How to Export or Download YouTube Video Metadata — Free, No API Key

The YouTube Data Viewer exports YouTube video metadata in two formats. Copy JSON gives you the complete raw API response — every field, ready to paste into a spreadsheet, database, or AI prompt. Copy as Text gives a human-readable summary you can paste into a document or share with a team. Both options work for any public YouTube video in one click, no API key or developer account needed.

What Metadata Is Included in the Export

The JSON export includes every field YouTube's API returns for a video:

• Title, channel, channel ID, video ID
• Published date (ISO format)
• Duration in seconds and formatted (e.g., "14:22")
• Definition (HD or SD)
• Default audio language and default language
• Category name and numeric category ID
• Topic categories (Wikipedia-linked taxonomy auto-assigned by YouTube)
• View count, likes, comments
• Privacy status, license, embeddable, made-for-kids, licensed content (boolean flags)
• Captions available (boolean)
• All tags as an array
• Full description text
• Thumbnails object with URLs and dimensions for all available sizes

This is a complete snapshot of everything publicly accessible about the video at the time you ran the check.

Using the JSON Export in Google Sheets and Excel

Paste the JSON into a Google Sheet to work with it as structured data. A few approaches depending on what you need:

Quick and manual: Paste the JSON into a text cell in column A. In adjacent columns, extract the fields you care about manually. For example, =REGEXEXTRACT(A1, '"views":"([^"]+)"') pulls the view count. This gets tedious for many fields but works for one-off checks.

Apps Script: For repeated use, write a short Apps Script function that parses the JSON and writes each field to its own column. This is a 20-line function for anyone comfortable with basic JavaScript.

Third-party JSON parsers: Sheets extensions like "Import JSON" or "JSON to Sheets" can parse a JSON string in a cell into structured columns automatically.

For Excel, paste the JSON into a cell, then use Data > From Text/CSV or Power Query's JSON import to parse it into rows and columns.

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Using Exported Metadata in AI Prompts

The most efficient use of the JSON export for many creators: drop it straight into a ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini prompt for analysis.

Some prompts that work well with exported metadata:

• "Here's the metadata for my top 5 performing videos [paste JSON]. What patterns do you see in the tags, categories, and description openings?"
• "Here's metadata from a competitor video with 3 million views [paste JSON]. What should I replicate in my next upload based on this?"
• "Here's the metadata for 10 videos in my niche [paste JSON]. Which category appears most often in the top performers?"
• "This video has the Licensed Content flag set to true [paste JSON]. Based on the description and tags, what's likely causing the Content ID claim?"

The JSON format gives AI models the cleanest possible input — structured, labeled, machine-readable. AI models extract and analyze structured data from JSON much more accurately than from prose descriptions.

Archiving Metadata Snapshots for Tracking Changes

One less obvious use of the metadata export: tracking how a video's data changes over time.

Creators occasionally update titles, descriptions, and tags on older videos to improve their SEO — what's sometimes called "video refreshing." If you're monitoring a competitor's channel, periodically exporting the metadata for their key videos lets you track what they changed.

A simple tracking setup: export the JSON for each target video monthly, paste it into a Notion page or a Google Doc with a date header, and compare side-by-side to spot changes. Did they add new tags? Change the category? Rewrite the first line of the description? These are strategic signals worth knowing.

For your own videos, archiving the metadata at launch and then at 30, 90, and 180 days gives you a record of what changed (after your edits) and when views started shifting — useful for correlating SEO changes with performance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I export metadata for multiple YouTube videos at once?

The viewer handles one video at a time — paste the URL, copy the JSON, repeat. For bulk export across many videos, the YouTube data source allows up to 50 video IDs per API call. If you need batch metadata for 100+ videos, a developer-written script using the API directly is more efficient than the web tool.

Does the exported JSON include the video thumbnail URLs?

Yes — the thumbnails object in the JSON contains URLs for all available sizes (default, medium, high, standard, maxres), plus the width and height of each. These are direct YouTube CDN URLs that load the thumbnail image. They remain valid as long as the video exists.

Can I export metadata from deleted YouTube videos?

Once a video is deleted, its API data is no longer available. The viewer returns a 'video not found' error for deleted video IDs. If you need metadata for a video before it's deleted, run the export while it's still live and save the JSON locally.