How-to guide

How do I scan a playlist? #

Two ways. On any YouTube playlist page, click the floating “Scan this playlist” button — it opens the panel and starts scanning that list. Or open the Manage tab, find the playlist in the list, and pick the middle stop of its switch. Watch Later, Liked videos, and Liked Music are always available. Nothing on YouTube changes — scanning only reads the list into your local library.

How do I scan every video in a playlist? #

Each playlist row in Manage carries one three-stop switch that reads left to right as increasing depth: not scanned, scanned, or every video scanned. Pick the far stop and it scans every video in the list, with an ETA on the row. Picking a shallower stop stops a run in progress, and you keep whatever finished.

Can I control how deep a scan goes? #

Yes. The “Scanning a playlist includes…” dropdown sets the default depth for every scan: the list only (fastest, names and channels), the newest 100 videos (a few minutes), or every video (thorough, roughly an hour per 1,000). The per-row switch overrides it for a single playlist.

How do I remove a playlist from the extension? #

Pick the leftmost stop of the row’s switch (the slashed circle) and confirm. This deletes only the local copy from the extension. Your actual YouTube playlist is untouched.

My playlists aren’t showing up — how do I refresh? #

Every place that lists your playlists — Manage, the add and move pickers, the Quick Add search, the target settings — renders from a stored copy of your playlist directory, so it opens instantly. Opening Manage freshens a list older than a few minutes by riding a YouTube tab you already have open, and the Refresh control forces it. A playlist you create through the extension appears everywhere at once, with no refresh needed. If a refresh fails you keep your last good list rather than an empty one, and if you’re signed out, sign in on YouTube and try again.

How do I search my videos? #

The search box in Browse matches across every scanned video by title and channel. Results update as you type.

How do I filter by playlist, category, or channel? #

Use the Playlist, Category, and Channel filter pills at the top of Browse. You can also click a channel name, or a category/playlist chip on any row, to filter to it instantly. Stack filters to narrow thousands of videos down fast.

There are a hundred categories — how do I find the right one? #

Open the Categories or Channels filter and a “Narrow down” band sits at the top offering only the values still present in your current results, newest first, with counts scoped to those results. On a big scanned library that turns scrolling a hundred categories into picking from the handful that can still match. Every section is collapsible, and the filters you’ve actively picked stay open.

Can I hide a category or channel instead of filtering to it? #

Yes. The eye icon on a filter pill flips it from “show only this” to “hide this,” pushing a category, channel, or source playlist out of view instead of narrowing to it. Handy for setting aside things you don’t want to see.

How do I filter by length, views, age, or language? #

Click the “More filters” funnel button for metadata filters: duration, view count, age/upload date, and language. A badge shows how many extra filters are active.

Can I make the video list more compact? #

Yes. Every card has a small arrow that folds it down to a single line, and that arrow is one shared setting, so a single click quietens the whole list rather than making you work down it. Collapsed, a card keeps its playlist chip, a count of the categories it is holding back, and the button to add one, which fits seven cards on screen where five used to go, and hands the width back to long or collaborative channel names. If you are filtering by a category, that chip stays visible on every card even while the rest are folded away, so the list keeps explaining why each video matched. Your choice is remembered.

How do I sort the list? #

The Sort control offers Recently added (the default), newest and oldest upload, longest and shortest, most liked, likes-per-view ratio, and a random shuffle. Sorting applies to whatever the current filters have narrowed you to.

What is the percentage next to the view count on YouTube? #

That’s the like-to-view percentage: likes divided by views, so you can tell how well a video landed before you open it. It sits inline in YouTube’s own byline, right after the view count, on home-feed cards, suggested videos, and under the title on the watch page (both watch layouts). It’s read from what the page already reports, so nothing extra is fetched to show it.

What are the numbers on each row in the panel? #

Every row shows likes, views, the like-to-view ratio, length, and age, so a huge list can be judged and cut by what people actually did with each video rather than by title alone. The same numbers back the sorts and the “More filters” ranges.

How do I play a video? #

Click any video row to play it on the panel’s tab. Hold a modifier or middle-click to open it in a new tab instead.

Can I play a whole filtered set in order? #

Yes — “Play all” plays your current filtered/sorted set in order as a temporary YouTube playlist, with autoplay and next working normally. No playlist is created or left behind. YouTube caps a temporary queue at 50 videos, so larger sets are noted and truncated.

How do I play just the videos I pick? #

Select them and press play — the results bar has one play button that follows what you are doing. With nothing selected it reads “Play all”; the moment you select videos it reads “Play 5” and plays exactly those, in the order you picked them — each selected row wears a number showing its place in the queue. So queuing up a session is: Cmd-click (Ctrl on Windows) each video you want, then press play. It plays in the panel’s tab; hold a modifier or middle-click for a new tab.

What is the “+” button on thumbnails (Quick Add)? #

A round “+” button appears on video thumbnails across YouTube and on the watch page. One click saves the video to your default target playlist. Hover to pick from up to three configured target playlists, or to search your whole library. A ✓ means it’s already saved — click the ✓ to remove it. The same button appears on each row inside the side panel. Saving to “Liked videos” likes the video; removing un-likes it. To create a playlist while saving, use the panel’s Add menu, which offers “New playlist…”.

Can I save to a playlist that isn’t one of my three targets? #

Yes. The Quick Add menu reaches every playlist you have through a search box, not just the three configured targets and not just the ones the extension has scanned. Under the video the box is always visible; on thumbnails it opens from a “Search playlists…” row so the hover menu stays small. Your recent destinations sit at the top, typing filters as you go, and Enter takes the first match. Playlists you saved from someone else’s channel stay listed but say why they can’t take a video — YouTube only lets you add to playlists you own.

How do I configure Quick Add (where it shows, which playlists)? #

In the Manage tab, open the “Quick add button” card: turn it on or off, choose whether to mark videos already in your library with a ✓, pick which YouTube surfaces it appears on (Home, Search, Watch page, Watch sidebar, Subscriptions, Channel pages, Playlist pages, and the side panel), and choose up to three target playlists plus which one is the default.

What is Quick Ask (the ✦ button)? #

The ✦ button on thumbnails and the watch page summarizes a video without playing it, showing the answer in a popover. It uses YouTube’s own built-in “Ask” AI, so there’s no extra sign-in. It only works on accounts that have YouTube’s Ask feature, it’s in beta, and answers can be inaccurate. Click runs your default mode; hover lists every mode. Answers can include clickable timestamps that seek the player.

Can I customize what Quick Ask asks? #

Yes. Ask modes are editable saved questions (a name plus a prompt). Built-in presets include ELI5, Timestamps, Key quotes, Worth watching?, Counter-arguments, and Action items. You can set a default, edit them, and add your own — in the “Quick Ask” card on the Manage tab.

How does automatic categorizing work? #

The moment a playlist is scanned, every video is sorted by a multilingual local classifier across 34 topics, over 100 music genres, film & TV genres, formats, moods, and 39 languages. Chips are color-coded by group. This is automatic and free — nothing to label by hand, and no paid tier. See the full list below.

What categories can it detect? The full list #

Six independent groups, so one video can carry several categories at once (a track can be Punjabi + Hip-Hop + Workout). Genres roll up their family tree: a Deep House track is filed under House, Electronic, and Music too.

1. 01 Topics (34) — Music, Gaming, Technology, Science, Education, Programming, Business, News, Comedy, Film & TV, Sports, Food, Travel, Health & Fitness, Beauty & Fashion, Autos, Pets & Animals, Home & DIY, Lifestyle, Kids & Family, Arts & History, Spirituality, Nature & Outdoors, Self-Improvement, Photography, Filmmaking, Dance, Visual Arts, Real Estate, Law, Language Learning, Parenting, Relationships, Entertainment.
2. 02 Music genres (104, in families) — Pop (K-pop, Synth-pop, Hyperpop…), Hip-Hop (Trap, Drill, Phonk, Lo-fi Hip-Hop, Desi Hip-Hop…), R&B (Neo-Soul, Funk, Gospel…), Electronic (House → Deep/Tech/Progressive House, Techno, Trance, Drum & Bass, Dubstep, Synthwave…), Rock (Indie, Punk, Grunge…), Metal, Jazz, Blues, Country, Folk, Classical (Film Score, Solo Piano…), Reggae, Latin (Reggaeton, Salsa, Regional Mexican…), Afrobeats (Amapiano), Indian (Bollywood, Bhangra, Sufi, Ghazal, Hindustani Classical, Carnatic…), Lo-fi, Ambient, Instrumental.
3. 03 Film & TV genres (13) — Drama, Action, Thriller, Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Romance, Crime, Mystery, Adventure, Animation, Anime, Superhero.
4. 04 Formats (30) — Tutorial, Review, Comparison, Reaction, Vlog, Podcast, Interview, Trailer, Documentary, Explainer, Compilation, Highlights, Ranking, Challenge, Unboxing, Gameplay, Speedrun, Esports, Live, Course, ASMR, Music Video, Lyric Video, Cover, Remix, Mashup, Q&A, Behind the Scenes, Keynote, Recap.
5. 05 Moods (11) — Study / Focus, Sleep, Relaxation, Workout, Party, Motivation, Romantic, Sad, Happy, Driving, Meditation.
6. 06 Languages (39) — English, Hindi, Punjabi, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Urdu, Marathi, and more. Detected from the script itself where possible, and from artist, label, and word cues for romanized titles.

What does scanning every video add? #

A scan of the list alone reads names and channels. Scanning every video goes further: it opens each one for its real YouTube category, the uploader’s keywords, the full description, and exact stats, which sharpens the categories and adds music-genre and language detail. It’s throttled and resumable.

Can I add my own categories? #

Yes. Each video row has a “+ category” input with live suggestions that reuse your existing labels. Your own categories sit alongside the detected ones and filter identically. Remove one with the trash icon on its chip.

How do I select multiple videos? #

Two ways. Cmd-click (Ctrl on Windows) any video card to pick it, or Shift-click to take a whole range — straight from the list, and select mode switches itself on at your first pick. Or click “Select” in the results bar to enter select mode first; a checkbox then appears in each row’s corner, where Shift-click also selects a range. Clicking a title or thumbnail still plays the video, with or without a selection going.

Does the order I select videos in matter? #

Yes — the order you pick them is kept, and each selected row wears a number showing its place. Play plays the selection in exactly that order. Add and Move also write in pick order: the videos land at the end of the target playlist in the sequence you clicked them. One quirk to expect: a playlist viewed as “Recently added” shows newest first, so there the moved videos appear in reverse — your last pick on top.

How do I move, add, or remove videos in bulk? #

With videos selected, the bulk-action dock lets you add them to a playlist, move them across playlists, remove them from a playlist, create a new playlist from the selection, add or remove a category across the lot, copy their links, or select all. Every operation shows live progress and has a one-tap Undo. This is how you split one big list into several. To play the selection instead, use the results bar’s play button, which reads “Play 5” while videos are selected.

Can I search when picking which playlist to add or move to? #

Yes. The panel’s Add and Move menus have the same search as the Quick Add button on YouTube: your recent destinations at the top, then the playlists you own above the ones you only saved. The page and the panel behave the same way, whichever you reach for.

How do I see and change which playlists a video is in? #

Each row shows the playlist(s) a video belongs to as chips: a single “Name ✕” chip you can remove, or “Name +N” with a hover dropdown listing every playlist, each removable. Read-only playlists (like Liked Music) show the chip without a remove control. Click a playlist name to filter to it.

How do I add a list of video links to a playlist? #

Yes. The “Import” button in the results bar opens a box where you paste YouTube links or IDs — any mix of watch URLs, youtu.be, /shorts/, /embed/, /live/, or bare 11-character IDs, separated by commas, spaces, or newlines — and adds them to a playlist you choose. Anything it can’t resolve is reported as skipped.

How do I export my playlist to CSV? #

The “Export CSV” button downloads exactly the current filtered/sorted list as a spreadsheet-ready CSV (UTF-8 with a BOM so Excel reads it cleanly). Columns: Title, Channel, Video ID, URL, Duration, Views, Published, and Categories (plus a Playlist column in the cross-playlist view). The file is named “Playlist Wrangler - <name> - YYYY-MM-DD.csv.” It’s an easy way to keep a copy of a list past YouTube’s limits.

Does it stay in sync when I change a playlist on YouTube? #

While the panel is open, Auto-sync (the “Auto” toggle in the Manage activity strip, also a Settings toggle) keeps your scanned playlists current with a fast light sweep plus periodic full reconciles. “Sync now” forces an immediate full reconcile of every scanned playlist, which catches deletions and reorders. The activity strip shows status like “Checking… / Updating… / In sync · 3m ago.”

Why does a playlist say it’s waiting to refresh? #

To read the newest videos, a playlist is briefly switched to “Date added (newest)” and then put back the way you had it. Those switches are paced — one every 10 minutes — so a library with several differently sorted playlists refreshes them in turn rather than flipping your playlists back and forth. A playlist waiting its turn says so, on the row and in the sync line, and nothing is written until the order is right, so a playlist you sorted your own way is never saved with its newest videos buried.

I see a “signed out” banner — what do I do? #

The extension reads YouTube using your own signed-in session, so if you’re logged out it shows a banner with an “Open YouTube” button. Open YouTube, sign in, and syncing/scanning resumes.

Does it work with more than one YouTube account? #

Yes. The panel automatically follows whichever Google/YouTube account the active YouTube tab is signed into — there’s no separate switcher. An account badge (avatar + name) shows in the tab strip only once two or more accounts have data. Your first account is fully free; managing a second (or more) is a one-time free unlock that asks for an email. Data is kept separately per account.

What’s in the settings (⚙) screen? #

The gear opens app settings: your keyboard shortcut (with a link to rebind it), a Privacy toggle for anonymous usage analytics, an optional email opt-in for release notes, and a Danger Zone to delete all scanned data (or one account’s, when you have several). The Quick Add and Quick Ask feature settings live on the Manage tab instead.

Where is my data, and what gets sent anywhere? #

What it scanned — playlists, categories, and metadata — lives in your browser’s local storage on your machine, and never leaves your device. There’s no account to create. The only thing it sends is anonymous, content-free usage counts (and only if you leave analytics on); never your video titles, channels, categories, or playlist contents.

How do I delete everything the extension stored? #

Gear → Danger zone → “Delete all data” wipes every scanned playlist and all stored video data (your Quick Add and privacy settings are kept). With two or more accounts, you can also delete a single account’s data. This can’t be undone.

It says “Nothing scanned yet” — now what? #

Your library is empty. Click “▶ Scan my Watch Later” on the Browse tab, open the Manage tab to pick playlists, or open a playlist on YouTube and click “Scan this playlist.”

Quick Ask isn’t returning anything — why? #

Quick Ask relies on YouTube’s own built-in “Ask” AI, which YouTube rolls out per account. If you never get a result, your account likely doesn’t have that feature yet. It’s also in beta, so answers can be wrong. Off the watch page it briefly opens a hidden background tab to summarize, which takes a few seconds.

The panel shows fewer videos than YouTube says — why? #

Because YouTube’s header counts videos it then refuses to hand over — deleted, private, and region-blocked ones. A playlist that reads “306 videos” can serve 272. The row says so rather than looking wrong: “272 videos · 34 hidden by YouTube.” The gap is learned once from a scan that reached the end, so the playlist stops re-scanning itself on every sweep.

A big playlist is taking a long time to scan. #

Scanning every video is roughly an hour per 1,000, because it opens each one for accurate detail. It’s throttled to be polite to YouTube, but it’s resumable and stoppable — stop any time from the activity strip and keep whatever finished, or choose the “newest 100 videos” depth instead.

Do I need a YouTube or Google API key? #

No. There’s no API, no OAuth, and no quota. It reads the playlist from the page you’re viewing, using your own signed-in session.

Does it work on private or unlisted playlists? #

Yes. As long as you’re signed in and can see the playlist, the extension can scan it.

Can it change anything on my YouTube account? #

Only your playlists, and only when you ask — you can add, remove, and move videos between playlists from inside the extension. It never likes, subscribes, comments, or changes anything else.

Is it free? #

Yes — completely free and ad-free, including the automatic categories. There’s no paid tier that unlocks features. If it helps you, you can support the work, but you never have to.

Which browsers does it work on? #

Any Chromium-based browser — Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, and Arc — plus Firefox. Chrome, Edge, and Firefox each have their own store listing, built from the same source; Brave, Opera, and Arc install the Chrome one. It’s a Manifest V3 extension. Opera and Arc have no side panel for extensions, so there the panel opens as a window (see below).

I use Firefox Multi-Account Containers and it seems signed out or shows the wrong account. #

Update to 1.5.0 or later. Before that, the extension read your session from outside the container, which left it either signed out or acting as whichever account you use in a normal window — so the panel could come up empty and adding or removing videos failed. It now uses the session belonging to the tab you’re working in, so a container tab is handled as the account that’s signed in there.

Does it work in Arc or Opera? #

Yes, since 1.17.0, as a window, and it is experimental. Arc and Opera have no side panel for extensions, so the panel opens as a window of its own beside your browser window. The library, search and playlist edits work from there; Play and Add to queue use the YouTube tab you have open. In Opera the keyboard shortcut toggles the window; Arc does not deliver extension shortcuts, so use the toolbar icon. Anything that does not behave as in Chrome: use the feedback link in the panel.