[HN Gopher] Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced ...
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Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters
Author : nevernothing
Score : 302 points
Date : 2026-04-06 00:18 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (playlists.at)
(TXT) w3m dump (playlists.at)
| dev1ycan wrote:
| This is just adding the hidden filters such as
|
| before:[date]: Finds videos uploaded before a specific date.
|
| Example: space exploration before:2020-01-01
|
| after:[date]: Finds videos uploaded after a specific date.
|
| Example: tech news after:2024-01-01
|
| To an UI, right?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| As long I doesn't shove "shorts" or "other people watched" in
| the result list, it's an improvement. Sometimes the results are
| so egregious and completely unrelated to the search terms that
| I feel like youtube wants to piss me off on purpose. I don't
| want to be searching some quantum physics video and get videos
| of some barely clothed women in Miami, I fail to see how it is
| related...
| tremarley wrote:
| Enshittification is the reason
| awesome_dude wrote:
| I think that it's a fair title - it takes the "hidden" search
| terms and brings them to the surface for users.
|
| The (default) YouTube search is barely useful
|
| They have made a search WITH the advanced features available
|
| Everything as advertised (IMO)
| bryanhogan wrote:
| One of the problems with YouTube seach is that they also stop
| showing you what you searched for after a couple of videos,
| instead you get the same crap you find on the homepage, which
| is bewildering.
| bilegeek wrote:
| Can't remember where I got them, but there's some uBO rules
| that really help on that front:
| youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-
| text(/Related to your search/i)) youtube.com##ytd-
| shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Related to your
| searches/i)) youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-
| scope:has(span:has-text(/From related searches/i))
| youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer:has-text(/People also
| watched/) youtube.com###contents > ytd-shelf-
| renderer:has-text(/For you/) youtube.com##ytd-shelf-
| renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Watch again/i))
| youtube.com##ytd-horizontal-card-list-renderer.ytd-item-
| section-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Searches
| related to/i)) youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-
| scope:has(span:has-text(/Learn while you\'re at home/i))
| youtube.com##ytd-horizontal-card-list-renderer.ytd-item-
| section-renderer.style-scope youtube.com###secondary >
| .ytd-two-column-search-results-renderer
| youtube.com###contents > .ytd-secondary-search-container-
| renderer.style-scope youtube.com##ytd-shelf-
| renderer:has-text(/Previously watched/)
|
| Also got some other rules from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44332976
|
| This all shouldn't be necessary, but alas...
| prophesi wrote:
| One of the first things I do on a new device is install an
| extension to expose these hidden filters, and to hide
| recommended videos + redirect the homepage to the subscriptions
| tab.
| cure_42 wrote:
| What extension exposes the hidden filters???
| prophesi wrote:
| You could probably vibe-code it if it doesn't exist. You're
| literally just adding extra parameters to the search
| request. Hard part is creating the interface for it. Saw
| more options looking for Firefox extensions than Chrome for
| this, though that might be expected.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > One of the first things I do on a new device is install
| an extension to ...
|
| < [which one]
|
| > vibe-code it if it doesn't exist
|
| So it doesn't exist? I don't understand what I'm reading.
| (Plus the suggestion to create more slopware)
| prophesi wrote:
| > You're literally just adding extra parameters to the
| search request
|
| > Saw more options looking for Firefox extensions than
| Chrome for this, though that might be expected.
|
| Sorry if I wasn't clear enough in my comment that it's a
| very trivial feature. Would you want a lmgtfy link
| instead?
|
| edit: The irony that this very submission is probably AI
| generated? There's no link to their source code, and
| there's a tab titled "AI Generator" for AI generated
| playlists?
| tredre3 wrote:
| I think there's been a break in this conversation
| somewhere.
|
| You said: One of the first things I do on a new device is
| install an extension to expose these hidden filters
|
| Someone asked you to name the extension.
|
| Then you go on saying it's easy to vibe code and you're
| not here to hold hands?
|
| Okay, so does the extension exist or not?
| prophesi wrote:
| Yes, there are plenty of them.
|
| I think you heard "vibe-code" and immediately went out of
| your way to act obtuse, even though I was using it as an
| example of how simple it is to show these "hidden"
| filters.
| lucb1e wrote:
| (Note you're not replying to the same person, so this
| "you" is me and not them.)
|
| Yes, I find the suggestion to waste a bunch of energy
| creating a mediocre extension that might actually work,
| when there is apparently an existing one that you are
| already happy with, a bit silly. But that wasn't the
| contradiction I was pointing out
| polywock wrote:
| Most definitely not the one he's talking about. But, I'll
| mention my extension. It exposes the hidden date operators
| through Youtube's search filter menu, allows searching
| comments and finding the most popular video's from a
| channel within the last year, etc.
|
| https://github.com/polywock/youtubeEye
| nevernothing wrote:
| You're basically right, it's just a UI for the old search
| filters, at least for the ones that still work today.
| atum47 wrote:
| I'm not popular enough to write a post about everything that is
| wrong with YouTube, from recommending the same few videos over
| and over again in different "categories" to ALL the results of a
| search being cringe shorts no one wants to see.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I know it's really really loud in your echo chamber but short
| form videos are extremely popular.
| mech422 wrote:
| He didn't say they weren't ? He said youtube keeps
| recommending 'cringe' shorts no-one wants to see. I can
| sympathize with him - I have the youtube recommends the same
| 4 videos over and over again in multiple categories issue,
| and the 'lots of shorts I don't care about issue'. Though,
| shorts at least get refreshed/rotated more often then the
| stupid suggestions.
| owlboy wrote:
| I desperately want someone to interview someone at YouTube and
| directly ask about this bullshit and get them to say it's all
| in the name of increasing watch time at all costs.
| atum47 wrote:
| https://anonmp4.help/v/SCBI4QBrglJIZix
|
| See if you can count how many times the video "where do video
| games come from" appears in my front page.
| wincy wrote:
| For April Fools Sega released an (actual, real) "Sanic the
| Hedgeheg" t-shirt and I wanted to see if there was anything about
| it on YouTube. YouTube assumed I meant "sonic" and it was
| impossible to correct it and say "no I'm actually searching for
| this dumb meme". It just assumes everyone who uses YouTube is
| really dumb I guess. (I bought the shirt by the way and am
| excited to get it lol)
| msephton wrote:
| Just put the term in quotes "sanic the hedgeheg" ignore the
| suggestions and press enter to see the real results.
| thfuran wrote:
| Google no longer cares much about quotes. Sometimes it'll
| take them seriously and sometimes not.
| lelandfe wrote:
| For instance, searching the quoted (random phrase) "pants
| butler" produces first page results like:
|
| "pants," Butler" and "pants...Butler" and "Pants -
| Butler's"
|
| Second page loses it entirely, with results like "BUTLER
| SVC Green Back Country Cargo Pants" and another that
| seemingly lacks "butler" anywhere on the page.
| iamnothere wrote:
| I have also noticed this. Many other search engines have
| started doing it too.
|
| If I had to guess, they are probably deferring to
| autocorrect if a quoted search doesn't appear often
| enough to be notable and the distance to existing common
| tokens is small. This really sucks, because it means that
| you can't search for uncommon things that are named
| similarly to common terms. Once upon a time it wasn't
| like this.
|
| A similar problem comes up if you want to clarify a
| common search with an uncommon term, like (made up
| example here) "German castle Tokyo". Once upon a time you
| could quote the uncommon term or prefix it with a plus to
| force a narrowing of the results. This could find
| discussions or specific posts with unusual combinations
| of words, which was great when you knew were looking for
| something very specific and obscure. Now this hardly ever
| works, and instead they just ignore your extra term.
|
| Sometimes the search engine "AI assistants" can find
| these things if you prompt correctly, which is maybe the
| most useful application of AI that I've found. But even
| then they often don't seem to search that deeply, and
| often they will just assume that your query is invalid
| and gaslight you.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| There's a whole list of search operators:
| https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-
| operators/#li...
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| Just last night, I wanted to find some antonyms of a word.
| So I did what I've done for decades and simply Googled
| that.
|
| It insisted that I meant _synonym_ , not antonym. Let that
| sink in for a moment.
|
| Irrevocably substituting the antonym of _antonym_ is the
| most balls-up, backwards, paradoxical "I'm from Google,
| and I'm here to help!" thing I can imagine happening to one
| word.
|
| The quotes did nothing. The search results were all for
| synonyms, with the word _synonym_ bolded in each excerpt.
|
| ---
|
| (Hey, Google: It's fine to present to the user a
| suggestion, or a correction. I can even work with a system
| that assumes a correction is good and uses it on the first
| pass -- I might not like the extra step, but I'll get over
| it. Sometimes, that's actually useful.
|
| But when your systems present a line that asks "Did you
| mean 'synonym'?" and then offers no option for the user to
| -- you know -- actually answer that question and reject the
| correction, then that's not good.
|
| In fact, some descriptors that come to mind before "not
| good" in this context are "callous," "insulting,"
| "recalcitrant," and "sadistic.")
| eMPee584 wrote:
| There's another more hidden tool avail: right of the
| search type bar (images/news/books) there is a "search
| tools" menu where you can open "all results" and switch
| it to "verbatim". Often times a good way to see another
| defunct relict of old, quality google: the empty-result-
| troll that would once upon a time pull out his fishing
| rod on click..
| Gander5739 wrote:
| A tangent, but this is the second time in two days I've
| seen the word spelled "often times" instead of
| "oftentimes". Is this some variant spelling I don't know
| of? I see it more than "oftentimes" now, which I was
| hitherto convinced was the only correct spelling.
| mister_mort wrote:
| I've never seen it spelled as "oftentimes".
| Gander5739 wrote:
| But as far as I can determine, often times is a
| misspelling of oftentimes.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I believe you may be correct, but they're both readable-
| enough.
|
| Like "cannot" vs "can not": One form may be more-correct,
| but both are very readable.
|
| Either way, it's easy enough to blame spell check on our
| personal pocket supercomputers for these things.
|
| (Every year or two, Google Keyboard on Android makes it
| its purpose to screw up "its" vs "it's". You type it the
| right way, you see it on the screen as being correct, and
| then it changes it to the _wrong form_. This happens 100%
| of the time and then the problem disappears in a few
| weeks.
|
| I'd give Google a break, but they don't deserve one.
|
| I also blame them single-handedly for the variations in
| spellings of brake-vs-break on the longer timeline:
| Sometimes, people get it right and nobody notices.
| Oftentimes, it's all backwards. The oscillation suggests
| that it is an auto-derp problem more than it is a
| cognitive one.)
| Gander5739 wrote:
| Cannot and can not are slightly different in that both
| are correct (in the prescriptivist sense, I suppose;
| arguably whatever gets the point across is correct). But
| there are cases where can not is more correct.
|
| I use a keyboard (Thumb-Key to be precise) without
| autocorrect, though it doesn't stop me from making typing
| mistakes.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Great. Is there a way to make that the default?
|
| I (usually!) want to find documents that include the
| words that I'm searching for, not an endless stream of
| links that some particularly-useless bot thinks I might
| want instead.
|
| (And when that search returns no results, then that is
| also a useful data point for me.)
| QuantumNomad_ wrote:
| I was curious after reading your comment and searched for
| _sanic meme tshirt_ in the YouTube app. One result looked
| highly relevant, posted 4 days ago. It was a short, not a
| normal video mind you. Titled _Official "Sanic" merchandise_
| and having a picture of sanic and some dude's face. Most of the
| rest of the results were from different dates, several ranging
| to years ago. But a lot of those other ones seemed to be about
| meme sanic as well at least.
|
| I didn't click on any of them to verify, lest YouTube decides
| that it should replace my whole YouTube home page with sonic
| fandom and sanic memes :P
| john01dav wrote:
| I just put this into YouTube search and got results that
| contraindicate your claim1:
|
| > "sanic" the hedgehog
|
| The quotes seem to shut down autocorrect
|
| 1: there's nothing that I see about the T-shirt, but the
| first result is titled "Sanic DA hedgeh0g". I will not be
| looking at what this video is. Several other results also
| include the word "sanic" in relation to the hedgehog.
| QuantumNomad_ wrote:
| Did you mean to respond to one of the sibling comments that
| are talking about autocorrect? I don't understand what
| would be contradictory between what I said and what you
| said.
| AlBugdy wrote:
| > It was a short, not a normal video mind you.
|
| If anyone doesn't know, you can change shorts/<ID> with
| watch?v=<ID> in the URL and it gives you the same UI as for
| other videos, including the controls (the time line). Not
| sure why YouTube doesn't have controls for shorts. I've seen
| some Facebook videos not having controls, either, when I've
| been sent a link. I imagine it's the same for Instagram and
| TikTok.
| byte_0 wrote:
| This is exactly the type of criteria that WhatsApp search
| struggles with. It basically assumes the user does not know how
| to type.
| kristopolous wrote:
| if there's no way to successfully attest competency then you
| are allocating your time poorly.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Apparently To Catch a Predator ("TCAP") makes YouTube think
| I've got a Spanish eating disorder and shoves a full screen
| "you're not alone" screen at you to call some eating disorder
| helpline.
| VenezuelaFree wrote:
| Search is the reason I stopped watching youtube, I used to view
| and discover so many nice stuff in there, tutorials, new hobbies,
| new music, new creators with different interests, etc but now
| it's pretty much impossible to find, you are forced to watch the
| 3 top videos, some 3 ads and then it forces you to watch some
| other random unrelated crap, it's so annoying and frustrating
|
| It got so bad that even searching the full tittle of the video
| doesnt show you that video haha
| gsky wrote:
| on top of that it pushes worst creators (who are the biggest
| thanks to yt) content.
| tyrust wrote:
| > you are forced to watch the 3 top videos, some 3 ads and then
| it forces you to watch some other random unrelated crap, it's
| so annoying and frustrating
|
| Brother, you are the one choosing the videos.
| wswope wrote:
| Exactly the sort of user hostility I'd expect from a google
| employee. Shameful.
|
| Maybe if practical tools such as like-ratios were in place
| users could sort good content from bad.
| tyrust wrote:
| Good thing I work on internal infrastructure and not
| pointing a gun to this guy's head to prevent him from
| scrolling down past the first three results or refining his
| query.
| dns_snek wrote:
| There is no "scrolling down past the first 3 results"
| because everything after that is recommended garbage
| that's unrelated to the search query. And as they already
| said, "refining the search query" doesn't work because it
| wouldn't find the video even if they searched its exact
| title.
|
| Furthermore, search is fundamentally broken in that it
| translates your query and then tries to match every title
| in every language that is vaguely similar. Of course it
| still only gives you a handful of results before listing
| off unrelated recommendations in the "search results".
|
| Search _used to_ work great ~10 years ago and I used to
| find majority of content that way. These days it 's so
| useless I don't really bother trying anymore.
|
| Reading comments like this really shines a light on why
| Youtube is as bad as it is, I didn't expect the employees
| to be this out of touch with the product that their
| company makes.
| baobun wrote:
| For real. Trying to find a specific video on youtube is a
| very similar experience to searching for legit cables and
| adapters on Amazon.
| tyrust wrote:
| > Reading comments like this really shines a light on why
| Youtube is as bad as it is
|
| I have about as much say in YouTube as you do. In the org
| tree, the lowest common ancestor between me and YouTube
| is Sundar.
|
| My original comment was a joke about the fact that
| someone felt as if they were "forced" to watch something.
| It was more of a comment on consumer attitude than
| YouTube itself. I'm sorry YT isn't working well for
| y'all. That said, expecting some grunt employee like me
| to feel personally responsible (or even "ashamed"??) is
| ridiculous.
| wswope wrote:
| > I'm sorry YT isn't working well for y'all. That said,
| expecting some grunt employee like me to feel personally
| responsible (or even "ashamed"??) is ridiculous.
|
| The point of a company is what it does: The money in your
| paycheck comes from anti-competitive behavior, denying
| accountability and customer support to your users, and
| yes, even the enshittification of Youtube.
|
| Deny it all you want, but you have every opportunity to
| walk away and do something better for society with your
| life if you so choose.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| There are no results past the first three videos.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| What a weird comment. Given that you clearly don't use
| YouTube, why did you feel the need to engage?
| jijji wrote:
| The search filters and the user interface in general on
| YouTube is garbage. you guys need to go back to the drawing
| board. it really is almost impossible to find a video, you
| have to sort through hundreds of AI slop clickbait videos in
| order to get to the one that you're actually interested in
| finding.
| insin wrote:
| It's gone massively downhill recently, noticeably so since
| the ability to sort by upload date was removed from the UI
| (and then very quickly removed from the API too). That was
| the final brick that prevented it from being literally
| unusable, now it's scroll and hope (and give up).
| eMPee584 wrote:
| before:2024-08 after:2023-06 to the rescue? manual but
| works, even though on queries for "trending" keywords
| results will still be flooded with hits that should be
| filtered..
| Chaosvex wrote:
| Nah, YouTube is absolutely shoving slop at users. They
| recently removed some of the search filters such as sorting
| by date, just to make it a little bit harder to find
| anything.
| adito wrote:
| What got me really mad is searching your own history. There's
| this "search watch history" on the
| https://www.youtube.com/feed/history
|
| I remember watching video that contains certain word in the
| title. A minecraft contraption from a small channel (4 videos,
| 93 subs). I searched that word in the title. But youtube can't
| find it. Fortunately, I saved the world download that listed in
| the video with the name of the channel. So I searched the
| channel name + the word, it still can't find it.
|
| So I searched only the channel name instead, in the search
| page. It works, and checking their videos, youtube mark one of
| them as watched. With the exact same title I searched. But it
| didn't show me in the history search. WTF youtube.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Google.com is a lot better at searching YouTube than YouTube
| is at searching YouTube
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| I prefer googling in duckduckgo
| moffkalast wrote:
| Duckduck going?
| sph wrote:
| Waddle-waddling
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| no, googling
|
| use the term, let trademark expire
| mosquitobiten wrote:
| DDG was the best at searching videos until a year ago,
| idk what changed but know is worse than youtube search
| anabis wrote:
| gemini @YouTube is decent too.
| hexage1814 wrote:
| >I remember watching video that contains certain word in the
| title
|
| You could use youtube-dl to download the all automatic
| subtitles those videos and then search.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I seem to remember at one point there was a bug (or "bug")
| where watches wouldn't be tracked if you used an adblocker.
| eager_learner wrote:
| Amazon is the same now. I can't find books on it that I know
| for sure exist on it. It always pushes something else first.
| wiether wrote:
| Search by ISBN works as expected for books
| eager_learner wrote:
| thanks.
| somat wrote:
| Youtube search is also weird in that it has a hard time
| finding something directly but will find it and put it it in
| the suggested videos feed after you have given up. 4 or 5
| videos later. (shrugs) hell if I know.
|
| But really, if I ever see a really good video I will download
| it. I try not to be too much of a digital horder, so it has
| to be really good. But their search has failed me enough
| times that it is worth it.
| mister_mort wrote:
| Perhaps this is due to Youtube's alternate titles or A/B/C
| testing scheme feature?
|
| YT videos have a canonical title, but can have other one
| assigned randomly (as well as alternate thumbnails). If
| you're in the B group you might have gotten the B title, but
| search might only look through canonical titles?
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| I suspect YT-Search is broken by intention
|
| There is no way that this billion company isnt/cant be able
| to build a working search for its video titles&texts.
| Electricniko wrote:
| And good luck if the video you're looking for was related to
| something featured in a news report. No, youtube, I am not
| searching for 100 different local TV news stories about a viral
| video, when I type in the title of that viral video.
| maxxmod wrote:
| It doesn't solve all the issues you mention, but YouTube Search
| Fixer [1] [2] is a browser extension that at least lets you
| remove irrelevant results, Shorts, live streams, and more from
| search. It makes results a bit more usable.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with YouTube Search Fixer. I'm
| currently working on https://maxxmod.com, a YouTube-focused
| browser extension that will include search improvements, so
| I've researched the ecosystem.
|
| [1] Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/youtube-suite...
|
| [2] Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/search-
| fixer-for-yo...
| el_io wrote:
| YouTube search filter is godsend.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Wish I knew about this extension earlier.
| mosquitobiten wrote:
| Just read the description and OMG soo much crap, thank you so
| much for this. I guess when I filter these dopamine leeches
| in my mind I kind of lump them together
| GeoSys wrote:
| They want to push down you throat whatever their algo decides.
|
| What sort of API do you use to search?
| t0bia_s wrote:
| https://freetubeapp.io/
|
| Advanced search works. Also auto-skipped sponsored content,
| thumbnails directly from video content, no google account to
| use it, subscribe works, no ads and many more...
| carlosjobim wrote:
| FreeTube has been extremely slow with loading videos for me.
| Otherwise it's a killer app and I would use it if it was
| possible to connect my premium account login to it.
| atoav wrote:
| Surely they just want to avoid straining their database so they
| put some "performance hacks" into their database instructions
| that they Ab/B-tested to "work" for 90 percent of people or
| something.
|
| Meanwhile they could have just returned the titles of all your
| videos you have ever watched as a list and let your computer do
| the heavey lifting by searching through that text on the
| frontend only to fetch thumbnails and such for the final
| matches. I have a webservice with a table of 4000 lines or more
| and I can search it quasi instantly on my smartphone with a
| simple Javascript script hooked up to an input field.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Nowadays if I want to see videos on a certain topic (not
| searching for a specific video), I usually ask an AI assistant.
| It uses web search with multiple related phrases and then picks
| the relevant ones out. I find this to be very effective right
| now, but of course in the future they could enshittify these
| assistants too.
| pbasista wrote:
| > forced to watch ... 3 ads
|
| There are very efficient ways to block all ads, including
| YouTube ads. uBlock Origin browser extension is one of them.
| SponsorBlock browser extension would also skip over in-video
| ads.
| 01jonny01 wrote:
| Try skipvids search it removes all the noise, including shorts
| and ai slop
| infecto wrote:
| Search and recommendations is terrible. It's a classic example
| of what's wrong at Google.
|
| I used to love watching recommended videos at the end of a
| video. They were always focused on some extension of the
| current video watched. Now it's slop trying to peddle stuff I
| don't watch or YouTube shorts. Same with search. It is so
| terrible, you get maybe 2-4 relevant results and then it again
| weights all the YouTube slop.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| If anyone has a good solution to YouTube destroying all value of
| the Subscriptions page I am open ears. Until recently my
| consumption of YT was basically to go to my subscriptions page
| and see what new content had been released since I last watched
| YT.
| atomicfiredoll wrote:
| Things like FreeTube and NewPipe let you keep a subscription
| list, even if you watch the videos elsewhere.
|
| Using them can be a pain with the whole cat and mouse thing,
| but at least it's something (for now... I wouldn't be shocked
| if google was partially gunning for projects like NewPipe
| specifically with the Android app installation changes.)
| loveparade wrote:
| You could manage your subscriptions in an RSS reader, that's
| what I used to do. Each channel has multiple RSS feeds
| associated with it for different types of videos (live, vod,
| etc).
| jeffbee wrote:
| That's ... exactly what the subscriptions feed does right now?
| ddtaylor wrote:
| The subscriptions page was changed about a month ago. It now
| shows the videos in the top as "Relevant", which includes a
| list of videos from the ~12 days that are being suggested to
| you. After that is a real list of chronologically ordered
| videos, but videos are not listed twice. This means if the
| video appears in the first list (as "relevant") then it will
| not be shown in the second list.
|
| The end result is that the subscriptions page now shows
| videos "in order", but the order is wrong. My current
| subscription page shows a video from 14 hours ago, then a
| video from 9 days ago, then one from 5 days ago, then 6 days
| ago, and then 1 day ago.
|
| Honestly, I feel like `yt-dlp` does a better job of this with
| this command: yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser
| chrome --flat-playlist
| https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
| deadbeef7f wrote:
| My subscription feed now has a row of 3 videos labeled
| "priority", then a row of 3 videos labeled "latest", then a
| row of "Shorts," then it appears to continue on with the
| "latest" but there's no label.
|
| This is from memory so I may have got something wrong. And I
| could be an A/B test subject as this has been new as of a few
| weeks. There's also a "More..." fold or two in there.
|
| This pattern does not represent how I use the product. I do
| not watch shorts and I don't know how or why they mark things
| as a priority. I want to know what's newest and the time
| ordered list being deprioritized in the UI and fractured
| makes that worse.
| try-working wrote:
| you can use lurkkit.com to build your own chronological youtube
| feed with only your subscriptions
| insin wrote:
| This is also the way I use YouTube and is the main thing I made
| Control Panel for YouTube [1] for (well, that plus globally
| hiding Shorts and removing all the unwanted recommendations
| everywhere) - my Subscriptions page acts like an inbox of
| unwatched videos and everything else is hidden (most recently:
| the new "Most relevant" section and "Collaborations" videos
| with channels I'm not subscribed to).
|
| My Subscriptions page currently has 15 videos above the fold, 5
| of which are from the last 12 hours. The oldest video in that
| first page is 2 weeks old, and if I turn the extension off I
| need to press Page Down 17 times to reach it in the vanilla
| YouTube interface.
|
| [1] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube
| porjo wrote:
| I use https://porjo.github.io/freshtube/ almost daily. It
| requires a Google API key but only have to set it once.
| 01jonny01 wrote:
| Skipvids.com recreates the old youtube subscription page
| experience pretty well.
| a96 wrote:
| Well, it's a semi nuclear one, but
| https://github.com/woefe/ytcc
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >Until recently my consumption of YT was basically to go to my
| subscriptions page and see what new content had been released
| since I last watched YT.
|
| What is your subscription page now?
|
| I just checked mine and its just an ordered list of videos from
| channels I subscribe to ordered by most recent.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47656418
|
| Its still like this. Sadly mobile is the only place I get a
| "real" subscriptions page, probably because I'm using
| ReVanced.
| loveparade wrote:
| The whole Youtube experience has gotten so bad over the years. I
| love the youtube content, but I wish I didn't have to deal with
| the UI/UX and recommendations that the YT app forces on me.
|
| Annoying Shorts. I'm trying to keep my watch history clean to
| "steer" recommendations, but YT keeps adding things to it that I
| didn't actually watch just because I happened to hover my mouse
| over a video, etc.
| owlboy wrote:
| They see those hovers as attention. And they likely calculate
| how long you linger. The lingering tells them a lot when you
| are infinite scrolling on other platforms.
|
| They would love to have full on eye tracking. So the next best
| thing is a cursor. (Even though I'd agreed with anyone who says
| it's a poor signal.)
| macintux wrote:
| I'm suddenly grateful that I use my iPad, so they can't use
| that signal on me.
| dns_snek wrote:
| They can see how long you stop scrolling, too.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Why does opening the youtube app sometimes just go straight
| into a short?
|
| I mean, i know _why_ it does that. Engagement. But I mean what
| governs it? Just a percent chance? If you havent watched any
| shorts in a while?
|
| Definitely another example of the shit UI/UX you speak of.
| 6thbit wrote:
| I still can't believe they don't let you search videos within a
| channel for example.
|
| Or filter out music playlist from video ones.
|
| Or search within transcripts.
|
| It's peak irony a company owned by the search overlord.
| gbnwl wrote:
| You can search videos within a channel, go to the channel page
| and look for the magnifying glass all the way at the end of the
| nav bar that has
|
| Home | Videos | Shorts | Playlists | Posts | *Magnifying glass
| here*
|
| Well at least in browser its there, I can't find it on mobile
| for whatever reason.
| 6thbit wrote:
| you're right! i was only looking at the mobile version. Sucks
| it's not there cause I typically don't have my pc around when
| infront of the TV and wanna search something.
| eieio wrote:
| I made a little TUI last month for searching within a channel!
| It supports before: / after:, fuzzy/exact/regex matching, lets
| you order by upload date/views/duration, lets you search over
| just a video's titles or descriptions, etc:
| https://github.com/nolenroyalty/yt-browse
|
| The vast majority of my youtube watching is "go to a specific
| channel and try to find a certain kind of video" so it drives
| me nuts that youtube channel search is so bad (and afaik you
| can't search a channel on mobile?). I end up using my tool to
| find a bunch of videos and get them into my history to watch on
| my ipad.
|
| n.b. my tool downloads _all_ video metadata for a channel and
| then searches over it locally, so it 's pretty slow the first
| time you search a channel (results are cached for 24 hours
| though).
| userbinator wrote:
| _It's peak irony a company owned by the search overlord._
|
| ...whose search engine has itself become noticeably less of a
| search engine and more of a recommendation /sheeple-herding
| engine over time.
| nothercastle wrote:
| Google of today would absolutely get steamrolled by any of
| the search engines it used to compete against. Now granted
| the web of today is mostly a toxic waste pile vs more of a
| cluttered basement back then.
| KomoD wrote:
| > I still can't believe they don't let you search videos within
| a channel for example.
|
| Uh, yeah, they do.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@PuddleOfMuddTV/search?query=blurry
|
| > Or search within transcripts.
|
| Yeah, I also wish this were possible using the normal CTRL+F
| just doesn't work properly
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| I've had ctrl+f work for searching within the transcript on
| the page recently. I assumed it wouldn't due to lazy loading,
| but was surprised because the video I tried it on was quite
| long.
|
| filmot.com exists too (found it on here, currently can't get
| past the cloudflare captcha to double check), but I have no
| idea how much of youtube's transcripts it has archived.
| KomoD wrote:
| > I've had ctrl+f work for searching within the transcript
| on the page recently. I assumed it wouldn't due to lazy
| loading, but was surprised because the video I tried it on
| was quite long.
|
| That was previously the case for me, none of the results
| outside of the current view would show up.
|
| I just went to try, and I noticed that you can actually
| search in a transcript now!? There's a search bar
| dbbk wrote:
| It works perfectly fine.
| throw7 wrote:
| Just asking: Is there an open source project that I can self-host
| that can organize my current subscriptions into separate
| groups/categories and make things easy to view/hide/digest?
|
| Many moons ago, I could hover and hide a video I didn't want to
| see in my feed with a single click. Best UX user feature evar...
| it was gone in a week or two I feel.
|
| I'm kinda ashamed to say I have multiple youtube accounts to keep
| my sanity, but yeah.
| dugite-code wrote:
| Yes any RSS reader works for this task.
|
| There are two types of channel RSS feeds
|
| https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<CHANNEL_ID
| >
|
| And the older
|
| https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=<username>
|
| Youtube used to have an opml export button but there are a few
| github projects that convert the youtube subscription csv that
| dumps out of the account data export.
|
| Edit: If you want to filter out shorts using the selfhosted
| application rssbridge allows you to do this.
| throw7 wrote:
| ok thanks!, i never knew there was an rss feed for each
| channel/users... that does open up solutions.
| Fr0styMatt88 wrote:
| This is great!
| maxxmod wrote:
| Not exactly what you're looking for, but Pocket Tube [1] [2] is
| a browser extension that lets you organize your subscriptions
| into custom groups. You can then browse non-algorithmic feeds
| showing the latest uploads from each group, which makes things
| much easier to manage and filter.
|
| Hope this helps.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Pocket Tube. I'm currently
| working on https://maxxmod.com, a YouTube-focused browser
| extension, so I've researched the ecosystem.
|
| [1] Website: https://pockettube.io
|
| [2] Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/youtube-subsc...
| throw7 wrote:
| interesting. looking forward to the release.
| Fr0styMatt88 wrote:
| EDIT: Sorry I realised you were asking more about
| categorisation and not downloading.
|
| ----
|
| The closest thing I can think of is Tube Archivist, which seems
| made for archiving large YouTube collections, including things
| like comments on videos.
|
| I've had mixed luck with it and it's a bit too heavy for my
| fairly limited needs. Youtube-dl hasn't worked for me for the
| last month or so on it --- oddly enough I have a MeTube
| instance on the same physical machine (different VM) which is a
| lighter web UI for yt-dlp and which is still working fine.
| That's Youtube's fault I assume and not the fault of Tube
| Archivist.
|
| https://www.tubearchivist.com/
|
| https://github.com/alexta69/metube
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Really wish there was an alternative. Especially to the
| manipulation of it all by YouTube (demonetization and other
| tactics).
| perching_aix wrote:
| Author must clearly never use porn sites like xvideos or PornHub,
| if they think YouTube's search is what "barely works".
| cj00 wrote:
| Yeah searching your history is so terrible too I ended up making
| a custom database that takes the also horrible Takeout output and
| parses it into a SQLite db. I end up relying on it when I
| remember some video I started watching weeks ago but can't
| remember where it was anymore.
| owlboy wrote:
| Do you automate your takeout so the DB is relatively fresh?
| RRRA wrote:
| Yeah the only reason I still use YouTube is because mBlock Origin
| still works great.
| storus wrote:
| Cable TV->enshittification->YouTube to the
| rescue->enshittification->???
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| I want to be able to search youtube videos for specific content.
| Like a middle aged man talking about football who is wearing a
| light blue shirt and holding a sports bottle. With AI we should
| be able to do that but maybe the compute cost is currently too
| high. I envision it sort of like a SQL for video search.
| moralestapia wrote:
| YouTube search went to absolute trash, same as Gmail, same as
| Google the search engine.
|
| Many time I search for a video I know the title of, letter by
| letter, in quotes, and it does not show up (at least in the first
| 50 or so results). Sometimes I think the video might have been
| deleted, only to find it out later in my bookmarks and realizing
| this is not the case.
|
| Crazy how them being fundamental to what we all know as "the web"
| nowadays, allows them to get away with being extremely mediocre
| and oblivious to user's needs.
| storus wrote:
| I am forced to use Yandex just to find stuff Google or DDG
| never shows anymore.
| carefree-bob wrote:
| Interesting. Do you have some examples?
| Esn024 wrote:
| I often find that using Google Search (the Video tab, with
| "site:youtube.com") allows me to find videos that don't show up
| in the YouTube search... or sometimes vice versa!
| jdprgm wrote:
| Yeah Youtube search is mediocre, though I feel like search has
| broadly declined across the entire web on all sorts of apps and
| services I use. Not to mention all the actual "search engines"
| feeling less and less powerful every year. I don't get it.
| BoppreH wrote:
| YouTube search is one of those services that is pointlessly
| hostile. Most recently, they've removed the "order by upload
| date" filter, and changed the way that blurring works.
| Previously, sensitive videos had blurred thumbnails and a toggle
| to remove the blur (even though it had no way to never blur). Now
| the UI looks the same, but the "toggle" reloads the page without
| any filters, and adding a filter re-blurs them. So it's
| impossible to filter results and see unblurred thumbnails.
|
| These changes baffle me. It's not even enshittification because I
| cannot see any benefit to YouTube at all.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| This is much needed. It says so much that "Title includes" is an
| advanced search .... I really wonder what a basic search is.
|
| My pet peeve: no way to filter on language. Once you hit obscure
| enough content, you start getting videos back in languages you
| can't understand. With no way to filter them out. So frustrating.
| Would be great to add that here. Assuming it even exists in the
| metadata.
| jmyeet wrote:
| It's kind of weird that Youtube search continues to be as bad it
| is. I honestly don't get it.
|
| When video first became popular, I got it. Scrapers had very
| little to go on: title, channel, tags (later), description,
| likes, dislikes (saldy, no more). There's only so much you can do
| with that.
|
| But times have changed. You can (within limits) link videos
| within videos. Google of course also has the entire Web to
| analyze links to videos.
|
| And then a decade or so ago we started to get automated
| transcripts, at which point search really should be getting on
| par with text-based search. Now? You have any number of LLMs you
| could develop to gather features from videos or could construct
| higher context than a pure word search.
|
| Also, Google's personalized search should be able to work well
| for videos. What category does it fit in? What demographics like
| it? Do people like you like it?
|
| I don't get it.
|
| Ok, as for the tool, does it work with "norms" of Google search?
| Do you really need boxes for "exact phrase" and "exclude" when
| you have double quotes and the hypen (respectively) for both of
| those things? Likewise do "from" and "to" type searches (a la
| Gmail) work? I ask because a single search box has definite
| advantages and you can keep adding search criteria as you see
| fit.
|
| In an ideal world, I'd also like to be able to search for videos
| I watched and I liked (eg "is:liked", "is:watched") and search
| channel categories or labels.
| tcherasaro wrote:
| Potentially unpopular idea:
|
| Maybe YouTube search is so bad because videos are poorly
| optimized for search.
|
| Today most of the emphasis to creators on YouTube is to create
| content that targets browse traffic and shorts to go viral and
| get millions of views.
|
| Not so much videos targeting specific user intent with a term
| that might get 2k views per month if it ranks #1.
| tredre3 wrote:
| Your idea doesn't explain why:
|
| - YouTube search often doesn't return the correct video when we
| search an exact title
|
| - YouTube search shows entirely unrelated videos after the
| first 4-5 results
| tartoran wrote:
| -YouTube search returns popular completely unrelated content
| (mostly brainrot) which is clearly feeding to users to watch
| in case they forgot they were searching for something else
|
| -YouTube search returns unrelated videos that were partially
| watched
|
| Clearly the youtube search is broken on purpose. It's hard to
| forget how google search went from good to barely usable and
| it's hard not to notice how they're applying the same
| strategy
| tcherasaro wrote:
| I've certainly experienced both of these and a lot of the
| other occurrences people are describing here, but here's what
| I think is going on in these 2 cases and why. This is based
| on my own observations actually trying to get videos ranked
| in search.
|
| Immediately after publishing a search optimized video the
| main way I measure if I was successful with the technical
| part of optimization (Title, description, transcript, Text
| Overlay, keyword density) is to search the exact title to see
| if my video appears. Immediately after publishing like within
| minutes, it usually does appear within the first five to ten
| results.
|
| After the youtube "testing period" if the CTR and AVD
| (retention) are good, then the views increase from there as
| the video starts to rank and get tested for more related
| keywords. And the video certainly continues to rank for the
| exact title.
|
| If click through and retention are bad in the testing period
| then the video fails to rank and the video seems to disappear
| or get pushed way down when searching exact title.
|
| So I believe CTR and AVD maybe factors in YouTube SEO.
|
| After 3-5 results I have noticed that there seems be a
| segment of long form videos and then shorts actually
| targeting that casual browse traffic in a search result page!
| The long form results in those positions are usually weak on
| technical optimization, only tangentially related or fluffy
| in terms of delivering on the user's search intent, but from
| larger channels that are heavily edited, produced and
| optimized for click through and viewer retention. The kind of
| hostile user experience that tries to keep people watching
| for longer with retention editing and by teasing or hyping
| good info when the user really just needs answers but are
| easily enticed by better packaging when the first 3 results
| didn't meet their intent.
|
| I notice the same videos again and again in those positions
| for a wide range of primary keywords and even the seed
| keyword, and they get tons of search traffic even though they
| aren't answering user intent because youtube has realized
| these videos are effective at converting a laser-focused
| search user looking for specific information into a casual
| viewer who is happy to be entertained for a longer period of
| time when they couldn't find the information they were really
| looking for.
|
| Let's face it, if the first few results didn't deliver,
| weren't optimized; then from YouTube's perspective, the user
| is browsing at that point and it's going to do it's best to
| retain them.
| dns_snek wrote:
| You have that causal relationship flipped around. Content is
| being optimized for clickbait engagement because that's the
| only way to survive, many creators have talked about this.
|
| The algorithms are pushing garbage clickbait and AI slop while
| cutting off all other discovery avenues like search, this is
| obvious on youtube because the "search results" only contain 3
| of those and then it's just more unrelated recommended garbage,
| the intent there couldn't be more clear.
|
| Rossmann talked about how his repair & data recovery business
| website that had tons of honest, professional, high quality
| content for years suddenly dropped off Google and it was
| killing his business, but when he followed Gemini's advice and
| recreated the website with AI slop it started ranking #1 within
| weeks.
| tcherasaro wrote:
| Fair points. I think my point about people targeting search
| overlaps actually.
|
| Creators think they can't survive on 2k views, especially
| since that's not guaranteed and YouTube isn't providing
| actual search results all the way down the SERP providing
| even less opportunity to rank so then they go after more
| views with clickbait and engagement across broader topics
| that aren't going to meet a users search intent and provide
| specific content. In a lot of niches that might be true.
|
| Now if they could knew they could consistently rank in search
| and that multiple videos producing 2k views per month, month
| after month and compound after time then they might have more
| interest in optimizing those videos more.
|
| Im a big fan of Rossmann, and wouldn't you know I found that
| video you are talking about on YouTube search of all places
| by searching "louis rossmann creating website with gemini"
|
| Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check that out.
| a96 wrote:
| That also doesn't explain why it was better and why it's been
| getting worse all the time. Also, just a simple text search in
| the titles would be much better, let alone all the text data
| that YT has on the videos. Even with keyword spam, that seems
| like a very simple task to get close to right. Once upon a time
| it might have even been there.
| swrly wrote:
| I agree, YouTube search is completely useless when we really need
| it. Especially with fizzy search!
| dawnerd wrote:
| Search is intentionally bad. You can search for something very
| generic where there should be millions of videos but only get
| about one page worth before it pushes shorts and other unrelated
| algo driven content.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Can anyone describe the problem and use-case in more detail? I've
| heard this before but it just doesn't resonate at all, and I'm a
| pretty heavy YouTube user.
|
| I mostly watch videos from my home feed or from channels I
| subscribe to. When I search it's almost always either:
|
| - film/game trailers I've heard about and want to find (e.g. gta
| vi trailer)
|
| - videos I've watched before but maybe not liked, with a channel
| keyword and maybe video keyword (e.g. tom scott bell), or music
|
| - tutorials, where I don't really care about the specific video,
| I care about the outcome (e.g. how to remove roller blind)
|
| In all of these cases search seems to nail it. The trailer is
| always the first result (but could be from a variety of sources),
| the recall on videos I've seen before is basically perfect, and
| the tutorials get me to the right outcome.
|
| Are people using search for _discovery_ , like putting in a vague
| topic and trying to explore a topic from search? What specific
| kinds of queries does it do badly at?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >What specific kinds of queries does it do badly at?
|
| in my experience all of them, because the experience for me
| currently is that youtube surfaces ~3 videos relevant to the
| search I entered, then the bizarre category of "here's other
| stuff you want to watch" (I don't) followed by "stuff you
| already watched but want to watch again" (I don't and didn't
| ask), followed by like 10 shorts and then again a handful of
| results relevant to the query
| danpalmer wrote:
| I haven't noticed this because in all of the above examples
| the first result is the one I want, almost without exception.
| In a scenario where the top result or two is correct, showing
| other stuff after result 3 doesn't sound that bad.
|
| What sorts of searches are you doing? My guess is this really
| matters and that you're using search for a completely
| different purpose to me, but I don't know what that is.
| dns_snek wrote:
| I'm not the person you were asking, but broadly speaking,
| almost any instructional video.
|
| _How do I do /fix/repair/cook/make XYZ?_
|
| It's a complete lottery whether the top 3 results will
| actually answer the question and they usually won't.
| carefree-bob wrote:
| It works pretty well for me, but my searches are mostly
| automotive youtube or some tech stuff.
|
| So if I want to know how to replace the water pump on my car, I
| type in the make and model and "water pump" and I usually find
| what I am looking for fairly easily.
| rhdunn wrote:
| That search (e.g. `ford fiesta water pump`) is consistent for
| me as well, except for an "explore more" section in the
| middle of the results.
|
| So it does seem to be specific searches where it gives up
| after the first 7-10 results (or decides to show you some
| more related results after 20-30 additional unrelated
| results).
|
| I wonder if this is algorithmic. E.g. people searching for a
| specific "how to replace/fix ..." are not going to click on
| results from their recommended feed, so the algorithm could
| have learned to keep those results fixed. However, someone
| looking for a piece of entertainment (trailer, book review,
| etc.) may be more inclined to click on other unrelated
| content, so those searches are more inclined to show results
| from the user's recommended feed.
| KevinMS wrote:
| I'm a heavy YT user and I don't have a problem either. I'm not
| sure what everybody is complaining about. Maybe its because I
| don't search on super specific things because I'm just looking
| for a larger topic, and I'm not sure if its actually returning
| all the best results because I don't know what it has to give
| me.
|
| All this tool does is use YT search but makes it easier to
| include existing search switches to get more specific. (which I
| had forgotten about and I'm grateful the tool reminded me of
| them.
|
| Really, if there's a problem, its not the search itself but how
| it prioritizes the search without the switches.
| rhdunn wrote:
| Examples:
|
| - `dune book review`
|
| - `sierpinski triangle`
|
| - `full adder` -- better results, but includes an unrelated
| "previously watched" section
|
| One of the main issues I've encountered is that when searching
| for something you generally see:
|
| - 7 or so relevant results
|
| - shorts (which I'm not interested in)
|
| - "people also watched" / "previously watched" results -- I'm
| not interested in that, I just want what I'm looking for
|
| - "channels new to you" -- can include results, so maybe okay
|
| - "explore more" -- mostly irrelevant results to what I'm
| looking for
|
| - "previously watched" -- may be fine, but mostly unrelated
|
| After the first 7-10 results it generally becomes unusable.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I just did the first one (`dune book review`) and the results
| were good. Like 12 relevant results, 5 shorts in one row
| (also relevant), followed by many more relevant results.
| stuffoverflow wrote:
| For me the problem is usually finding older videos. Youtube's
| search heavily favors newer videos to the point of completely
| hiding older ones even if using the exact video title. They've
| also removed the possibility of sorting results by date
| somewhere within last 6 months.
| gall wrote:
| The date filters seem to be ignored for certain search terms and
| not others. Searching for, say, "dune before:2019-04-05" filters
| as expected, but searching for current events proximate terms
| like "iran" or "donald" returns results that disregard the date
| ceiling completely.
| usernamed7 wrote:
| I confirmed searching for "Iran" with a before set ends up
| showing me all recent results. BUT if i use this search form to
| generate the query (and not the youtube search bar) it works.
|
| via the search form:
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=+%22iran%22+bef...
|
| via the YT search:
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=+%22iran%22+bef...
| aaa_aaa wrote:
| Downfall of youtube is one word: shorts.
| rvnx wrote:
| The worst offender is Apple Music search. Sad because the service
| is great
| ankitsanghi wrote:
| I've actually never had an issue with YouTube search. I can
| usually search by what I saw in the video roughly and it works
| almost every time. I hate that the top 4 4-6 videos are YouTube
| shorts but that's fine I get they're trying to push shorts
| heavily.
| Esn024 wrote:
| Nice work! Does this use the YouTube data API behind the scenes?
| https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/search/list
|
| Also, would adding any of the following be possible?
|
| 1) Search for specific video quality (standard YouTube search
| already does this - you can ask for "HD", but would it be
| possible to search for more specific qualities such as 480p,
| 720p, etc?)
|
| 2) Search for videos only in a specific language
|
| 3) Search only for videos that have subtitles in a specific
| language
|
| 4) more detailed length search for the "over 20 minutes" category
| (e.g. over 40 minutes, over 60 minutes, etc)
|
| All of these are things that I have desperately wished existed
| over the past few years, and which would have sometimes saved me
| a lot of time.
| Vachyas wrote:
| I'd like to second that I wish a lot of those existed. For 1),
| 60fps is another good one.
|
| It seems Youtube also removed "sort by upload date" if I'm not
| mistaken. The closest we can get now is the "uploaded today"
| filter but it's not the same since it still seems to prioritize
| popularity over recency, surfacing mostly second-hand sources
| or popular "reactions" to the primary-source videos (that also
| exist on Youtube!) I'm actually looking for.
|
| Edit: IIRC they even used to have an "uploaded in last hour"
| filter, but I'm not sure. Can anyone confirm this?
| hexage1814 wrote:
| You should add this option to filter shorts:
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s&sp=CAI%253D
|
| Also, related project:
| https://filmot.com/search/radiohead%20/1/1?sortField=uploadd...
|
| It allows you to do text to full search on youtube videos. The
| project obviously didn't index ALL youtube videos subtitles, but
| it easily index millions of youtube subtitles.
| micw wrote:
| Hey great. Need the same for amazon ^^
| oyebenny wrote:
| Colour me surpised.
| gbro3n wrote:
| It's always surprised me that Youtube being owned by the worlds
| leading search company has such awful on-site search. I've always
| left Youtube and searched for youtube videos via Google search,
| which brings up better results!
| Dban1 wrote:
| Hostile engineering
| gbro3n wrote:
| Maybe, I'm not clear what the goal is though.
| yoavm wrote:
| I guess YouTube doesn't really have any competition, i.e
| it's not like you're going to switch to the competitor
| video platform and search there. Your only option is to
| watch through multiple other videos before finding the one
| you want, which is great for them.
| jfoster wrote:
| Really nice. Bookmarked it. Thank you for making it!
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| The irony with Google, er alphabet, a search company, is that the
| search feature are deeply flawed in their products.
|
| If you have thousands of resources in GCP, for example, the
| search is not super helpful.
| WhyIsItAlwaysHN wrote:
| Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but this seems to just create
| the search string in the url, aka youtube search already supports
| these features.
|
| If people were really looking for exact title search they could
| write "term".
|
| It is definitely true that youtube's search is optimized for
| engagement, but going through a separate ui just to search it
| seems a bit redundant, especially if after I click search I have
| ti deal with youtube's UI.
| WASDx wrote:
| Similar site with same features: https://xn--1-zfa.com/
| moropex wrote:
| been doing site:youtube.com on google for years because youtube
| search is that bad. the google video option here is a nice touch
| Vachyas wrote:
| I was hoping to finally see an advanced time filter so I could do
| something like "over 2 minutes" but it seems you've only got the
| same ones Youtube has (< 4 minutes, 4-20, and > 20).
|
| If it's an opaqueness restriction with the API or something, I'd
| like to suggest letting us at least combine the provided ones, so
| I could do something like (4-20) && (> 20) to get "over 4
| minutes" which doesn't exist on Youtube but seems pretty useful.
|
| Another thing that would be useful is filter-by-channel since the
| search function within Youtube for searching a channel's uploads
| (using the search button on a channel's page) is a significantly
| nerfed version of their usual search function.
| AlBugdy wrote:
| I wish I could select "between 2.5 and 6 minutes". That search
| can translate to 2 queries to YouTube (<4 and 4-20), then the
| results can be combined and pruned to keep only those between
| 2.5 and 6. To get enough videos if there aren't enough after
| pruning, we could access the 2nd, 3rd and so on pages from the
| results. But I doubt YouTube will like 6 searches in a row.
| Vachyas wrote:
| Yea and I'm doubtful we'll see a service willing to do their
| own post-processing per-query while also being at the whim of
| Youtube's API (official or not).
|
| Ultimately, I would like these features to come to Youtube
| itself since there's a lot of nice features built into it
| that would be hard for a third-party to replicate without
| permission (such as playing videos inline on hover, with
| captions).
| AlBugdy wrote:
| I doubt it will ever happen. This is Google after all, not
| a small company we can hope will get it right after a
| while. They've left the search parameters shitty for years.
| Google, arguably the most advanced search company ever,
| can't make an efficient filter for custom time ranges? They
| obviously can, but, as other comments have noted, they seem
| to think that good search is an anti-feature.
| 1e1a wrote:
| I looked into youtube's search filters recently, and the length
| range option is stored as an enum (stored as base64-encoded
| protobuf in the sp query parameter), so it doesn't look like
| it's possible to set to specific values.
| Duplicake wrote:
| All this does it generate a search term from what you put in
| which you can do pretty easily yourself
| Alifatisk wrote:
| I feel like we have reached a point where Youtube can just remove
| the search fields and let their algorithms do its thing.
|
| The last time I tried YTs search field was when I was trying to
| find an older video in my history. Nothing, even if I typed down
| the exact keywords. Nothing. Luckily, I found it through
| myactivity.google.com.
|
| Its actually kind of fascinating how a huge enterprise like
| Youtube can ruin a feature to the point that its actually
| useless.
|
| What they are good at is pushing irrelevant content everywhere,
| if I scroll to the bottom of my playlist, there is a suggestions
| feed. If I search something, after a couple of results, it turns
| into a suggestion feed. Even my subscribers feed is now a
| recommendations system at the top instead of just displaying in
| chronological order.
|
| If it wasn't for their dominance in the market, I would have left
| long time ago. But I am stuck there, because the creators are
| there.
|
| uBlock and Sponsorblock is a bless.
|
| I am curious if there is alternative frontends to youtube that
| also allows me to sign in with my Googlw account and access all
| my playlist, likes, watch later etc.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| > I am stuck there, because the creators are there.
|
| Don't make this mistake. You are not "stuck" - you're making a
| choice. You can also choose to seek other materials elsewhere
| to stay entertained.
| etothet wrote:
| > Its actually kind of fascinating how a huge enterprise like
| Youtube can ruin a feature to the point that its actually
| useless.
|
| For the people in charge of engagement at YouTube, making
| search useless is a feature. If most people don't get value
| from search then they'll resign and be forced into following
| the algorithm, which is how Google wants you to consume
| YouTube.
|
| Similar reason why streaming providers keep making it more
| difficult to find your previously watched list.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > I feel like we have reached a point where Youtube can just
| remove the search fields and let their algorithms do its thing.
|
| > The last time I tried YTs search field was when I was trying
| to find an older video in my history. Nothing, even if I typed
| down the exact keywords. Nothing. Luckily, I found it through
| myactivity.google.com.
|
| I have had a similar experience but it seems ridiculous to
| propose removing the search. It's not like its returning random
| results. It does generally work, even with the major failure
| points you describe.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| Ooh. I despise how YouTube removes videos from my saved videos
| list, "Unavailable videos were removed". YouTube is crap.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Would it be possible to toggle the search to exclude all videos
| with emojis in their title?
|
| I've noticed that every YouTube video containing one or more
| emojis in their title are AI generated spam.
| jjallen wrote:
| I've never been annoyed with YouTube search. Product is great as
| far as I'm concerned. Love YouTube all around.
| joserohan wrote:
| Looks neat!
| rallypi wrote:
| It looks similar to just searching on YouTube--are there any
| specific ways to use this service?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I've just stopped using YouTube entirely. I'll watch the odd
| video that gets linked somewhere else, but I actively avoid going
| there. And this is as someone who used to pay for YouTube
| Premium. The site just doesn't value my time, and the company
| seems to think that I'll just accept watching whatever the
| algorithms decides I should watch. No thanks.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This is the "normal science" of software engineering.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_science
| loloktryagain wrote:
| It literally just parses it into a regular YouTube search, this
| is vaporware trash
| fighting_anakin wrote:
| Thank god. I can't believe how horrible youtube's search
| functionality has gotten. I wonder if it's a function of scale or
| due to the new generation not engaging with old videos.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Can it sort by "upload date" which was removed by YT some weeks
| ago?
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