Guide

How to Export Your YouTube Watch History

Last updated: July 8, 2026 · ~15 min (mostly waiting)

There are two ways to get your YouTube watch history out of Google: the official route through Google Takeout, and browser extensions that read your history page directly. This guide walks through Takeout step by step, shows exactly what the export contains — and is honest about the one thing it leaves out.

Exporting with Google Takeout, step by step

1. Open Google Takeout. Go to takeout.google.com and sign in with the Google account you use on YouTube.
2. Deselect everything. Takeout pre-selects every Google product. Click "Deselect all" at the top of the list so you don't end up with a 50 GB archive.
3. Select YouTube and YouTube Music. Scroll to the bottom of the product list and tick "YouTube and YouTube Music".
4. Switch the history format to JSON. Click the "Multiple formats" button. In the dialog, change History from HTML to JSON. This is the step almost everyone misses — the default HTML file is nearly useless for any analysis tool.
5. Export only your history. Click "All YouTube data included", press "Deselect all" in the dialog, and tick only "history". Otherwise the export bundles your uploads and can take much longer.
6. Create the export. Click "Next step", keep "Export once" and the .zip file type, then click "Create export".
7. Wait for Google's email. A history-only export is usually ready in a few minutes, but Google says it can take hours or days. You'll get an email with a download link when it's done.
8. Download and unzip. Download the archive and extract it. Your file is at Takeout → YouTube and YouTube Music → history → watch-history.json.

What’s inside watch-history.json

The JSON file is a flat list with one object per video you watched. For each one, Google includes:

• the video title and its URL;
• the channel name (in a subtitles field);
• the timestamp of when you watched it; and
• occasionally a note that the video came from an ad.

It covers your full YouTube history (and YouTube Music plays, mixed into the same file), going back years — which makes it great as a personal archive.

What Takeout leaves out

The export does not include how long each video is or how much of it you actually watched. Every entry looks the same whether you bailed after four seconds or finished a 40-minute deep-dive. That completion signal — the one the recommendation algorithm itself pays the most attention to — only appears on your YouTube history page as the red progress bar under each thumbnail.

That’s why our free Decode My Feed extensionexists: it reads that history page on your own device and exports a JSON file that includes each video’s duration, how much you watched, and the completion percentage — the data a Takeout export can’t give you. No waiting for an email, either: it takes about a minute.

Common problems

“My file is HTML, not JSON.”The format choice in step 4 only applies to future exports — you’ll need to re-run the export with History set to JSON.

“My archive only contains archive_browser.html.”That file is just the index page Google puts in every export — if it’s alone, your export came back empty. Three usual causes: your watch history is paused (check My Activity controls — if YouTube History is off, Google has nothing to export), “history” wasn’t ticked in step 5, or you ran Takeout signed in to a different account (or a Brand Account) than the one you watch YouTube with.

“The export is taking forever.”You likely left all YouTube data selected (step 5). Videos you’ve uploaded are included in full, which can add gigabytes. Re-run it with only “history” ticked.

“I use multiple accounts.” Takeout exports one account at a time. Repeat the process signed in to each account whose history you want.

What to do with the file

Plenty of free tools will turn a Takeout export into charts — totals, top channels, watch-time graphs. We wrote an honest comparison of those free tools and where our paid report differs (short version: they describe what you watched; we explain why the algorithm keeps feeding it to you).

You can also upload your watch-history.json to Decode My Feed directly — pick the Google Takeout tab on the upload page. Fair warning, stated there too: without watch-progress data the report skips its completion-based sections (viewing style, attention gap, reclaimable time). The extension export unlocks the full version.

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