Drop your Google Takeout export to see which channels kept bringing you back, when in the week you open YouTube, and what changed from one period to the next.
Drop your Takeout file here
The archive as Google sends it (ZIP or TGZ), or watch-history.json or watch-history.html from inside it.
The file is read in this browser tab and is not uploaded. You can confirm it in your browser’s Network panel.
How to export your YouTube history
- Open takeout.google.com and click Deselect all.
- Tick YouTube and YouTube Music, open All YouTube data included, and keep only history.
- Open Multiple formats and set history to JSON. HTML also works for English-language accounts.
- Create the export. Google emails a download link when the archive is ready, usually within minutes for history alone.
- Drop the downloaded archive here as it is, without unpacking it.
What the report reads from your file
Google Takeout keeps your YouTube watch history as one entry per opened video: the title, the channel and the moment it was opened. The report takes that file, either inside the archive Google sends or on its own, and reads it in this browser tab. The demo button builds the same report from a generated history, so every section can be explored before your export arrives.
While the file is read, the first counts appear one after another: entries found, channels, days with openings. Entries the report can’t read are counted and listed further down rather than dropped without a trace.
Choosing the stretch of time
The default window is the twelve months ending on the last day in your file, not today, so an export downloaded months ago still gives a full year. Calendar years found in the file, the whole history and your own dates sit next to it. Turning on the comparison adds the stretch of the same length right before the one you picked.
The numbers at the top are plain counts: videos opened, different channels, days with at least one opening out of the days in the window, the longest run of consecutive days, and how many videos you opened more than once.
The rhythm dial
Each of the 168 cells in the dial is one hour of one weekday, with Monday on the inner ring and Sunday on the outer one. Brightness follows the opening count on a straight scale from zero, so a week spread evenly across the day looks even instead of being stretched into peaks that aren’t there. Pointing at a cell shows its count, how many channels it covered and which one led. Below the dial are the three busiest hours and the hours with no openings, or the least active hour if every hour has some. Times come from the UTC timestamps in the file, converted to this browser’s time zone, so weeks spent in another zone shift with it.
Channels ranked by the days you came back
The channel list is sorted by the number of different days each channel appears on. A channel opened 300 times over one weekend and a channel opened 300 times across ten months end up far apart here, while a list sorted by openings would put them side by side. Openings, months and latest appearance are the other sort orders. The first five channels each get a line where one mark is one day with at least one opening, set against the full window. Tapping a line opens its openings per month, its first and last dates and its share of everything you opened; the full channel table sits one tap below.
Openings are then split between channels first recorded inside the window and channels that already appear earlier in the file. When the window starts with the file itself there is nothing earlier to check against, and the report says so instead of treating every channel as new. With the comparison on, channels from the previous window that don’t appear in this one are listed as not seen this period.
Videos you opened again
Every video opened more than once gets its count, its dates and a thin 24-hour strip with a mark at the time of each opening. Entries for removed or private videos stay in the history without a title or channel; they are counted as unavailable videos and stay in the totals.
Runs of openings
A run is a series of openings where each one follows the previous within the session gap set lower on the page. The three longest runs are drawn as a thread of dots that changes color whenever the channel changes, with the video that started the run, how many openings followed and how many channels they covered. Moving the gap slider redraws them, since a run only exists relative to that gap.
What changed between the two windows
With the comparison on, the report lists the differences that can be stated as numbers: openings, active days, the most active hour, the share taken by your five most-opened channels, the share of openings that went to videos already opened in the same window, and whether the channel you returned to on the most days is still the same one. A line appears only when the difference isn’t zero.
What the file can and cannot say
Everything above is counted directly from the file. Time spent isn’t in it: Takeout records when a video was opened, not how long it played, whether it finished or at what speed. The session time estimate adds up the gaps between neighboring openings that are shorter than the gap you choose and shows the result for 10, 20 and 30 minutes, so the effect of that choice is visible. The last opening of each session adds nothing, because nothing follows it. Ads, YouTube Music and unavailable videos can be switched in or out, with the number of entries behind each switch.
The card
The card is a 1080 by 1920 image drawn in this tab from up to four facts you tick, with a small copy of your dial at the top. Channel names stay off it unless you add them, and the session time estimate never appears on it, because an image can’t carry the assumption behind that number.