How to use every part of TidyWL

Install TidyWL and open the dashboard

Browser toolbar → the TidyWL icon

1. Install from the Chrome Web Store, or from the Firefox install page.
2. Open YouTube and go to your Watch Later playlist, your Liked videos, or any playlist you created.
3. Click the TidyWL icon in the browser toolbar. The popup confirms where you are — “✓ You’re on Watch Later” — and shows Open Dashboard. Click it.
4. If you are somewhere else on YouTube, the popup says “Open Watch Later, Liked videos, or any playlist first” and offers Go to Watch Later instead. That button navigates there and opens the dashboard for you.

To close the dashboard, click the × in the top-right corner or click the dimmed area outside the panel. If you deleted or moved anything, the YouTube page behind it reloads so it matches what you did.

There is no sign-in and no API key. TidyWL uses the YouTube session you are already logged into, so it only works while you are signed in.

Find your way around the dashboard

The panel that opens over the YouTube page

• The header carries the extension name and version, the playlist switcher in the middle, and on the right your plan badge, the announcements bell, an About button and the close ×.
• The left sidebar holds two stat cards — Videos Fetched and Last Synced with the Sync button — and, below them, the By Channel and By Topic breakdowns.
• The toolbar across the top of the video grid holds every action, as icons. Hover any icon to see what it is; that hover label is the name used throughout these tutorials.
• The grid below it is your videos, as cards.

Hover the divider between the sidebar and the grid and a small handle appears. Click it to collapse the sidebar down to a narrow rail that still carries Sync. On a narrow window the sidebar stacks above the grid instead. The collapsed state is not remembered — the dashboard reopens with the sidebar showing.

Sync a playlist

Sidebar → Sync

1. The very first time you open the dashboard on an unsynced playlist, TidyWL asks whether to sync now. Say yes.
2. Otherwise, click Sync in the sidebar. Progress reads “Fetching videos... 420 / 3,683”.
3. Syncing clears your filters and your selection, then draws the fresh list.

Videos Fetched can be lower than the number YouTube reports. When it is, the card says so — “N hidden from API · YouTube reports M total” — and the info icon beside it lists why: deleted, private, region-locked, copyright-blocked, expired livestreams, suspended channels, and age-restricted videos on an unverified account.

A banner appears above the grid when the cache is more than an hour old, or when the count has drifted a long way from YouTube’s. It offers Sync Now and Dismiss.

Sync also fetches each video’s tags, and the first sync after updating to version 2.0 records information the Lineup and the music switch need. If TidyWL asks you for one sync after an update, it only asks once.

Search your playlist

Toolbar → the magnifier (Search)

1. Click the magnifier in the toolbar. It expands into a box reading “Search by title, channel or tag…”.
2. Type. The grid narrows as you go.
3. Escape clears the box and closes it. Clicking away closes it too, as long as it is empty.

What you type is treated as one phrase, never split into separate words, and it is matched anywhere inside a video’s title, channel name, or any of its tags — including tags that are not shown on the card. On a merged view it also matches playlist chip names.

Filter by the uploader’s tags

The chips under each video card’s title

1. Every card carries the tags its uploader gave the video — the keyword field YouTube stores but never shows — plus any hashtags from the description. They arrive with each sync; nothing to press.
2. Click a tag chip to filter to videos carrying it. Click it again to drop it.
3. Click a second tag and the filters stack: you get the videos carrying both, not either.
4. Each active tag gets its own removable chip in the filter row, reading Tag: name.

The tag row is clamped to two lines per card. Anything that does not fit collapses into a +N chip; hover it to see every tag on that video, each one clickable.

Tags are the one field written in the video’s own language, which is what makes search work on a playlist that is not in English. Uploaders commonly tag in both their language and English.

Filter by watched, unwatched or unavailable

Toolbar → the funnel (Filter)

1. Open the funnel and pick All Videos, Unwatched or Watched.
2. Under those three sits Progress at least __ % with a slider marked Any · 25 · 50 · 75 · 100. Drag it, or type an exact number in the box, to ask for videos you are at least that far through.
3. Below the divider, Unavailable cross-references your list against YouTube’s current one and shows what has gone missing. The first time you pick it, it fetches — give it a moment.

Watched means started — any video YouTube has recorded progress on, which is usually far more than you expect. That is why the threshold exists.

The threshold applies to Watched only. Unwatched stays “never started” and ignores it, so with a threshold of 50% a video you are 20% through appears in neither list. That is deliberate, not a bug.

Unavailable is hidden on a merged view — it needs a single playlist to compare against.

Filter by length

Toolbar → the clock labelled Filter by duration

1. Open it and pick a bucket: Shorts (≤60s), Under 5 min, 5–20 min, 20–60 min or Over 1 hour. All durations clears it.
2. For anything else, click Custom range… at the bottom. A small form appears with Min and Max boxes in minutes.
3. Fill in one or both and press Apply. Leaving one empty leaves that side unbounded; leaving both empty resets to all durations. Enter in either box applies it, and Tab moves Min → Max → Apply without closing the dropdown.

Type them the wrong way round and TidyWL swaps them for you. The active filter shows as a chip reading Duration: 5–15 min, ≥ 5 min or ≤ 15 min.

Videos with no duration — live, upcoming, private and deleted entries — are hidden whenever any duration filter is on, preset or custom.

The toolbar has two clock icons. This one’s hover label is Filter by duration; the other is Lineup.

Sort the list

Toolbar → the arrows labelled Sort

1. Under the By Playlist Order heading: Playlist order (Top first) and Playlist order (Bottom first).
2. Below the divider: Channel (A-Z), Title (A-Z), Duration (Longest first), Duration (Shortest first), Published date (Newest first), Published date (Oldest first), Views (Most first) and Views (Fewest first).

“Playlist order” is YouTube’s own server-side order, not a date-added sort — YouTube does not publish per-video add times on the web. To change what that order means, use the Manual ⌄ dropdown at the top of the playlist page on YouTube itself. The info icon beside the section heading says the same thing.

Published date is bucketed rather than exact, because YouTube only returns relative timestamps like “3 weeks ago”. Videos in the same bucket can come out in any order.

Your sort choice is not remembered when the dashboard closes.

Activate your key, and manage your devices

Header → the plan badge, or the About button

1. Click the plan badge in the dashboard header — the small Free or Pro pill next to the bell. It opens the About panel on the licence card. The About ⓘ button gets you to the same place.
2. With no key active, the card reads “Not active on this device” and offers Upgrade to Pro and Have a key?.
3. Click Have a key?, paste your key into the TWL-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX field, and check the device name — it is filled in for you and you can change it. Press Activate.
4. Once live, the card reads Active with your renewal date and lists every device the key is on.

To free up a device you no longer use, press Remove beside it in the list. The removed device drops back to free at its next dashboard open. Deactivate this device releases the one you are on.

Manage subscription opens your billing page in a new tab — change your card, see invoices, or cancel. Payment is handled by Paddle; TidyWL never sees your card.

If TidyWL cannot reach the licence server, Pro keeps working for two weeks, so an outage or a flight costs you nothing. Past that the card reads Pro paused and asks you to reconnect and reopen the dashboard.

The Lineup — build a watchlist that fits the time you have Pro

Toolbar → the clock labelled Lineup — pick what to watch for the time you have

1. Filter the grid first if you want to narrow the pool. The Lineup always draws from what is on screen, and its header line tells you so: “Picking from filtered (3,711) videos, based on your 95 most recent watches.”
2. Open the Lineup and pick a budget: 15 min, 30 min, 45 min, 1 hour, 1½ hours, or type your own number of minutes in the Other box.
3. Pick a tab:
   • Based on recent watches — videos you have not opened, matched to what you have been watching lately by title, by channel and by category. With no watch history to read, it becomes Channels you save most instead.
   • Resume — videos you started and did not finish, furthest along first.
   • Subscribed channels — only channels you subscribe to, the ones you watch most first.
   • Backlog — your oldest saves that you have never opened.
4. Two controls sit under the tabs. Include music keeps or drops music videos, and the Last N watches slider sets how far back the Lineup looks when reading your taste. Both are remembered.
5. Each row carries one line saying why that video was picked. Adjust the list:
   • Drag a row by the grip over its number to reorder.
   • The refresh arrows (“Find me something to replace this one”) swap that one pick in place, leaving the rest of your order alone.
   • The bin removes that video from the playlist entirely, like a single delete.
6. Then finish with one of three:
   • Another combo — a different list for the same time, on the tab you are looking at.
   • Play all — starts the list playing on YouTube, in order.
   • Save as… — name it and get a new private playlist on your account, ready for your phone or TV. Your saved videos stay exactly where they are, and each save makes a fresh playlist rather than overwriting the last.

Nothing shorter than three minutes is ever picked, so a trailer cannot win a slot just by fitting the last few minutes of your budget.

The first time you open the Lineup after upgrading, it reads through your recent watch history to learn what kind of thing each video is. That takes a moment on a long history and the list fills in as it lands; after that it only looks at what is new.

Clean-up rules Pro

Toolbar → the sparkles (Clean-up rules)

Three rules, each one item in the dropdown. Two things are true of all of them: a rule only selects — it hands the list to the ordinary delete or archive flow, so you always see and can edit the list before anything happens — and a rule never touches a pinned video.

Rules run on one playlist at a time. On a merged view TidyWL says so and asks you to pick a single playlist first.

Archive finished videos

1. Open Clean-up rules and pick Archive finished videos.
2. TidyWL selects everything you have watched past 95% and opens the list — “You finished N of these”. Untick anything you want to keep.
3. Press Archive N videos.

Nothing is deleted. The videos move into a private playlist called TidyWL Archive, created the first time you run it. When that playlist approaches YouTube’s 5,000-video ceiling, the next one becomes TidyWL Archive 2. A video is only removed from the source once TidyWL has confirmed it landed in the archive.

95% rather than 100% because YouTube stops counting progress somewhere in the end card. And it archives rather than deletes because a progress bar is wrong about rewatches, background playback and shared devices.

Remove dead entries

1. Open Clean-up rules and pick Remove dead entries.
2. TidyWL selects every entry that has neither a channel nor a duration — the private and deleted rows that clutter a long playlist — and shows you the list.
3. Untick anything you want to keep, then confirm.

This is the one rule that deletes rather than archives, because a dead entry cannot be moved anywhere.

It deliberately does not use the Unavailable filter, which answers a different question and also returns videos blocked in your country and videos removed elsewhere since your last sync. Those are alive and this rule leaves them alone. If nothing matches, TidyWL says “No dead entries here — every video still has a channel and a duration.”

Archive the oldest 10% each month

1. Open Clean-up rules and pick Archive the oldest 10% each month…. A settings box opens.
2. Set the percentage — Archive the oldest __ % each month, anywhere from 1 to 50. TidyWL tells you the size your list will settle at.
3. Tick Offer this when it is due, next time I open the dashboard if you want reminding. TidyWL always asks first — it never archives on its own.
4. Press Save, or Save and run now to review the first batch immediately.

This rule needs your playlist sorted by date added on YouTube’s own playlist page — that is the only thing that makes a video’s position mean its age. If it is set to Manual or Most popular, the rule explains itself and stops. Set the sort on YouTube, sync once in TidyWL, then run it again. If your last sync happened before you upgraded, one sync also fixes this.

It runs at most once every 30 days. When it is due and you have asked to be reminded, the next dashboard open offers Review or Not this month — declining skips the whole month, not just that page load. Cancelling the review does not count as this month’s run.

Pin a video so nothing removes it Pro

The pin on a card’s thumbnail, the card’s three-dot menu, or Pin Selected in the toolbar

1. Hover a video card. A pin appears in the top-right corner of the thumbnail. Click it.
2. Or open the card’s three-dot menu and pick Pin (protect from deletion).
3. Or select several videos and press Pin Selected in the toolbar.
4. A pinned card keeps its pin visible. To unpin, click it again, or pick Unpin from the menu.

A pinned video survives every removal: clean-up rules, bulk delete, a single delete, removing a like, and archiving. A Move on a pinned video quietly becomes a Copy — it is added to the destination and left where it was.

Everything that does not remove it still works: a pinned video selects, copies, exports, opens in tabs and yields transcripts. Pin protects a video’s place in the playlist, not the video from being used.

Bulk actions leave pinned videos out and tell you how many they held back. A single delete on a pinned video refuses and tells you to unpin first — so to delete one, unpin it and then delete.

Preview the exact list before any bulk action Pro

Opens by itself before every bulk delete, unlike or rule

1. Run any bulk delete, bulk unlike, or clean-up rule. Instead of a plain confirmation, the full list opens: thumbnail, title and channel for every video, with a checkbox each.
2. Untick anything you want to keep. The count updates live, and the confirm button carries the surviving number — Delete 43 videos.
3. Use Search these videos… to find one in a long list, and shift-click to tick a range. One button above the list toggles between Deselect all and Select all, so you can start from either end.
4. Press the confirm button, or Cancel — cancelling changes nothing at all.

Untick every video and the confirm button simply disables, so there is no way to confuse “I changed my mind” with “I unticked everything”.

Free users get an ordinary confirmation dialog instead.

Undo deletions, for 90 days Pro

Toolbar → the anticlockwise arrow (Deleted videos)

1. Press Deleted videos. Everything you have deleted through TidyWL in the last 90 days is there, grouped by the batch it went out in — each group headed with the date, how many videos, and which playlist they came from.
2. To put a whole batch back, press Restore all N on its header.
3. For individual videos, use Restore on the row — or find them with Search deleted videos…, tick them (shift-click selects a range) and press Restore at the bottom.

A restored video lands at the top of the playlist. YouTube provides no way to put it back where it was.

Delete removes the ticked rows from this list without touching YouTube; Empty clears the whole list. Either way the videos stay deleted on YouTube — this list is a record, not a holding pen.

Two limits worth knowing. The record is kept on this device: it does not travel to your other browsers and it does not survive uninstalling. And it covers deletions only — removing a like is a different operation on YouTube’s side and is not logged.

Saved views Pro

Toolbar → the bookmark (Saved views)

1. Set up the filters you want to keep — say unwatched, over 20 minutes, from three channels.
2. Open Saved views and click Save this view….
3. Name it (the box suggests something like Weekend deep-dives) and press Save view.
4. To use it again, open Saved views and click its row. Every control snaps back to where it was.
5. The × on a row deletes that view. There is no confirmation — it is a filter preset, not data.

A view remembers the channel, the topic and any topics you hid, the watched filter and its threshold, the duration bucket or custom range, every tag filter, and the search box.

Saving under a name you already used updates that view instead of making a second one. Saving with nothing filtered is refused — an empty view would do nothing when you reapplied it.