TidyWL Add to Chrome Install

Tutorials

How to use every part of TidyWL

One short guide per feature, in the order you would meet them. Written against version 2.3. Every button name below is the name on the button.

Pro marks a feature that needs a TidyWL Pro subscription. Everything else is free, with one limit on installs made from version 2.5.0 on: removing hand-picked videos is free up to 1,000 every 30 days.

Getting started

Install TidyWL and open the dashboard

Browser toolbar → the TidyWL icon

  1. Install from the Chrome Web Store, from Microsoft Edge Add-ons, or from the Firefox install page.
  2. Open YouTube and go to your Watch Later playlist, your Liked videos, or any playlist page, one you made or one you saved.
  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.

In the browser’s extension list it is called Watch Later Tidy for YouTube™ & YouTube Music.

On YouTube Music (from version 2.7.0), open the playlist on music.youtube.com and press Open Dashboard in the popup. It takes you to the same playlist on youtube.com and opens the dashboard there. The dashboard does not run on music.youtube.com itself yet. Songs you like on YouTube Music also show up in your Liked videos on youtube.com, so you can unlike them in bulk from there, and the like comes off YouTube Music too.

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, a Help button that opens this page, an About button, a Full page 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, in labelled groups: Find, Pro tools, Select & move and Export & open, plus an unlabelled group for the two red removal buttons. Hover any icon to see its name; the Pro tools add a short line on what they do. The name is what these tutorials use.
  • The grid below it is your videos, as cards, or as one row each in List view.

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 the search, the channel, topic, tag and watched filters and your selection, then draws the fresh list. A length filter, hidden topics and your sort stay as they were; on a merged view only the selection is cleared.

Videos Fetched can be lower than the number YouTube reports. When it is, the card says so — “N YouTube won’t show · M on YouTube” — 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, its category for the Lineup’s music switch, whether it is a Short, and any channel name YouTube left off. If your cache predates that, TidyWL asks for one more sync after an update — “needs one more sync for its new features to work properly”. It asks once per version.

Choosing what you see

Switch between Watch Later, Liked videos and your own playlists

Header → the Watch Later | Liked videos | Playlists ⌄ switcher

  1. Click Watch Later or Liked videos to switch straight to either. Both work from whichever page you opened the dashboard on.
  2. Click Playlists ⌄ to open the list: Watch Later, Liked videos, the playlists you created, then the ones you saved from others, drawn the way YouTube’s own “Save to…” panel draws them. Coming from Watch Later or Liked videos, the grid switches to whatever you last ticked in this menu, which is nothing the first time.
  3. Click a row to open that playlist on its own.
  4. Use the Filter playlists… box at the top to find one by name. The down arrow walks the list, Enter picks the first match, Escape goes back to the switcher.

Clicking a playlist you have never synced syncs it on the spot. Each playlist keeps its own cache and its own last-synced time, so working on one never disturbs another.

From version 2.1.0 the menu also lists the playlists you saved from other channels, marked Saved · owner. Open one to search it, sort it or copy its videos into a playlist of your own. Only its owner can edit it, so Delete and Move are not offered there: Delete is greyed out, and hovering it names the owner. From version 2.2.0 you can also remove it from your library.

Reordering is off on Liked videos, because YouTube orders that list by when you liked something.

See several playlists at once

Header → Playlists ⌄ → the checkboxes

  1. Open Playlists ⌄ and tick the checkbox on the right of each playlist you want. Press Space on a focused row to do the same, or shift-click to tick a whole range.
  2. Select all at the top of the menu ticks everything; clicking it again becomes Deselect all.
  3. Close the menu with two or more ticked — click outside it or press Escape — and the grid merges them: one card per video, with a small chip under the title for every playlist that video sits in.
  4. The switcher segment now reads All playlists, or N playlists.

Search matches those chip names too, so you can type a playlist name to narrow a merged view.

Pressing Sync on a merged view syncs every ticked playlist in turn, each into its own cache, with a Stop button between playlists.

A merged view supports copy, move and delete, but not reorder — narrow to a single playlist for that. On a merged view all three act across every ticked playlist a video is in: move removes it from each of them you can edit, skipping the one you are moving it to, and delete removes it from every one of them you can edit. A playlist saved from someone else keeps its copy, and a video that sits only in such playlists is skipped and named in the confirmation. To remove a video from just one playlist, untick down to that playlist first. Undo records the removal separately for each playlist, so restoring puts the video back in each; a removed like cannot be restored. Archiving finished videos and the monthly clean-up still need a single playlist.

Break the playlist down by channel or topic

Sidebar → the By Channel and By Topic tabs

  1. By Channel lists the channels in the playlist with a bar for how many videos each contributed. Click a row to filter the grid to that channel. Clicking a channel name on a video card does the same thing.
  2. By Topic groups videos by keywords found in their titles. Each video goes under its most common keyword, and a keyword has to appear in at least three titles to count. A group that ends up with fewer than three videos is left off the list, so the rows do not always add up to the playlist. Videos with no qualifying keyword land in [No common keywords]. Click a row to filter to it.
  3. Both lists start at ten rows. Show 10 More adds the next ten; near the end it reads however many are left.
  4. A search box above the rows narrows the list as you type. It reads “Search channels” on one tab and “Search topics” on the other, and looks through every row, not only the ten on screen. Escape clears it.

The search box is free from version 2.1.0; in 2.0 it was part of Pro. Clicking a row after a search filters the grid exactly as before.

On a topic row, the crossed-out eye hides that topic from the grid rather than filtering to it — “Hide these videos from the list”. Hide as many as you like; the eye turns back on to “Show these videos again”. Hiding a topic never hides videos with no matching keyword; those sit under [No common keywords], which has an eye of its own.

Switch to List view, or fill the window

Toolbar → List view · Header → Full page

  1. Click List view, in the toolbar’s Find group just left of the search, to show each video as one row: the thumbnail, the title, and the channel, views and date under it. The button then reads Grid view and puts the cards back.
  2. Click Full page, in the header beside the close ×, to make the dashboard fill the whole browser window instead of sitting in the middle of it. It then reads Exit full page.

Both arrived in version 2.1.0, and the dashboard remembers each choice the next time it opens. Everything else works the same in either view, including selecting, pinning and dragging to reorder. A row leaves out the video’s tags; switch back to the grid to see them.

Finding videos

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 → Find → 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 → Find → the hourglass (Filter by duration)

  1. Open it and pick a bucket: Shorts, 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.

Shorts asks YouTube whether each video is a Short, so it finds Shorts up to three minutes long and leaves out ordinary short videos. Videos synced before version 2.2.0 are checked on your next sync.

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

Sort the list

Toolbar → Find → the arrows (Sort)

  1. Under the By Playlist Order heading: Playlist order (Top first) and Playlist order (Bottom first).
  2. Below the divider: Title (A-Z), Duration (Longest first), Duration (Shortest first), Published date (Newest first), Published date (Oldest first), Views (Most first) and Views (Fewest first).
  3. Under Group by channel: Most videos first, Fewest videos first and Channel name (A-Z). Each draws a heading before every channel in the grid, with a chevron that folds that channel shut, and Select all, which ticks every video of that channel and then reads Clear. Selecting still works across channels, and a bar at the foot of the grid says how many channels your selection spans. Folding a channel drops its videos from the selection.

“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.

Acting on videos

Select videos

The cards, and Select All in the toolbar’s Select & move group

  1. Click a card, or its checkbox, to select it. A selected card takes a coloured frame.
  2. Hold Shift and click another card — or another checkbox — to select everything between the two.
  3. Select All in the toolbar ticks every video currently on screen, which means everything that survives your filters, not the whole playlist. Press it again to clear. Ctrl/Cmd + A does the same.

Filter first, then select. Changing a filter, or syncing, clears the selection.

Delete videos, or remove likes

Toolbar → the red bin (Delete Selected)

  1. Select the videos you want gone.
  2. Click the red bin. On Liked videos the same button becomes a crossed-out heart and reads Remove likes.
  3. Confirm. On the free plan the question gives the count — “Delete 12 videos?”, or “Delete all 430 videos?” when the whole list is selected — and the red button repeats it; on Pro the preview takes its place. TidyWL then sends the removals to YouTube in groups, one group at a time, showing “Deleting videos... 100/430” and a Stop button. Likes go one at a time, because YouTube only accepts a few unlikes a second, so a long list takes a few minutes; leave the tab open.
  4. A completion box shows how many videos went, how many hours of video that was, and how long it took. If some could not be removed it reads “Finished with errors”, counts them under Not removed and leaves them selected; Retry runs the removal again on just those.

To remove a single video, use its three-dot menu and pick Remove (or Remove like on the Liked tab).

On an install made from version 2.5.0 on, the free plan removes up to 1,000 hand-picked videos every 30 days. The 30 days start with the first removal that counts; when they end, the count goes back to 0, and the next removal that counts starts a new 30 days. If your first removal that counts is on October 8, the allowance comes back on November 7. The sidebar shows what is left under Videos Fetched, the info icon beside it gives the date the allowance comes back, and the floating selection count shows what is left too. Selecting more than is left offers to remove the first ones on screen and keeps the rest selected for later. Emptying a whole list, removing one video from its menu, removing likes and copying never count, and a removal that fails costs nothing. Installs from before 2.5.0 have no limit, and neither does Pro.

Each unlike is checked: one YouTube says it took but quietly ignores is sent again, and one still refused after several tries counts as not removed and stays selected for Retry. A video you had already unliked counts as done.

On a playlist you saved from someone else, the red bin is greyed out; hover it to see who owns the playlist. Copy its videos into a playlist of your own instead.

This removes videos from the playlist. It does not delete the video from YouTube, and it does not touch anyone else’s copy. Removing a like is not a playlist edit — YouTube treats it as un-liking, which can change what it recommends to you.

YouTube offers no undo. TidyWL Pro keeps a 90-day record of deleted videos you can restore from (a removed like cannot be restored), and shows you the exact list before anything is removed.

Guide: how to unlike all your liked videos at once, or only some of them. Video: search and unlike all your liked videos.

Move or copy videos to another playlist

Toolbar → Select & move → the folder with a plus (Add to Playlist)

  1. Select the videos, then click Add to Playlist.
  2. Under Save to…, pick a destination from the list of your playlists. Type in Filter playlists… above the list to narrow it by name; a playlist you already picked stays picked while the filter hides it. To make a new one, click New playlist, type a name, choose Private, Unlisted or Public, and press Create.
  3. Under Action, choose Copy (“Keep videos in Watch Later”, or whichever playlist you are on) or Move (“Remove from Watch Later after adding”).
  4. Press Add to Playlist. A Move asks once more — “Move 12 videos to playlist?” — and says it cannot be undone; press Confirm.
  5. When it finishes, a box shows where the videos came from and where they went, then how many were Added, how many were Skipped, and how long it took. Videos YouTube refused are counted under Not added and stay selected so you can try again.

Moving from Liked videos adds the video to the destination and then removes your like.

Moving from a merged view removes the video from every ticked playlist it was in, and skips the one you are moving it to.

Videos arrive in the order you see on screen when you press the button. Copying into Watch Later, which lists the newest first, still keeps the source’s order.

Videos YouTube no longer has are left out and named, and stay selected so a clean-up rule can clear them. On a playlist you saved from someone else, or a shared one you can only add to, only Copy is offered.

Reorder the playlist

Toolbar → Select & move → Move to Top / Move to Bottom, or drag a card

  1. Select one or more videos and press Move to Top or Move to Bottom. A progress box with a Stop button runs the moves one at a time.
  2. To place a video precisely, drag it by the grip that appears on hover. A line shows where it will land.
  3. Dragging one card out of a multi-video selection moves the whole selection.
  4. A single video’s three-dot menu also offers Move to top and Move to bottom.

Reordering is not available on Liked videos, which YouTube orders by when you liked each video; on a merged view, since position belongs to one playlist; or on a playlist YouTube says you cannot edit — one you saved from someone else, or a shared one you can only add to.

Open several videos in tabs

Toolbar → Export & open → the arrow leaving a box (Open in Tabs)

  1. Select the videos.
  2. Press Open in Tabs. They open as background tabs, so your place is not lost. A single video opens in the foreground.
  3. Above five videos, TidyWL asks for confirmation first.

Export to CSV or JSON

Toolbar → Export & open → the share icon (Export your videos)

  1. Filter the list down to what you want. Export takes whatever is on screen, not the whole playlist.
  2. Open the share icon and pick Export your videos as CSV (Excel native) or Export your videos as JSON.

The CSV carries index, title, channel, channel ID, video ID, set-video ID and URL, and opens cleanly in Excel. The JSON keeps every field TidyWL holds on each video. Both land in your Downloads as watch-later- plus a timestamp, whichever playlist you exported.

Download transcripts

Toolbar → Export & open → the document icon (Download Transcripts)

  1. Select the videos you want transcripts for, then press Download Transcripts.
  2. The first time, a tab opens asking permission to save files. Press Allow downloads, then press the button again — TidyWL says so in a banner. Choose Save them manually instead and, after you press the button again, TidyWL fetches the transcripts and offers a Save N files button at the end; files saved that way land loose in your Downloads, not in the folder below.
  3. For a large batch, TidyWL first tells you roughly how long it will take and asks you to confirm.
  4. It then asks YouTube which of your videos have captions at all, so it only opens the ones that do.
  5. A small window opens and works through them. Leave it alone until it finishes.
  6. You get one .txt per video in a TidyWL transcripts folder inside your Downloads, named after the video, each opening with the title, channel and URL.

The summary at the end separates videos with no captions from videos that were unavailable, from ones whose transcript could not be read, from a run you stopped. Failures stay selected so you can retry just those.

Automatically generated captions are marked as such at the top of the file. Transcript language selection is not available — you get YouTube's default for that video.

Send videos to Gemini Notebook

Toolbar → Export & open → Gemini Notebook

  1. Select the videos you want as sources. With nothing selected, TidyWL sends every video on screen.
  2. Click Gemini Notebook and choose Create New Notebook or Choose Notebook.
  3. The first time, TidyWL asks for permission to work with the Gemini Notebook site. It is only granted when you say yes, and only for that site.
  4. With Create New Notebook, TidyWL makes the notebook in the background, shows “Creating a new notebook with N videos…”, and switches you to it when it is ready. With Choose Notebook, Gemini Notebook opens in a tab; open the notebook you want and the videos are added to it. Either way they go in using your own Google session.

This is the one feature that sends any of your YouTube data out of your browser, and only when you press it: the video links you selected go to Google’s Gemini Notebook. Nothing else in TidyWL does this.

After Create New Notebook, a banner says how many videos were added, how many Gemini Notebook skipped and how many it refused, and stays until you close it.

A free Gemini Notebook account caps a notebook at 50 sources.

Guide: how to add a whole playlist, Watch Later or Liked videos to NotebookLM.

Delete a playlist you own

Header → Playlists ⌄ → the bin on a row, or the toolbar’s Delete this playlist from YouTube

  1. Open Playlists ⌄ and click the bin icon on the playlist’s row. If that playlist is already the one on screen, the red list icon in the toolbar does the same.
  2. Confirm — TidyWL names the playlist back to you and says: “The playlist itself is deleted — its videos stay on YouTube. This cannot be undone.”

On a playlist you saved from someone else (version 2.2.0 and later), the same bin reads Remove from your library (in the toolbar, Remove this playlist from your library). It takes the playlist off your list; the playlist stays on YouTube and its owner is not told. To get it back, open it on YouTube and press Save.

Never offered on Watch Later or Liked videos. Deleting a playlist is permanent; the videos in it are not touched.

TidyWL Pro

This section covers TidyWL Pro: how to switch it on, then the tools it adds, each marked Pro. Pro has been available since version 2.0; see pricing for what it costs and what it covers. Every Pro charge carries a 14-day refund. If an offer is running, the plans card names it above the price. Nothing that is free today moves behind it.

Activate your key, and manage your devices

Header → the plan badge, or the About button

Bought Pro in this browser? There is nothing to paste. The page you land on after paying hands your key to TidyWL and Pro switches on by itself (version 2.2.0 and later): an open dashboard shows PRO straight away and opens the Pro is on window. On Firefox it asks for its key-check permission first. On another computer or a phone, that page shows the key and the steps below.

  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 or txn_… field, and check the device name — it is filled in for you and you can change it. Press Activate.
  4. On Firefox, the first Activate opens a page asking “Let TidyWL check your Pro key?”. Firefox files a licence check under Authentication information, so TidyWL asks first. Press Allow, then Allow in Firefox’s own prompt, and activation finishes by itself. Not now sends nothing.
  5. Pro switches on and a Pro is on window opens with your next payment date and your key, with a Copy button. Save the key: it is not emailed. Press Start tidying. From then on the card reads Active with your renewal date (“Complimentary · ends …” for a gift key) and lists every device the key is on. A key works on 3 devices at a time.

Lost your key? Paste the Transaction ID from any Paddle receipt, the one that starts with txn_, into the same field instead. TidyWL finds your key and activates it in one step. On a device where Pro is already on, the card shows your key under Key, hidden until you press Show, with a copy button beside it. Without the extension to hand, open the key page and use Find my key. Anyone with a Transaction ID can see the key, so keep receipts to yourself.

To free up a device you no longer use, press Remove beside it in the list. It goes back to the free version within a day, and the seat is free for another computer straight away. 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.

Paddle's billing page has no refund button, so the card has one: Request a refund, on its own line under the buttons, copies an email to support written with your key and opens it in Gmail; using another email app, paste it in. Within 14 days of a charge, no reason is needed — refund policy.

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.

On Firefox, if the Authentication information permission is off, the card says so and offers Allow key checks. Nothing is checked until you allow it, and Pro pauses 14 days after the last check. You can change it any time under about:addons → TidyWL → Permissions and data.

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

Toolbar → Pro tools → the clock (Lineup)

  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. On Liked videos it reads Remove your like.
  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 appears at once and re-ranks when the read finishes; after that it only looks at what is new.

Clean-up rules Pro

Toolbar → Pro tools → 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.

Archive finished videos and the monthly rule run on one playlist at a time; on a merged view TidyWL says so and asks you to pick a single playlist first. Remove dead entries also works on a merged view, and removes each dead entry from every ticked playlist it is in.

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 tells you there are no private or deleted videos in that playlist, and suggests syncing first to catch any made private since your last sync.

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 Ask me when it’s due 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 TidyWL has not read the sort yet, it says so, and one sync fixes it.

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’s Pro tools group

  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. Its tooltip carries the count, Pin Selected (12), and when everything selected is already pinned it reads Unpin Selected instead.
  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 becomes a Copy — it is added to the destination and left where it was, and the confirmation says so before anything runs.

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. Shift-click copies what you just did across the range: untick one row, shift-click another, and everything between is unticked too. One button above the list toggles between Deselect all and Select all; while a search is running it reads Deselect N shown and acts only on the rows you can see.
  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 → Pro tools → the anticlockwise arrow (Delete history)

  1. Press Delete history. 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. The panel says how many records it is keeping.
  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, which carries the count — Restore 3.
  4. A restore runs one video at a time, showing “Restoring... 12/430” with a Stop button. Stop lets the video in flight finish and keeps everything not yet restored in the list.

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

Keep up to sets how many records the list holds: 10,000, the default, 50,000, 250,000 or No limit. Past the limit the oldest drop off first, even inside the 90 days. A bigger list costs space and speed: about 9 MB and at least 40 ms on every delete at 50,000, and about 46 MB and at least a quarter of a second at 250,000. The panel warns you when you pick one, and lowering the limit asks before anything is dropped.

Delete, which also carries the count, 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 → Pro tools → the bookmark (Saved views)

  1. Set up the filters you want to keep — say unwatched, over 20 minutes, from one channel.
  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, the search box, and the sort order. Reapplying one opens By Topic when it filters by topic, and By Channel otherwise.

Saving under a name you already used warns “A view named … already exists. Saving replaces it.” and 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. You can keep 50 views; saving a 51st drops the one you saved longest ago, without asking. Using a view does not count as saving it.

Reference

Keyboard shortcuts

KeysWhat it does
Ctrl/Cmd + ASelect, or deselect, every video currently on screen
Shift + clickOn a card or its checkbox: select the range from the last one you clicked
Delete or BackspaceDelete the selected videos
EscClose whichever dialog or panel is on top — in Add to Playlist a filled filter box is cleared first; with nothing open, clear the selection
Tab / Shift + TabIn a confirmation or a result: move between its buttons without leaving it. It opens on the safe button — Cancel on a question, Done on a result — so Enter never confirms a delete by accident
SpaceOn a row in the Playlists menu: tick it into the merged view
↑ ↓ Enter Esc TabMove around any dropdown — sort, filter, duration, export
EnterIn the custom-duration boxes: apply the range
TabIn the custom-duration boxes: Min → Max → Apply, without closing the dropdown

Shortcuts stand down while you are typing in a text box, and while a dialog is open.

Using several Google accounts

  1. Switch account on YouTube itself, the way you normally would.
  2. Open the dashboard again. TidyWL reads whichever account is signed in on the page each time it opens and each time it syncs.

Every account gets its own cache, its own sync times, and its own pins, saved views and delete history. Nothing crosses between them.

Brand channels work, with two differences: picking another playlist reloads the page on it rather than swapping in place, and a merged view of several playlists — and syncing them all at once — is refused there, because YouTube’s API answers with the main account’s playlists instead.

Announcements, and the About panel

Header → the bell, the Help button and the ⓘ button

  • The bell carries a red count when there is something new. Open it to read the notices; the badge clears itself.
  • Important notices appear as a banner above the grid instead, and stay dismissed once you close them.
  • Now and then a notice that matters more opens as a small window the next time you open the dashboard. It opens once, closes with Got it (or Not now when it carries a link), and stays readable under the bell afterwards.
  • The Help button, a question mark, opens this page in a new tab.
  • The ⓘ About button shows your version, your licence card, what Pro adds, and a row of links: Rate it, which opens the store your copy came from — the Chrome Web Store, Edge Add-ons or Firefox Add-ons; Join us on Discord; Ko-fi, hidden once you have Pro; and Thoughts?, which opens an email to the support address and copies the address to your clipboard as well.

Stuck on something not covered here? The Discord community is the fastest place to ask, and support@tidywl.com reaches the developer directly.

Questions

The things people ask first