Dailymotion Video Discovery by Topic & Channel

Dailymotion's catalog is organized into keyword search, trending feeds, 17 topic categories, channel pages and playlists. This actor reads whichever of those you point it at — plus specific video IDs and a channel/user keyword search — and returns one clean JSON record per video or channel, straight from Dailymotion's public API. No login, no API key, no proxy.

What this actor does

• Seven modes: search videos by keyword, browse trending, walk a byTopic category, pull a byUser channel's uploads, read a byPlaylist, look up byVideoIds, or searchUsers for Dailymotion channels and creators.
• Filters that match how the API really behaves: language, country (search/trending), publish date range, tag, verified channels only, live streams only, and exact min/max duration.
• More than 1,000 results per query: setting maxItems above 1,000 makes the actor sweep Dailymotion's date windows automatically (newest-first or oldest-first), deduplicating as it goes — up to 10,000 records per run.
• Engagement over time: total views plus views in the last hour, day, week and month, so you can see velocity, not just the all-time number.
• Full channel context per video: owner ID, display name, profile URL, followers, following, total videos and playlists, country, language, join date, avatar, cover and verification.
• Geo-blocking, hashtags and every thumbnail size are returned when Dailymotion has them; fields the source doesn't carry are simply left out of that record.

Output per video

Field	Description
videoId	Dailymotion video ID.
title / description	Video title and description.
ownerId / ownerUsername / ownerUrl	Channel ID, display name and profile URL.
ownerVideosTotal / ownerFollowers / ownerFollowing / ownerPlaylistsTotal	Channel counters.
ownerCountry / ownerLanguage / ownerCreatedAt	Channel country, language and join date (ISO 8601).
ownerVerified / ownerPartner	Channel verification and partner status.
ownerAvatarUrl / ownerAvatarUrlLarge / ownerCoverUrl	Channel avatar (360/720 px) and cover image.
views	Total views.
viewsLastHour / viewsLastDay / viewsLastWeek / viewsLastMonth	Recent view counts (velocity).
likes / bookmarks	Like and bookmark counts.
comments	Comment count. Dailymotion no longer shows comments, so this is always 0 — kept for compatibility.
duration	Duration in seconds.
publishedAt / updatedAt / uploadedAt	Publish, last-update and upload timestamps (ISO 8601 UTC).
thumbnailUrl / thumbnailUrlSmall / thumbnailUrlLarge / thumbnailUrlMax	Thumbnails (default, 240 px, 720 px, 1080 px).
firstFrameUrl	720 px first-frame image.
videoUrl / tinyUrl	Canonical video page and dai.ly short link.
embedUrl / embedHtml	Embeddable player URL and iframe snippet.
allowEmbed / allowedInPlaylists	Embedding and playlist permissions.
width / height / aspectRatio	Video dimensions and frame aspect ratio.
availableFormats	Available stream qualities, e.g. sd, hq, hd720, hd1080.
tags / hashtags	Searchable tags and uploader hashtags.
channel / channelName	Dailymotion category ID and label.
language / country	Video language and country codes.
explicit / isCreatedForKids	Content flags when set.
mode	vod for on-demand, live for livestreams.
geoBlockingMode / geoBlockingCountries	Geo-restriction mode (allow/deny) and the affected country codes.
sourceUrl	The search/topic/channel URL this record was found through, when the mode used one.
recordType	Always "video".
scrapedAt	ISO 8601 timestamp of when the record was fetched.

Output per channel (mode = searchUsers)

Field	Description
channelId	Dailymotion user/channel ID.
username / screenname	Handle and display name.
description	Channel bio, when present.
verified / partner	Verification and partner status.
url	Channel profile URL.
followers / following	Follower and following counts.
videos / playlists / views / reposts	Catalog and engagement totals.
country / language	Channel country and language.
createdAt	Join date (ISO 8601).
avatarUrl / avatarUrlLarge / coverUrl	Avatar (360/720 px) and cover image.
sourceUrl / recordType / scrapedAt	Provenance (recordType is "channel") and fetch time.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string (select)	search	search / trending / byTopic / byUser / byPlaylist / byVideoIds / searchUsers.
searchQueries	array	–	One or more keywords (mode=search, searchUsers). The daily test uses ["technology news"].
usernames	array	[]	Channel usernames, profile URLs or IDs (mode=byUser). Multiple allowed.
topic	string (select)	news	One of Dailymotion's 17 categories (mode=byTopic).
playlists	array	[]	Playlist URLs or IDs (mode=byPlaylist). Multiple allowed.
videoIds	array	[]	Video IDs or URLs (mode=byVideoIds).
sortBy	string (select)	relevance	Result order; see the Sort section below.
language	string (select)	"" (all)	Only videos in this language.
country	string (select)	"" (all)	Only videos from this country (mode=search, trending).
verifiedOnly	boolean	false	Only videos from verified channels (mode=search, trending).
liveOnly	boolean	false	Only live streams.
tag	string	–	Only videos carrying this tag (mode=search, byTopic, byUser, byPlaylist).
createdAfter / createdBefore	string	–	Publish date window, YYYY-MM-DD (mode=search, trending, byTopic, byUser). Long ranges are fetched automatically in overlapping windows.
minDuration / maxDuration	integer	–	Only videos within this duration range, in seconds.
maxItems	integer	20	Maximum records to return (1–10,000). Values above 1,000 use automatic date-window partitioning in search/topic/channel modes.

Sort order values

Value	Works in	Notes
relevance	search, searchUsers	Default for search.
recent	every video mode	Newest first.
trending	every video mode	Dailymotion's trending order.
visited / visited-hour / visited-today / visited-week / visited-month	every video mode	Most-viewed windows.
random	every video mode	Random sample.
old / id-asc	search, byTopic, byUser, byPlaylist	Oldest first.
popular	searchUsers	Most-followed channels.

Picking a value a mode can't honor (e.g. relevance in trending) falls back to that mode's default order, and the run's status message tells you it did. Runs with maxItems above 1,000 always use a recent or old time-ordered sweep (the status message says so); byVideoIds keeps your input order.

Example: keyword search

{
    "mode": "search",
    "searchQueries": ["electric cars", "solar power"],
    "sortBy": "visited-week",
    "language": "en",
    "maxItems": 100
}

Example: a large channel sweep (more than 1,000 videos)

{
    "mode": "byUser",
    "usernames": ["euronews-en"],
    "sortBy": "recent",
    "maxItems": 8000
}

The actor walks the channel's history in automatically-sized date windows and removes overlaps, so the dataset contains 8,000 distinct videos (or every video the channel has, whichever comes first).

Example: a channel's uploads, by profile URL

{
    "mode": "byUser",
    "username": "https://www.dailymotion.com/user/euronews-en",
    "createdAfter": "2026-01-01",
    "maxItems": 200
}

Example: a playlist

{
    "mode": "byPlaylist",
    "playlist": "https://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x6pu6c",
    "maxItems": 50
}

Example: specific videos by ID

{
    "mode": "byVideoIds",
    "videoIds": ["x4d4447", "https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3gmshg"],
    "maxItems": 10
}

Example: channels and creators by keyword

{
    "mode": "searchUsers",
    "searchQueries": ["space news"],
    "sortBy": "popular",
    "maxItems": 30
}

Use cases

• Channel monitoring — track a publisher's new uploads and their first-day view velocity.
• Topic and trend research — compare the most-viewed videos across categories and languages.
• Competitive benchmarking — collect follower, catalog and engagement counts for a set of channels.
• Media analysis — build duration-bucketed datasets of short clips vs long-form content.
• Archival and licensing research — map playlists, creators and geo-restrictions across a catalog.
• Dashboards and alerting — feed fresh upload metadata into BI tools on a schedule.

FAQ

Do I need a Dailymotion account or API key — and will this keep working when Dailymotion moves to API v2? No account or key is needed: the actor reads Dailymotion's public read API without credentials, cookies or proxy setup. That API is still documented and supported (no sunset announced as of 2026-10). API v2 targets authenticated publisher workflows and requires private API keys, so a credential-free actor cannot use it; if Dailymotion ever announces a sunset for the public read API, this actor will need a rework. Current behaviour is tracked in the project research notes.

How many records can one run return? Up to 10,000 per run. Dailymotion's API itself returns at most 1,000 results per query, so the actor fetches more by sweeping the query's date range in overlapping windows (newest-first or oldest-first) and removing overlaps — the run's status message tells you how many windows were used. byPlaylist and searchUsers modes stay at 1,000 per query, because the playlist and user-search endpoints don't accept date filters. The date filters are applied by Dailymotion in roughly five-minute buckets, so at a day boundary a window can include up to five minutes of neighbouring content; the actor never fabricates or drops records because of it and reports what the source returned.

Which modes, filters and sort orders does Dailymotion's API actually support? Playlist search by keyword is not available — the public API supports keyword search only for videos and channels/users (the actor reads playlists by URL or ID, mode=byPlaylist). The country filter is accepted only together with a keyword search or the trending order; elsewhere it is ignored and the run's status message says so. Likewise, the old/id-asc orders are rejected for the plain trending feed and for keyword searches outside a mode that supports them — the actor falls back to the mode's default order and notes it in the status message.

Why do some videos have no tags, description, firstFrameUrl, or channel no ownerCoverUrl? Dailymotion only stores those fields for some uploads, and those artifacts genuinely don't exist for every video or channel — the player metadata returns empty first-frame sets for the same videos, and channels without a cover get a generated gradient on the site. When a field is missing from the source it is left out of the record entirely: records never contain empty placeholders and nothing is faked.

Why is comments always 0? Dailymotion removed public comments from its platform; the API reports 0 for every video and the comments endpoint returns an empty list (re-verified 2026-10-17 across 300 videos). The field is kept so existing integrations don't break.

What do the viewsLastHour / viewsLastDay / viewsLastWeek / viewsLastMonth fields mean — and are the numbers accurate? They are Dailymotion's own rolling view counters for the 60 minutes / 24 hours / 7 days / 30 days before the request, and the actor reads the video's metrics from the same API the video page uses. They usually nest inside each other, but because Dailymotion updates the total and window counters independently, a window counter can occasionally exceed views by a count or two; the actor reports the API's numbers as-is rather than correcting them.

Can I download videos or get direct stream URLs? No. This actor is for discovery and analytics: it returns metadata, thumbnails and embed links, not media files. Stream/download URLs require authenticated publisher access that Dailymotion doesn't grant to public integrations.

What topics can I browse? All 17 built-in categories: News, Sports, Music, Tech, Animals, Cars, Celeb, Comedy & Entertainment, Creative, Education, Gaming, Kids, Lifestyle & How-to, Movies, Travel, TV and Webcam.

Are private or unlisted videos included? No — only publicly accessible videos are returned. Unavailable IDs passed to byVideoIds are skipped, and the run status reports how many could not be accessed.

Is this affiliated with Dailymotion? No. This actor is an independent tool that reads Dailymotion's public API and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Dailymotion.