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Show HN: YouTube search barely works, I made a search form with advanced filters

https://playlists.at/youtube/search/
90•nevernothing•3h ago

Comments

dev1ycan•2h ago
This is just adding the hidden filters such as

before:[date]: Finds videos uploaded before a specific date.

Example: space exploration before:2020-01-01

after:[date]: Finds videos uploaded after a specific date.

Example: tech news after:2024-01-01

To an UI, right?

throw_m239339•2h ago
As long I doesn't shove "shorts" or "other people watched" in the result list, it's an improvement. Sometimes the results are so egregious and completely unrelated to the search terms that I feel like youtube wants to piss me off on purpose. I don't want to be searching some quantum physics video and get videos of some barely clothed women in Miami, I fail to see how it is related...
tremarley•1h ago
Enshittification is the reason
awesome_dude•2h ago
I think that it's a fair title - it takes the "hidden" search terms and brings them to the surface for users.

The (default) YouTube search is barely useful

They have made a search WITH the advanced features available

Everything as advertised (IMO)

bryanhogan•2h ago
One of the problems with YouTube seach is that they also stop showing you what you searched for after a couple of videos, instead you get the same crap you find on the homepage, which is bewildering.
bilegeek•1h ago
Can't remember where I got them, but there's some uBO rules that really help on that front:

  youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Related to your search/i))
  youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Related to your searches/i))
  youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/From related searches/i))
  youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer:has-text(/People also watched/)
  youtube.com###contents > ytd-shelf-renderer:has-text(/For you/)
  youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Watch again/i))
  youtube.com##ytd-horizontal-card-list-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Searches related to/i))
  youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer.style-scope:has(span:has-text(/Learn while you\'re at home/i))
  youtube.com##ytd-horizontal-card-list-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope
  youtube.com###secondary > .ytd-two-column-search-results-renderer
  youtube.com###contents > .ytd-secondary-search-container-renderer.style-scope
  youtube.com##ytd-shelf-renderer:has-text(/Previously watched/)
Also got some other rules from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44332976

This all shouldn't be necessary, but alas...

prophesi•2h ago
One of the first things I do on a new device is install an extension to expose these hidden filters, and to hide recommended videos + redirect the homepage to the subscriptions tab.
cure_42•1h ago
What extension exposes the hidden filters???
prophesi•1h ago
You could probably vibe-code it if it doesn't exist. You're literally just adding extra parameters to the search request. Hard part is creating the interface for it. Saw more options looking for Firefox extensions than Chrome for this, though that might be expected.
lucb1e•1h ago
> One of the first things I do on a new device is install an extension to ...

< [which one]

> vibe-code it if it doesn't exist

So it doesn't exist? I don't understand what I'm reading. (Plus the suggestion to create more slopware)

prophesi•1h ago
> You're literally just adding extra parameters to the search request

> Saw more options looking for Firefox extensions than Chrome for this, though that might be expected.

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough in my comment that it's a very trivial feature. Would you want a lmgtfy link instead?

edit: The irony that this very submission is probably AI generated? There's no link to their source code, and there's a tab titled "AI Generator" for AI generated playlists?

nevernothing•1h ago
You're basically right, it's just a UI for the old search filters, at least for the ones that still work today.
atum47•2h ago
I'm not popular enough to write a post about everything that is wrong with YouTube, from recommending the same few videos over and over again in different "categories" to ALL the results of a search being cringe shorts no one wants to see.
jeffbee•1h ago
I know it's really really loud in your echo chamber but short form videos are extremely popular.
mech422•24m ago
He didn't say they weren't ? He said youtube keeps recommending 'cringe' shorts no-one wants to see. I can sympathize with him - I have the youtube recommends the same 4 videos over and over again in multiple categories issue, and the 'lots of shorts I don't care about issue'. Though, shorts at least get refreshed/rotated more often then the stupid suggestions.
owlboy•30m ago
I desperately want someone to interview someone at YouTube and directly ask about this bullshit and get them to say it’s all in the name of increasing watch time at all costs.
wincy•1h ago
For April Fools Sega released an (actual, real) “Sanic the Hedgeheg” t-shirt and I wanted to see if there was anything about it on YouTube. YouTube assumed I meant “sonic” and it was impossible to correct it and say “no I’m actually searching for this dumb meme”. It just assumes everyone who uses YouTube is really dumb I guess. (I bought the shirt by the way and am excited to get it lol)
msephton•1h ago
Just put the term in quotes "sanic the hedgeheg" ignore the suggestions and press enter to see the real results.
thfuran•1h ago
Google no longer cares much about quotes. Sometimes it’ll take them seriously and sometimes not.
QuantumNomad_•1h ago
I was curious after reading your comment and searched for sanic meme tshirt in the YouTube app. One result looked highly relevant, posted 4 days ago. It was a short, not a normal video mind you. Titled Official “Sanic” merchandise and having a picture of sanic and some dude’s face. Most of the rest of the results were from different dates, several ranging to years ago. But a lot of those other ones seemed to be about meme sanic as well at least.

I didn’t click on any of them to verify, lest YouTube decides that it should replace my whole YouTube home page with sonic fandom and sanic memes :P

john01dav•13m ago
I just put this into YouTube search and got results that contraindicate your claim¹:

> "sanic" the hedgehog

The quotes seem to shut down autocorrect

1: there's nothing that I see about the T-shirt, but the first result is titled "Sanic DA hedgeh0g". I will not be looking at what this video is. Several other results also include the word "sanic" in relation to the hedgehog.

VenezuelaFree•1h ago
Search is the reason I stopped watching youtube, I used to view and discover so many nice stuff in there, tutorials, new hobbies, new music, new creators with different interests, etc but now it's pretty much impossible to find, you are forced to watch the 3 top videos, some 3 ads and then it forces you to watch some other random unrelated crap, it's so annoying and frustrating

It got so bad that even searching the full tittle of the video doesnt show you that video haha

gsky•1h ago
on top of that it pushes worst creators (who are the biggest thanks to yt) content.
tyrust•37m ago
> you are forced to watch the 3 top videos, some 3 ads and then it forces you to watch some other random unrelated crap, it's so annoying and frustrating

Brother, you are the one choosing the videos.

wswope•24m ago
Exactly the sort of user hostility I’d expect from a google employee. Shameful.

Maybe if practical tools such as like-ratios were in place users could sort good content from bad.

jijji•12m ago
The search filters and the user interface in general on YouTube is garbage. you guys need to go back to the drawing board. it really is almost impossible to find a video, you have to sort through hundreds of AI slop clickbait videos in order to get to the one that you're actually interested in finding.
adito•11m ago
What got me really mad is searching your own history. There's this "search watch history" on the https://www.youtube.com/feed/history

I remember watching video that contains certain word in the title. A minecraft contraption from a small channel (4 videos, 93 subs). I searched that word in the title. But youtube can't find it. Fortunately, I saved the world download that listed in the video with the name of the channel. So I searched the channel name + the word, it still can't find it.

So I searched only the channel name instead, in the search page. It works, and checking their videos, youtube mark one of them as watched. With the exact same title I searched. But it didn't show me in the history search. WTF youtube.

ddtaylor•1h ago
If anyone has a good solution to YouTube destroying all value of the Subscriptions page I am open ears. Until recently my consumption of YT was basically to go to my subscriptions page and see what new content had been released since I last watched YT.
atomicfiredoll•1h ago
Things like FreeTube and NewPipe let you keep a subscription list, even if you watch the videos elsewhere.

Using them can be a pain with the whole cat and mouse thing, but at least it's something (for now... I wouldn't be shocked if google was partially gunning for projects like NewPipe specifically with the Android app installation changes.)

loveparade•1h ago
You could manage your subscriptions in an RSS reader, that's what I used to do. Each channel has multiple RSS feeds associated with it for different types of videos (live, vod, etc).
jeffbee•1h ago
That's ... exactly what the subscriptions feed does right now?
ddtaylor•37m ago
The subscriptions page was changed about a month ago. It now shows the videos in the top as "Relevant", which includes a list of videos from the ~12 days that are being suggested to you. After that is a real list of chronologically ordered videos, but videos are not listed twice. This means if the video appears in the first list (as "relevant") then it will not be shown in the second list.

The end result is that the subscriptions page now shows videos "in order", but the order is wrong. My current subscription page shows a video from 14 hours ago, then a video from 9 days ago, then one from 5 days ago, then 6 days ago, and then 1 day ago.

Honestly, I feel like `yt-dlp` does a better job of this with this command:

    yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser chrome --flat-playlist https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions
deadbeef7f•31m ago
My subscription feed now has a row of 3 videos labeled "priority", then a row of 3 videos labeled "latest", then a row of "Shorts," then it appears to continue on with the "latest" but there's no label.

This is from memory so I may have got something wrong. And I could be an A/B test subject as this has been new as of a few weeks. There's also a "More..." fold or two in there.

This pattern does not represent how I use the product. I do not watch shorts and I don't know how or why they mark things as a priority. I want to know what's newest and the time ordered list being deprioritized in the UI and fractured makes that worse.

try-working•1h ago
you can use lurkkit.com to build your own chronological youtube feed with only your subscriptions
insin•21m ago
This is also the way I use YouTube and is the main thing I made Control Panel for YouTube [1] for (well, that plus globally hiding Shorts and removing all the unwanted recommendations everywhere) - my Subscriptions page acts like an inbox of unwatched videos and everything else is hidden (most recently: the new "Most relevant" section and "Collaborations" videos with channels I'm not subscribed to).

My Subscriptions page currently has 15 videos above the fold, 5 of which are from the last 12 hours. The oldest video in that first page is 2 weeks old, and if I turn the extension off I need to press Page Down 17 times to reach it in the vanilla YouTube interface.

[1] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube

loveparade•1h ago
The whole Youtube experience has gotten so bad over the years. I love the youtube content, but I wish I didn't have to deal with the UI/UX and recommendations that the YT app forces on me.

Annoying Shorts. I'm trying to keep my watch history clean to "steer" recommendations, but YT keeps adding things to it that I didn't actually watch just because I happened to hover my mouse over a video, etc.

owlboy•35m ago
They see those hovers as attention. And they likely calculate how long you linger. The lingering tells them a lot when you are infinite scrolling on other platforms.

They would love to have full on eye tracking. So the next best thing is a cursor. (Even though I’d agreed with anyone who says it’s a poor signal.)

macintux•20m ago
I’m suddenly grateful that I use my iPad, so they can’t use that signal on me.
6thbit•1h ago
I still can’t believe they don’t let you search videos within a channel for example.

Or filter out music playlist from video ones.

Or search within transcripts.

It’s peak irony a company owned by the search overlord.

gbnwl•1h ago
You can search videos within a channel, go to the channel page and look for the magnifying glass all the way at the end of the nav bar that has

Home | Videos | Shorts | Playlists | Posts | *Magnifying glass here*

Well at least in browser its there, I can't find it on mobile for whatever reason.

eieio•1h ago
I made a little TUI last month for searching within a channel! It supports before: / after:, fuzzy/exact/regex matching, lets you order by upload date/views/duration, lets you search over just a video's titles or descriptions, etc: https://github.com/nolenroyalty/yt-browse

The vast majority of my youtube watching is "go to a specific channel and try to find a certain kind of video" so it drives me nuts that youtube channel search is so bad (and afaik you can't search a channel on mobile?). I end up using my tool to find a bunch of videos and get them into my history to watch on my ipad.

n.b. my tool downloads all video metadata for a channel and then searches over it locally, so it's pretty slow the first time you search a channel (results are cached for 24 hours though).

userbinator•1h ago
It’s peak irony a company owned by the search overlord.

...whose search engine has itself become noticeably less of a search engine and more of a recommendation/sheeple-herding engine over time.

nothercastle•44m ago
Google of today would absolutely get steamrolled by any of the search engines it used to compete against. Now granted the web of today is mostly a toxic waste pile vs more of a cluttered basement back then.
KomoD•59m ago
> I still can’t believe they don’t let you search videos within a channel for example.

Uh, yeah, they do.

https://www.youtube.com/@PuddleOfMuddTV/search?query=blurry

> Or search within transcripts.

Yeah, I also wish this were possible using the normal CTRL+F just doesn't work properly

extraduder_ire•47m ago
I've had ctrl+f work for searching within the transcript on the page recently. I assumed it wouldn't due to lazy loading, but was surprised because the video I tried it on was quite long.

filmot.com exists too (found it on here, currently can't get past the cloudflare captcha to double check), but I have no idea how much of youtube's transcripts it has archived.

dbbk•1h ago
It works perfectly fine.
throw7•1h ago
Just asking: Is there an open source project that I can self-host that can organize my current subscriptions into separate groups/categories and make things easy to view/hide/digest?

Many moons ago, I could hover and hide a video I didn't want to see in my feed with a single click. Best UX user feature evar... it was gone in a week or two I feel.

I'm kinda ashamed to say I have multiple youtube accounts to keep my sanity, but yeah.

dugite-code•1h ago
Yes any RSS reader works for this task.

There are two types of channel RSS feeds

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<CHANNEL_ID>

And the older

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=<username>

Youtube used to have an opml export button but there are a few github projects that convert the youtube subscription csv that dumps out of the account data export.

Edit: If you want to filter out shorts using the selfhosted application rssbridge allows you to do this.

throw7•54m ago
ok thanks!, i never knew there was an rss feed for each channel/users... that does open up solutions.
SilverElfin•1h ago
Really wish there was an alternative. Especially to the manipulation of it all by YouTube (demonetization and other tactics).
perching_aix•1h ago
Author must clearly never use porn sites like xvideos or PornHub, if they think YouTube's search is what "barely works".
cj00•1h ago
Yeah searching your history is so terrible too I ended up making a custom database that takes the also horrible Takeout output and parses it into a SQLite db. I end up relying on it when I remember some video I started watching weeks ago but can’t remember where it was anymore.
owlboy•29m ago
Do you automate your takeout so the DB is relatively fresh?
RRRA•1h ago
Yeah the only reason I still use YouTube is because μBlock Origin still works great.
storus•1h ago
Cable TV->enshittification->YouTube to the rescue->enshittification->???
phyzix5761•57m ago
I want to be able to search youtube videos for specific content. Like a middle aged man talking about football who is wearing a light blue shirt and holding a sports bottle. With AI we should be able to do that but maybe the compute cost is currently too high. I envision it sort of like a SQL for video search.
moralestapia•56m ago
YouTube search went to absolute trash, same as Gmail, same as Google the search engine.

Many time I search for a video I know the title of, letter by letter, in quotes, and it does not show up (at least in the first 50 or so results). Sometimes I think the video might have been deleted, only to find it out later in my bookmarks and realizing this is not the case.

Crazy how them being fundamental to what we all know as "the web" nowadays, allows them to get away with being extremely mediocre and oblivious to user's needs.

storus•45m ago
I am forced to use Yandex just to find stuff Google or DDG never shows anymore.
carefree-bob•42m ago
Interesting. Do you have some examples?
jdprgm•39m ago
Yeah Youtube search is mediocre, though I feel like search has broadly declined across the entire web on all sorts of apps and services I use. Not to mention all the actual "search engines" feeling less and less powerful every year. I don't get it.
BoppreH•22m ago
YouTube search is one of those services that is pointlessly hostile. Most recently, they've removed the "order by upload date" filter, and changed the way that blurring works. Previously, sensitive videos had blurred thumbnails and a toggle to remove the blur (even though it had no way to never blur). Now the UI looks the same, but the "toggle" reloads the page without any filters, and adding a filter re-blurs them. So it's impossible to filter results and see unblurred thumbnails.

These changes baffle me. It's not even enshittification because I cannot see any benefit to YouTube at all.

zmmmmm•22m ago
This is much needed. It says so much that "Title includes" is an advanced search .... I really wonder what a basic search is.

My pet peeve: no way to filter on language. Once you hit obscure enough content, you start getting videos back in languages you can't understand. With no way to filter them out. So frustrating. Would be great to add that here. Assuming it even exists in the metadata.

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