YouTube 'Unavailable Videos Are Hidden': How to See What Was Deleted

If you have had your YouTube account for years, your "Liked Videos" playlist is basically a personal diary of everything you have enjoyed watching: old songs, coding tutorials, gaming highlights, cooking recipes, and conference talks.

Then you open that playlist one day, and right under the playlist header or between your saved clips, you see that familiar message: "Unavailable videos are hidden".

If you click the playlist menu (the three dots) and turn on "Show unavailable videos", your playlist reveals grey rows that simply say "[Deleted video]" or "[Private video]".

The worst part is not just that the video will not play. The real headache is that YouTube completely hides the title and the channel name. You know you cared enough about that video to click the like button, but you cannot even remember what video it was. And because you have no title, you cannot even search for a re-upload or an alternative copy.

What does "Unavailable videos are hidden" mean on YouTube?

When you see the message "Unavailable videos are hidden" in your Liked Videos playlist, it means one of several things happened to videos you previously saved:

• Creator deleted the video: The creator decided to take down their video or clean up their channel.
• Video set to private or unlisted: The creator made the video private, meaning only they can watch it.
• Copyright or community guidelines takedowns: YouTube took down the video due to music licensing disputes, strikes, or policy issues.
• Channel terminated or closed: The entire channel that uploaded the video was deleted or suspended.

By default, YouTube automatically hides these videos so viewers do not click on unplayable links. But when you toggle "Show unavailable videos", you quickly realize YouTube will not tell you the title, creator, or description. If you click on the grey box, YouTube just says "Video unavailable". You are left completely in the dark about what you lost.

Why manual workarounds usually fail

People on Reddit and forums often suggest copying the video URL and pasting it into the Wayback Machine or searching Google. But that comes with big headaches:

• Finding the video ID from a greyed-out "[Deleted video]" row on a phone or tablet is frustrating and often impossible.
• Doing it one by one for dozens of missing videos takes hours of tedious copying and pasting.
• Most everyday YouTube videos were never crawled or saved by the Wayback Machine, leaving you with a blank 404 page.

Why you need to be signed in to scan your liked videos

Unlike public playlists that anyone can open in a web browser, your "Liked Videos" playlist is completely private to your YouTube account. Its system playlist ID is LL, and YouTube strictly blocks public access to it.

If you are not logged in, no tool or website can scan your liked videos. There is simply no way around that because of how YouTube protects account privacy.

To scan your liked videos, you sign in to our tool and connect your YouTube account through Google's official sign-in system. Here is what you should know about how this works:

• Safe and read-only: We only request read-only access to view your Liked Videos playlist. We never see your password, and we cannot edit, delete, or change anything on your account.
• Connect multiple accounts: If you have more than one YouTube account (like a personal account, a work email, or an old channel), you can connect all of them to your profile and easily select which one you want to scan from a dropdown menu.
• Daily free quota: When you log in, you get a daily free quota of 5 operations across our YouTube tools. You can scan your playlist and test the tool without entering a credit card or spending money upfront.

How our recovery tool reveals hidden and deleted video titles

We built our Deleted Liked Videos Recovery Tool specifically to solve the "Unavailable videos are hidden" mystery without manual work. Here is what happens behind the scenes when you run a scan:

1. Fast playlist crawl: The tool scans your Liked Videos playlist batch by batch, checking every single video status in real time.
2. Detects unavailable items: It instantly separates active public videos from those marked as deleted, private, or blocked.
3. Matches historical records: For every missing item, our system extracts the original video ID and queries historical public archive databases and indexes to find what the video was called before it disappeared.
4. Pulls creator details: Whenever a match exists, we recover the original video title, the channel name of the creator, and its position in your playlist.

Step-by-step: How to scan your liked videos and recover titles

The whole process takes only a couple of minutes. Here are the exact steps:

1. Open the tool: Head over to our Find Deleted Liked Videos page.
2. Sign in and connect: Sign in to your account, click Connect YouTube Account, and authorize read-only access via Google. If you already connected an account, simply choose it from the dropdown.
3. Start the scan: Click the Scan Liked Videos button. A live progress bar will show you videos checked, unavailable items found, and titles recovered in real time.
4. Check your recovered list: When the scan finishes, you will see a clean dashboard showing your total videos, active videos, and missing videos.
5. Filter by status: Use the filter buttons to switch between All, Recovered, Private, Deleted, or Can't Find.
6. Search for re-uploads: Click the Search on YouTube button next to any recovered video. This immediately opens a search for that exact title and creator so you can find re-uploaded copies, clips, or song mirrors.
7. Export your records: Click the Export dropdown to download your entire missing list to your computer.

Export your missing videos in 10 different formats

Once you recover your lost titles, you should keep an offline copy so you never lose track of them again. We provide 10 different export formats directly from the dashboard:

• Spreadsheets: Excel (.xlsx) and CSV (.csv) for sorting, searching, and filtering in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.
• Documents: PDF (.pdf) and Word (.docx) for clean, formatted reading and printing.
• Developer and data formats: JSON (.json), YAML (.yaml), and Markdown (.md) for note-taking apps like Obsidian or Notion.
• Web and text: HTML (.html), XHTML (.xhtml), and Plain Text (.txt) for quick viewing in any browser or text editor.

Honest recovery rates and our Fair Credit Guarantee

We believe in being 100% transparent about what is possible and what is not.

In our tests and user scans, our tool typically recovers between 80% and 90% of deleted or private video titles. Why is it not 100%? If a creator uploaded a video and deleted it five minutes later, or set it to private right after uploading, its title was never public long enough to be indexed anywhere. When that happens, no historical record exists on the web, and we clearly mark those as Can't Find.

Because of this, we created our Fair Credit Guarantee:

• If your playlist is 100% intact and has zero deleted videos, 0 credits are deducted.
• If deleted videos are detected but our tool cannot recover even a single title, 0 credits are deducted.
• You only spend credits (5 credits) when we actually recover missing video titles for you.

What to do after you find your missing video titles

Getting the title back is the key that unlocks everything else. Once you know the name of the video and the creator who posted it, here is what you can do:

• Find re-uploads on YouTube: Fan channels, community members, and archive accounts frequently re-upload popular tutorials, deleted music tracks, and podcast episodes. Use the one-click search button in the tool to check for mirrors.
• Check alternative video sites: Many creators post their videos across Vimeo, Dailymotion, or their personal websites. Searching the recovered title on Google often brings up working copies on other platforms.
• Keep a permanent offline backup: Download your liked videos spreadsheet or PDF and save it in Google Drive or your local storage. That way, whenever YouTube removes another video in the future, you will always have an exact record of what it was.

Do not let your favorite videos turn into forgotten blank boxes. When you see "Unavailable videos are hidden" on YouTube, connect your account, check your playlist with your free daily quota, and find out exactly what was removed.