To find old videos on YouTube, you can check your watch/search history via My Activity on Google or the YouTube app for your own viewing history, use advanced search operators like before:YYYY-MM-DD on Google (site:youtube.com) for general discovery, or apply the "Upload date" filter within YouTube's search results to sort by year/custom range.
The most crucial filter for finding old videos on YouTube is the "Upload date" filter. This allows you to specify a date range, such as "This year," "This month," or even a custom range. To find really old YouTube videos, select "Any time" and then choose the timeframe that best suits your search.
View watch history
Using the Wayback Machine
How far back does YouTube history go? Indeed, this answer is depending your YouTube settings. If you turned on the YouTube auto-delete option, then you can only find history as far back as 3/18/36 months. Otherwise, YouTube keeps a record of every video you watch as long as you are signed in to your account.
To view your history, use your browser's history menu (often three dots > History) for recent browsing, or go to your Google Account 'My Activity' page (myactivity.google.com) to see all your Google-related activity across devices, where you can search and filter by date for past searches, websites, and videos.
No, YouTube Is Not Deleting Old Videos.
Be sure to sign in with the same account you use to watch YouTube.
View watch history
To find older videos specifically, select 'Upload Date' and then choose 'This Year', 'Last Year', or even 'Older'. This will help narrow down your results significantly by showing only relevant uploads within those time frames. Another useful tip is to use advanced search operators directly in the search bar.
Starting August 13, 2025, we'll begin rolling out an age estimation model to determine if a US-based user is under the age of 18. This will happen regardless of the birthdate a user entered when creating their account.
Restore photos & videos
YouTube does not keep backups of deleted videos, and the deletion process is irreversible for privacy and security reasons. If you uploaded the videos from your phone or computer, check your local storage, Google Photos, or cloud backups (like Google Drive or iCloud) to see if you still have the original files.
Let's see how to recover deleted Chrome history via Google History.
If you would like to see a history of the pages you've visited, choose "Your data in Search" in the Settings Menu. This will bring you to your "Search History" Page in Google. You (and Google) are the only ones who can view this page. It's useful for finding sites you've visited but can't remember.
`C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default`. Make sure to replace `<username>` with your actual Windows user account name. 3. Inside the Default folder, you will find a file named `History`.