YouTube Watch Later Tidy

Bulk delete, filter, sort, and reorder your YouTube Watch Later. Escape the 5000-video limit. Runs locally, no data collected.

YouTube Watch Later Tidy is a Chrome extension for managing your YouTube Watch Later playlist. Bulk delete, filter by channel or topic, sort by duration, views or upload date, reorder videos, download transcripts in bulk, and escape the 5,000-video limit. Everything runs locally — no account, no sign-in, no data collected. 📋 Your YouTube Watch Later playlist is a graveyard. Videos saved months or years ago. Channels you forgot you followed. A queue so long you stopped trusting it. Then one day, you hit the 5,000-video limit. YouTube freezes you out. Can't save anything new until you dig through the pile and start deleting. One. Video. At. A. Time. YouTube gives you zero tools to fix this. No bulk delete, no overview, no way to take back control. YouTube Watch Later Tidy fixes it. Open a dashboard over your YouTube page, see your entire Watch Later broken down by channel or by topic (like a storage manager for your queue), filter, sort, reorder, and bulk-delete. Done in minutes instead of hours. 🚀 HOW IT WORKS 1. Install the extension. 2. Go to youtube.com/playlist?list=WL (your Watch Later page). 3. Click the YouTube Watch Later Tidy icon in the top-right corner of Chrome (pin it from the puzzle-piece menu if you don't see it). 4. Click "Open Dashboard". 5. Hit Sync and wait for the progress counter to finish. 6. Browse by channel or by topic, filter, sort, select, bulk-delete, reorder, or export. No account. No setup. No permissions beyond your current YouTube session. Completely free. ✨ NEW IN v1.4.0 📝 Download transcripts in bulk: select any number of videos and get a text file for each one, named after the video, with a timestamp on every line. TidyWL checks which videos actually have captions first, so it never wastes time on the ones that don't — and the summary tells you exactly which videos it couldn't get and why. 📓 Send to Gemini Notebook: push your selected videos straight into a notebook as sources without leaving the dashboard. Create a brand-new notebook or add to an existing one. 🙈 Exclude videos by topic: hide entire topics from the list, instead of only being able to filter down to one. Hide as many as you like at once. 👁️ Sort by views: most-viewed or least-viewed first. 🔢 Version number in the dashboard header, so you can tell at a glance whether you're up to date. Also included since the last listing update: 📏 Custom duration range: filter by any minimum and maximum length in minutes, not just the preset buckets. 📌 Sticky toolbar: Sort, Filter, Select and Delete stay pinned while you scroll a long list. 🔔 Notification bell: a badge shows when there's something new, with a dated history of past announcements. 🐛 Fix: the sticky toolbar no longer floats over progress dialogs while deleting, syncing or moving videos. 🛠️ FULL FEATURE LIST 🗑️ Bulk delete selected videos with live progress and a stop button. 📊 A dashboard with channel breakdown bars, sorted by count. 🏷️ By Topic view: local keyword clustering, no API calls, no data sent. Filter to a topic, or hide topics you don't want to see. 🔍 Search and filter by title, channel, watched status, availability, or duration (preset buckets or a custom min/max range). 🔃 Sort by playlist order (top/bottom first), duration (longest/shortest), published date (newest/oldest), views (most/fewest), channel A–Z, or title A–Z. 📝 Download transcripts for one video or hundreds, as timestamped text files named after the video. 📓 Send selected videos to Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) as sources. 📁 Move or copy videos to another playlist. Create new playlists inline (Private / Unlisted / Public). ↕️ Reorder via Move to Top, Move to Bottom, or drag-and-drop (single or multi-select). 🔖 Per-video 3-dot menu: Move to Top, Move to Bottom, Open in new tab, Copy URL, Download transcript, Remove. 💾 Export to JSON or CSV (UTF-8 BOM, handles non-Latin titles correctly). 👤 Multi-account aware: auto-detects your logged-in Google account. Brand channels supported. ⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts: Cmd/Ctrl+A (select all), Delete/Backspace (delete selected), Esc (close or deselect). 🌗 Light and dark theme following your browser's setting. WCAG-AA contrast in dark mode. ♿ Accessibility: keyboard navigation on dropdowns, ARIA labels, prefers-reduced-motion respected. ❓ FAQ Does it need a YouTube API key or OAuth login? No. It uses the same internal endpoints your browser already calls when you use YouTube. No API key, no OAuth, no account setup. Is my data sent anywhere? No. Everything runs locally in your browser. No login, no servers, no analytics, no telemetry. The extension calls YouTube's own endpoints (with your existing session) and a public config file on tidywl.com (no identifiers, no payload). The one exception is entirely under your control: if you use "Send to Gemini Notebook", your chosen video links go to Google's Gemini Notebook using your own Google session — because that is the point of the feature. How does bulk transcript download work? Select the videos you want, click Download Transcripts, and you get one text file per video in a "TidyWL transcripts" folder. TidyWL first asks YouTube which of your videos have captions at all, so videos without them are reported rather than silently skipped. It then opens one small window and works through the rest, roughly three seconds per video, and closes it when finished. Leave that window on top while it runs — YouTube only builds transcripts in a visible window. Which videos can I get transcripts for? Any video with captions, either creator-provided or auto-generated. Videos with captions disabled, most live streams, and some Shorts have no transcript to fetch. The summary at the end lists exactly which videos were skipped and why, so you're never left guessing. Why can I only add 5,000 videos to Watch Later? YouTube caps every playlist, including Watch Later, at 5,000 items. Once you hit the limit, adding more fails silently. The only fix is to delete older ones. This extension makes that possible without losing your afternoon. How do I bulk-delete videos from YouTube Watch Later? Install the extension, go to your Watch Later page, click "Open Dashboard", hit Sync, then select videos (individually, by channel, by topic, by filter, or with Cmd/Ctrl+A) and press Delete. YouTube's API requires sequential deletion, so large batches take a few seconds. How does the By Topic grouping work? It scans the titles of videos in your cached Watch Later and clusters them by recurring keywords (e.g. "recipe", "react", "interview"). Each video is assigned to its single strongest keyword, and topics with fewer than 3 videos are excluded to avoid noise. It runs 100% locally: no API calls, no external service, no data sent anywhere. Why does my video count differ from what YouTube shows? YouTube hides videos from its own playlist API when they are deleted, set to private, region-locked, copyright-blocked, from an expired livestream, from a suspended channel, or age-restricted. The dashboard shows you the exact gap and explains each reason. Does it work on brand channels or "Page" accounts? Yes, as of v1.2.0. Sync, delete, and reorder all work correctly on brand-channel Watch Later playlists. Can I undo a deletion? No. Deletions are permanent on YouTube's side. Confirm before you delete. Use Export first if you want a snapshot. Does it sync across devices? No. The cached playlist lives in your browser's local storage. Open the extension on another device, hit Sync, and you get a fresh pull from YouTube. Will it break if YouTube changes their API? Possibly. This extension piggybacks on YouTube's internal endpoints, which can change without notice. A remote config system lets many breakages be patched without forcing an extension update, which adds real resilience. Larger breakages will still require an update. 🔒 PRIVACY No login required. No servers storing your data. No analytics. No telemetry. Network calls go only to YouTube (using your own logged-in session) and to a public config file on tidywl.com (no identifiers, no payload). Two optional permissions are requested only at the moment you first use the feature that needs them, never at install: - Gemini Notebook access, so the videos you pick can be added as sources. - Saving downloads, so transcripts can be written to your Downloads folder. Decline either one and the rest of the extension carries on working normally. ⚠️ HONEST LIMITATIONS - Requires being signed in to YouTube in this browser. - No undo: deletions are permanent. - No cross-device sync. Storage is local to each browser. - Transcript download opens a small visible window and works through videos one at a time, around three seconds each. It cannot run invisibly — Chrome does not render hidden windows, so YouTube never builds the transcript there. - Transcripts come in whichever language YouTube shows by default. Choosing a language isn't supported yet. - "Playlist order" sort reflects current playlist position, not the date you added the video. YouTube doesn't expose per-video added-date timestamps on web — for true date-added sort, use the YouTube mobile app. - Uses YouTube's internal, undocumented API. It could break if YouTube changes their internals. 💬 COMMUNITY Join the Discord to report bugs, request features, or just say hi: https://discord.gg/natc623GhX Built by an indie developer who hit the 5,000-video limit and had enough. Independent and not affiliated with YouTube or Google. 🚀