Okay, so today I’m gonna walk you through how I tackled a super annoying problem I had with YouTube – getting rid of stuff from my “Watch Later” list. It was a mess, overflowing with videos I’d probably never actually watch. Here’s the lowdown on how I cleaned it up.
It all started when I realized my “Watch Later” list was basically a digital graveyard. Every time I saw something interesting, I’d toss it in there, thinking “I’ll watch that later!” But “later” never came. It was just piling up, making it impossible to find the videos I actually wanted to watch.
First thing I did, I tried the obvious: manual removal. Went to YouTube, opened my “Watch Later” playlist, and started clicking those three dots next to each video, then selecting “Remove from Watch Later.” Tedious doesn’t even begin to describe it. After about five minutes, I had removed maybe ten videos and realized this wasn’t sustainable. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of videos in there!
Next, I looked for a “select all” option or some kind of bulk delete. Nope, YouTube doesn’t offer that. Seriously, YouTube, why not?
So, I turned to the internet for help. Started searching for “YouTube Watch Later bulk remove” and variations of that. Found a few threads and articles suggesting browser extensions or scripts. I was a bit wary of installing random extensions, so I dug a little deeper.
Discovered a few people mentioning using the browser’s developer console to run some JavaScript code. Now, I’m not a coder by any means, but I can usually copy and paste with the best of ’em. Found a snippet that looked promising – basically, it automates the process of clicking the “remove” button for each video.
Alright, here’s where it gets a little technical (but don’t worry, it’s not too scary). I opened my “Watch Later” playlist in Chrome (or whatever browser you use), then hit F12 to open the developer console. Usually, it pops up at the bottom or side of the screen.
Then, I pasted the JavaScript code snippet into the console. It looked something like this (but I’m not giving you the actual code because I don’t want to be responsible if you break something!):
- A loop that iterates through all the video entries in the playlist.
- Code to find the “remove” button for each video.
- A function to simulate clicking that button.
- A delay to avoid overloading YouTube’s servers.
I hit Enter, and… nothing. Well, not nothing, but it wasn’t working perfectly. The script started running, but it was super slow, and sometimes it would miss videos. I had to tweak the code a bit. Played around with the delay timing to make sure it didn’t go too fast and get throttled by YouTube.
Finally, after some trial and error, I got it working reasonably well. It was still a bit slow, but way faster than manually deleting each video. I let it run for a few hours, and slowly but surely, my “Watch Later” list started shrinking.
One thing I learned: YouTube loads the playlist dynamically. So, as the script deleted videos at the top, it would load more at the bottom. I had to keep scrolling down to make sure the script had more videos to work with.
End Result? My “Watch Later” list is now manageable. It’s not completely empty (I kept a few videos I actually intend to watch), but it’s no longer a source of digital anxiety. The whole thing took a few hours of fiddling and running the script, but it was totally worth it.
My advice? If your “Watch Later” list is out of control, try the JavaScript method. Just be careful, use a reputable code snippet (do your research!), and be prepared to tweak it a bit. Good luck!
