL. You will then get details like the title of the video, and publish date among others.
In case WayBack Machine won’t show you the video details, you can use the link you copied in step 2 above and follow the steps below on how to find out what a private video was on YouTube.
2. Using Web Search
You can do a simple web search using the copied URL as one of the ways on how to find out what a private video was on youtube. This method helps in finding traces of the video where it was shared online on blogs, forums or websites.
Here are the steps to achieve that:
- Open your Web Browser eg Google Chrome, Firefox, etc.
- Paste the copied URL but remove everything in the URL after “&list=” eg change the copied URL from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyDsHYUrE&list=JJgXXXX to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyDsHYUrE (Removed everything after &list= and &list= itself).
- Hit Enter to Search. You may find results from websites or forums where the video was listed and you can get video details from there eg Title, Publish Date, etc.
- If there are no results, copy and search the video code itself eg ZyDsHYUrE. The video code is located after the tag “watch?v=“.
- After finding the video title, copy it and go do a search directly on YouTube. You may get replicas of the video posted by other accounts or videos similar to the original one,
How do you view a private video on YouTube?
To view any private video on YouTube, you require to have the link to that video. You can either ask the video owner to share the link or obtain it from someone that has it.
Conclusion
I hope this article on how to find out what a private video was on youtube has helped you in finding details of missing videos. Let me know if you have any questions or if you need help in the comments section below.
If you would like to know How to Create an Aesthetic YouTube Banner Easily and Fast you can read our article and watch our quick tutorial videos. Until we meet again, take care of yourself. Cheers.
