YouTube Playlist Exporter & Importer

About

You spent hours building the perfect playlist. 300 songs. Carefully ordered. Then you need it somewhere else — a new channel, a shared account, a backup before YouTube decides to "update" something. And you realize: there's no export button. No way to save it. No way to move it.

YouTube gives you no tools to manage your own playlists outside their platform. You can't back them up. You can't transfer them. You can't even get a simple list of what's in them without scrolling through hundreds of videos one by one.

Most people just accept this. They screenshot their playlists. They manually copy titles into spreadsheets. They lose playlists when channels get deleted or videos go private — and there's nothing they can do about it.

This extension fixes that.


WHY PLAYLIST MANAGEMENT IS BROKEN

YouTube playlists are surprisingly fragile:

- Videos get deleted or go private — your playlist shrinks without warning
- No native export — you can't save your playlist data anywhere
- No native import — rebuilding a playlist means adding videos one by one
- No cross-account transfer — switching channels means starting over
- No backup system — if something breaks, it's gone

Content creators with dozens of curated playlists, music collectors with thousands of saved tracks, educators with course playlists — all of them are one bad day away from losing hours of curation work.

The YouTube Data API technically allows playlist operations, but building your own solution means dealing with OAuth, quota limits, rate limiting, and pagination. Nobody should need to write code just to back up a playlist.

This extension handles all of that complexity behind a clean, simple interface.


WHAT THIS EXTENSION DOES

YouTube Playlist Exporter & Importer runs directly in your browser. It connects to the official YouTube Data API through your Google account to export any playlist to a CSV file — and import playlists back from CSV.

No spreadsheet formulas. No manual copying. No third-party services touching your data.

Here's what you get:

One-click playlist export — Enter any public or unlisted playlist URL, get a complete CSV with video titles, URLs, thumbnails, and durations. Your data, in a format you control.

CSV-based playlist import — Select a CSV file, name your new playlist, and the extension creates it on your YouTube account and adds every video automatically. One click, walk away.

Background processing — Large playlists with hundreds of videos import in the background. Close the popup, keep browsing. Come back anytime to check progress.

Smart quota management — YouTube's API has daily limits. When the quota runs out mid-import, the extension pauses automatically and resumes the next day. No lost progress, no manual intervention.

Progress tracking — Real-time progress bar shows exactly how many videos have been processed, how many succeeded, and how many failed (with reasons).

Free tier included — Export any playlist for free (up to 30 videos). Import up to 20 videos per month at no cost. Enough for casual users who just need occasional backups.

Pro unlimited — Remove all limits. Export full playlists of any size. Import unlimited videos. One token, instant activation.


HOW IT WORKS

1. Click the extension icon on any YouTube page
2. For export: paste a playlist URL, click Export — CSV downloads immediately
3. For import: switch to the Import tab, select your CSV file, click Import
4. The extension asks you to name your new playlist, then handles everything in the background
5. Check progress anytime by clicking the extension icon again

That's it. Export takes seconds. Import runs unattended — even if you close the popup.


WHY BACKGROUND IMPORT MATTERS

Most playlist tools require you to keep a tab open the entire time. For a 500-video playlist, that means leaving your browser untouched for 30+ minutes.

This extension runs imports through the service worker. Start the import, close the popup, watch YouTube, open other tabs — it keeps working. The progress is checkpointed after every single video, so even if your browser restarts, it picks up exactly where it left off.

For playlists larger than ~200 videos, YouTube's daily API quota will pause the import. The extension schedules an automatic resume for the next day. A 1000-video playlist takes about 5 days to fully import — completely hands-off after the first click.


MULTI-LANGUAGE SUPPORT

The interface is available in 7 languages:

- English
- Japanese
- Korean
- Spanish
- Portuguese
- French
- German

The extension automatically matches your browser language. All UI text, error messages, and status updates appear in your language.


REAL SCENARIOS WHERE THIS HELPS

Backing up before disaster:
You have a 400-video music playlist you've been building for 3 years. Videos disappear every month as creators delete content or get copyright strikes. Export it now — at least you'll have the titles and URLs to find alternatives.

Channel migration:
You're moving from a personal YouTube account to a brand account. You have 12 curated playlists. Without this tool, that's manually adding hundreds of videos one by one. With it: export all 12, import all 12 on the new account.

Collaborative playlist building:
Your team curates video resources in a shared spreadsheet. Instead of everyone manually adding videos to a YouTube playlist, one person exports the spreadsheet as CSV and imports it in one shot.

Music DJ prep:
You organize sets by mood, BPM, or event type across dozens of playlists. When you need to restructure — splitting one playlist into three, or merging several into one — export, edit the CSV, re-import.

Course content management:
You teach online and maintain playlists for each module. When you update your curriculum, export the old playlist, edit the CSV to add/remove/reorder videos, and import the updated version as a new playlist.

Archival and research:
You're documenting a niche YouTube community — tracking which videos exist, when they were added, what content is available. CSV export gives you structured data you can analyze, filter, and preserve.


PRIVACY AND PERMISSIONS

This extension does not track your browsing. It does not collect analytics. It does not send your data to any third-party server.

The only external connections:

- YouTube Data API (googleapis.com) — to read and write playlist data on YOUR account, using YOUR Google login
- Payment verification server — only when you enter a Pro token, to check if it's valid

Permissions used:
- identity — Google OAuth sign-in for YouTube API access
- tabs — to detect if you're on YouTube (required for import)
- scripting — to show the playlist name prompt on the active tab
- downloads — to save the exported CSV file
- storage — to save your Pro token and import progress locally
- alarms — to resume paused imports and keep the background process alive

Your playlist data never leaves your browser except to go directly to YouTube's API. CSV files are generated and downloaded locally.


FREE TIER

Export: up to 30 videos per playlist, unlimited exports.
Import: up to 20 videos per month, resets monthly.

For most users who need occasional backups or small playlist transfers, the free tier is enough. The current month's usage is shown in the Import tab.

Pro removes all limits — unlimited export size, unlimited imports, no monthly cap.


WHO THIS IS FOR

- Music collectors who maintain large playlists and want backups
- Content creators migrating between YouTube channels or accounts
- Educators managing course playlists that change each semester
- Researchers archiving video collections as structured data
- DJs and curators who reorganize playlists frequently
- Teams who build playlists collaboratively from spreadsheets
- Anyone who has ever lost a playlist and wished they had a backup


GETTING STARTED

Install the extension. Open YouTube. Click the icon. Paste a playlist URL and export.

You'll have a CSV file in under 10 seconds. No account needed for export. No sign-up. No credit card. Just your playlists, saved as files you own.