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 searching and managing your YouTube Watch Later and Liked videos playlists. Search thousands of saved videos by title or channel, bulk delete, remove likes in bulk, filter by channel or topic, sort by duration, views or upload date, reorder, 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. 🔍 You know you saved that video. You just can't find it again. Scrolling is the only tool you have — thousands of thumbnails, loading a screen at a time, hunting for one title you half-remember. Give up often enough and the whole list stops being worth keeping. 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. Your Liked videos list is worse — it goes back years, it has no limit, and YouTube gives you no way through it at all. YouTube Watch Later Tidy fixes all of it. Open a dashboard over your YouTube page, type a few letters to find any video instantly, see your entire playlist 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. Search by title or channel to find one video, or browse by channel or by topic, filter, sort, select, bulk-delete, reorder, or export. 7. Switch between Watch Later and Liked videos from the header at any time — each keeps its own cache and sync time. No account. No setup. No permissions beyond your current YouTube session. Completely free. ✨ NEW IN v1.5.0 ❤️ Liked videos: a switch in the dashboard header — Watch Later | Liked videos — opens your Liked list in the same dashboard, with the same channel and topic breakdowns, search, sorting, filtering, export and Send to Gemini Notebook. It works from either page. Each playlist keeps its own cache and its own sync time; your Watch Later data is untouched. 💔 Remove likes, one at a time or in bulk: on Liked videos the delete button becomes "Remove likes". Select as many as you want and clear them in one run, with the same confirmation, live progress and Stop button as deletion. 📊 Filter by how far through a video you got: the filter menu has a slider under "Watched", with marks at 25 / 50 / 75 / 100 and a box for any exact number. Set it to 75 to find the videos you nearly finished, or 100 for the ones you actually did. Leave it at "Any" and it behaves exactly as before. 🌍 Fix: the Watched filter used to come back empty for anyone whose YouTube was not in English. It read the word "WATCHED" off the thumbnail, which YouTube translates. It now uses each video's watch progress, which works in every language — and starts working immediately, with no re-sync. Also included since the last listing update: 💛 The support note now waits until you've actually cleaned up 20 videos, tells you the number, and then stays quiet for another 200. TidyWL counts this locally and sends it nowhere. ✅ Fix: the OK button on confirmation, export and error dialogs was red — the colour reserved for destructive actions. Red is now kept for the dialogs that really do destroy something. ⭐ Fix: rating the extension marked you as "already asked" before the store tab opened, so a blocked popup burned your only prompt. It's now recorded after the page opens. 🛠️ FULL FEATURE LIST 🔍 Search your whole playlist by title or channel, as you type. Works across thousands of videos without scrolling. 🗑️ Bulk delete selected videos with live progress and a stop button. ❤️ Watch Later and Liked videos in one dashboard, switchable from the header. 💔 Remove likes in bulk, through the same flow as deletion. 📊 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. 🎚️ Filter by watched status (with an adjustable progress threshold), 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 do I find a specific video in my Watch Later? Open the dashboard, hit Sync once, then type in the search box. It matches against both the video title and the channel name as you type, across your entire playlist, however long it is. You can also narrow by channel, by topic, by duration, or by how much of it you've already watched, and combine those with the search. How do I bulk-remove likes? Open the dashboard, switch to Liked videos in the header, hit Sync, then select the videos you want and press "Remove likes". They're removed one at a time, same as deletion, with progress and a Stop button. Be aware that YouTube uses your likes to shape recommendations, so removing them can change what it suggests. What does the Watched filter actually mean? "Watched" means started — any video YouTube has recorded progress on. That's why the slider exists: set it to 75 and you only get videos you're at least three-quarters through. "Unwatched" means never started, and it ignores the slider, so with the slider at 75 a video you left at 50% appears in neither list. 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 playlist 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 and removed likes are permanent. - Removing a like is not a playlist edit — YouTube treats it as un-liking the video, which can affect your recommendations. - Reorder and Move to playlist are hidden on Liked videos. That list is ordered by when you liked something, so reordering it isn't a thing YouTube supports. - 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. 🚀