🎯 YouTube Scraper — Channel Videos

📺 What does YouTube Scraper do?

This Actor scrapes public data from a YouTube channel's /videos page. It focuses on parsing the channel videos page and returning a dataset of video items with basic metadata.

• 🔎 Extracts core video fields from the channel's videos page: video id, title, thumbnail URL, duration, published time, channel id/name/url/thumbnail (when available), and view counts.
• ⚡ Designed for quick retrieval of videos for a specific channelId.
• 💾 Outputs results to the Apify Dataset so you can download JSON/CSV/Excel from the Storage tab.

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💡 How to use scraped YouTube data

You can use the scraped data to:

• 📈 Monitor channel uploads and trends
• 🧾 Collect public video metadata for analysis or aggregation
• 🔗 Feed video metadata to dashboards or analytics pipelines

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🔎 What data can you scrape?

This Actor returns (from the channel's /videos page):

• Video id, title, thumbnail URL
• Duration (text) and duration in seconds
• publishedAt (ISO) and publishedText
• Channel id, name, URL and thumbnail/handle when available
• viewCountText (raw) and views (parsed integer when possible)

The Actor follows continuation tokens when present to fetch more items, up to an internal limit.

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🚀 Quick start — How to run

1. Edit INPUT_SCHEMA.json or provide JSON input in Apify Console.
2. Provide channelId (required) and optional limit.
3. Start the Actor and download results from the Storage (Dataset) tab.

⬆️ Input example

{
  "channelId": "UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw",
  "limit": 24
}

⬇️ Output example (simplified)

Dataset items include full objects. Example video item:

[
  {
    "id": "CW7gfrTlr0Y",
    "title": "Example video title",
    "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CW7gfrTlr0Y/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "duration": "00:03:17",
    "duration_seconds": 197,
    "publishedAt": "2021-12-21T00:00:00.000Z",
    "publishedText": "4 years ago",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW7gfrTlr0Y",
    "channel": {
      "id": "UC...",
      "name": "Channel Name",
      "url": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC...",
      "thumbnail": "https://...",
      "handle": "@example"
    },
    "viewCountText": "35,582,192 views",
    "views": 35582192
  }
]

Returned wrapper includes videos (array), max when available, and requested (number returned).

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🔧 Notes & limitations

• The Actor scrapes public HTML. Results depend on YouTube's page structure and may change.
• Very large limit values may not return all requested items (continuation loop capped internally).
• The Actor does not fetch subtitles, comments, or video files.

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🧰 Specialized scrapers and related tools

• 💬 Fast YouTube Videos Scraper
• 🏎 Fast YouTube Channel Scraper
• ▶️ Fast YouTube Channel Videos Scraper
• 📽️ Fast YouTube Channel Videos Scraper Fallback

You can combine results with other social media scrapers (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook) or feed data to AI agents (e.g., sentiment analysis, influencer discovery).

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❓FAQ

• Q: Can I get subtitles or comments?

  • A: No — this Actor does not extract subtitles or comments. Use the related tools above for those features.

• Q: Is scraping YouTube legal?

  • A: Scraping public data is subject to local laws and platform terms. Consult legal counsel if unsure.

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🐞 Feedback

Found a bug or want an enhancement? Open an issue in this repository.

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License: ISC (see package.json).