LaterLens

About

# LaterLens: YouTube Watch Later Search

Search and sort your YouTube Watch Later playlist - works even with 1000+ videos!

Free!  No paywall.  No IAP.  No subscription.  No Ads.  No data gathering.  Use this extension if it'll be helpful to you.  If it saves you time and you feel like buying me a coffee, I'll drink it: https://ko-fi.com/knivesonstrings

## Why This Extension?

If you're like me, you have a huge Watch Later playlist on YouTube.  YouTube's Watch Later playlist has no built-in search.  I wrote this extension to solve my problem, and hopefully yours too!  With hundreds of saved videos, finding what you want was nearly impossible until now.  I've testing this up to 1700+ videos in my own Watch Later list.

## Features

🔍 **Instant Search** - Search by video title or channel name
📋 **Cache Mode** - Scan once, search instantly forever (no rescanning needed)
🔤 **Smart Quotes** - Use "AI" to match whole words only
📊 **Sorting** - Sort by channel, title, duration, or shuffle randomly
⚡ **Regex Support** - Advanced pattern matching for power users
🌙 **Dark Mode** - Seamlessly matches YouTube's dark theme

## How It Works

1. Navigate to your Watch Later playlist
2. Click "Scan Playlist" to cache all videos (one-time)
3. Search instantly using the search bar
4. Click results to open videos directly

## Privacy

This extension:
- ✅ Stores data locally on your device only
- ✅ Does NOT collect or transmit any personal data
- ✅ Does NOT require account access
- ✅ Works entirely client-side via DOM scraping

## Permissions Explained
- **Storage**: Save your cached playlist locally
- **ActiveTab**: Access the current YouTube tab to inject the search UI

## Version History
**v1.3.x** - Tons of UI/UX fixes, Persistent sort, Paginated results, Accessibility, speed improvements, bug fixes
**v1.2.3** - Cache search mode for instant results
**v1.1.x** - Sorting, regex, quoted search
**v1.0.x** - Initial MVP with scanning and filtering

## Known Issues
- It's slower than I'd like.
- YouTube updates could break it at any time.
- Would like the cache to persist over sessions but I need to make sure that's not a potential privacy problem first.