You’ve come to the right place if you want to learn how to make YouTube Videos private. This quick tutorial will share detailed steps on how to accomplish that.
YouTube lets you share your videos and showcase your video editing skills to the entire world. But you may want to keep specific videos from public view for personal reasons.
Whatever your reasons, you can restrict access to the videos you upload to YouTube, and we’ll get to that in a bit. First, here are some advantages to making your videos private.
Advantages of Making Your Videos Private
- The private video setting is excellent if you want to share a strategy with your team on YouTube but don’t want your competitors to see them. For example, you may have critical training videos or some other projects you are working on and don’t want others outside your team to access them.
- If you have personal videos you want to share with loved ones, you definitely don’t want the entire YouTube community to access those videos. Restricting such clips is a great way to share special moments privately.
- You can create a private video library for your consumption alone. It is similar to a personal art or books collection; only this time, it is online.
- You can save a lot of storage space on your phone or computer by uploading your videos to YouTube and freeing up memory.
How to Make YouTube Videos Private
There are two ways to hide your videos on YouTube, both of which are very easy to do. You can make a video private as you upload it to YouTube. That way, you will minimize the chances of forgetting to hide them later on.
You can also hide an existing public video. If you think one or more of your videos shouldn’t be accessible to the entire YouTube community, you can easily change the visibility setting.
Here’s how to do that:
Make Your Video Private During Upload
1. Sign in to your YouTube account
2. Click the Create icon on the top right corner of the window
3. Click Upload video
4. Click on the Select Files button to add files from your computer or device
5. Locate the file you want to upload and click Open
You can also drag and drop the file from an open folder on your computer to upload them
6. Enter details for the video, including the title and description
7. Scroll down and choose whether the video is suitable for kids or not
8. Click Next to proceed
9. You can add video elements (related videos, call to action, and more) on the next screen or click Next to proceed
10. Lastly, select Private in the Visibility screen that appears to make your video private and click Save
Your video is now private, and only you and those you invite can see it.
Note that if you select more than one file to upload, you won’t be able to make them private at once during upload. You will have to edit them (individually or collectively) to change their visibility after the upload process is complete.
Make an Existing Video Private
1. Sign in to your YouTube account
2. Click on your profile icon
3. Click Your Channel
4. Click Manage Videos
5. Locate the video you want to make private and click Public under the Visibility section
6. Select Private
7. Click Save
Your video is now private.
How to Share a Private Video
While no one can view your private videos, you can still invite a few people (up to 50) to watch them.
Here’s how to do that:
1. Sign in to your YouTube account
2. Click on your profile icon
3. Click Your Channel
4. Click Manage Videos
5. Locate the video you want to share and click the Private option under Visibility
6. Click the Share Privately button to invite people to watch your video
7. Enter the email addresses of the people you want to share your content with
8. Check the Notify via email checkbox and click Done
9. Click Save
Private Videos vs. Unlisted Videos
Notice the visibility options when uploading videos. Apart from private and public, there’s also an option to make your videos unlisted.
Should you make your videos private or unlisted? What are the differences?
Private Videos
Private videos have the most secure visibility setting on YouTube. No one can see the videos apart from you and your invitees.
People cannot find your videos even if they search for them on YouTube because they won’t appear on search results, related videos, and suggestions. Videos with a private visibility setting don’t show up on the Videos tab of your channel or your subscriber feed.
While the people you invite can watch your private video, they can’t comment on it. If anyone you didn’t invite tries to use your private video link, they still won’t be able to view the video because the link is not re-sharable.
In a nutshell, you are in full control of who can and can’t see your videos if you set the visibility to private.
Unlisted Videos
On the flip side, an unlisted video shares a few of a private video’s qualities but with some limitations.
Unlisted videos don’t show up in recommendations, search results, and related videos. They are also not listed on your subscriber feed.
However, anyone with the unlisted video link can view and re-share it. They don’t even need a Google account to see the video. Also, if someone adds the video to a public playlist, it will show up in YouTube’s search results.
You can make a video unlisted if you don’t mind it getting to the public. It will remain somewhat private as long no one shares the link with other people.
In Closing
Now that you know how to make YouTube videos private, what’s stopping you from freeing up your phone memory? You can confidently upload your personal videos to the world’s largest video sharing platform, knowing that only you and your invitees can view them.
