I have 2 YouTube premium accounts. One is my personal account. The other I use in my classroom.
I was going to originally upgrade my personal YouTube account to a family plan so I could just add my classroom account as a family member of my personal account. But my personal premium account is part of a business plan and Google won’t allow me to upgrade that account to a family account.
Also, both accounts were created through Apple and I want to stop paying the Apple tax.
Long story short, I want to cancel both premium account and then set up one premium family account. If I first back up each of the existing YouTube accounts using Google takeout, will I be able to restore the data to new accounts?
Did a quick search for you, it doesn’t appear that this workflow is supported based on this help center article - Merge YouTube channels - YouTube Help
They suggest that you manually re-upload your videos to the new account.
That’s too bad. But after seeing where you searched, I did a different search and found some possible solutions to try. So, thanks!
Here’s what I found and will try:
Google Takeout does not directly support transferring YouTube-specific data like watch history, liked videos, or playlists. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you achieve this:
Accessing Liked Videos and Playlists
Access Liked Videos:
Log into your school YouTube account.
On the YouTube homepage, click on the Library tab (on mobile) or the Liked Videos option on the left sidebar (on desktop).
Scroll through or use the search bar to find specific videos.
Accessing Playlists:
In the YouTube Library (on mobile) or under the Playlists section (on desktop), you can view all your created playlists.
Transferring DataManual Method
Liked Videos and Playlists:
Manually add each liked video and playlist video to a new playlist in your personal account. This can be time-consuming but ensures all content is transferred.
Watch History:
As you mentioned, manually clicking on each URL from your watch history in the “My Activity” page and opening it in your personal account is impractical due to the large number of videos.
Using Google Takeout for Other Data
While Google Takeout does not support transferring YouTube data directly, it can be used for other Google services like Drive and Gmail. For YouTube data, consider the following alternatives:
Exporting Subscriptions:
You can export your subscriptions from your school account and import them into your personal account using the Subscriptions Importer Tool.
Playlist Transfer:
Create a new playlist in your personal account and manually add videos from your school account playlists. Alternatively, make your playlists public or unlisted, share the link, and then save them under your new account.
Scripting Solution
For liked videos, you might consider using a Python script to extract video titles from the JSON data available in the YouTube page source or through Google Takeout’s YouTube data export (if available). However, this method is more complex and requires some programming knowledge.
Additional Tips
Save Playlists Manually: Since you can’t directly transfer playlists, manually recreate them by adding videos one by one.
Use Browser Extensions: Some browser extensions can help automate tasks like adding videos to playlists, but be cautious with security.
Contact School Admin: If possible, ask your school administrator to temporarily restore access to facilitate a smoother transfer.
Given the limitations of Google Takeout for YouTube data, manual methods or scripting solutions are your best options for now.
I was going about this in the wrong way. Instead of cancelling my 2 YouTube subscriptions through Apple, I’ve downloaded them from premium accounts to a regular accounts Supposedly, I’m not supposed to lose any of my playlists or watch history by downgrading. I just lose the commercial free aspect and the ability to download videos. Maybe a few other things. I did run takeout first, just in case.
Then I upgraded my other 2 YouTube accounts to premium status directly from YouTube. I’m not saving a lot of money. But it’s more about the principle (not paying the Apple tax).
Next step is to manually edit the shares of my playlists from the original account to Public so I can start copying them over to the new account. There are 3rd part software solutions and browser extensions I could use. But, even tiding this manually will take a long time, I don’t know how much I can trust third party tools.
Finally, I’m going to have to use python to create a script to parse out the information from my play history file in my google takeout archive and do some functions to get it into my new account.
One more thing. In my google searches, I was asking how to transfer a YouTube channel when I should have just been asking how to transfer an account. Fortunately, I only have 4 videos in my channel, so it’s not a concern to re upload the original ms to the new account. But it is possible to transfer channels easily, as long as they’re branded channels (something I’m still trying to wrap my head around). There’s tons of tutorials for doing that.