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I was wondering if anyone knows a way to find out when a YouTube livestream started. I've tried googling around but can't seem to find a solution. Of course I can see the date of the stream, but I'm trying to figure out a way to see when it began exactly. I am not the content owner. Thanks!

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  • Note: this question was previously asked here, but was closed as off-topic. Per a commenter's recommendation, it looks like the author then asked on Super User, but that question was then migrated here.
    – V2Blast
    Commented Oct 1, 2023 at 0:37

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To get this information you can currently open up the JavaScript console on the stream's page and type in the following:

window.ytInitialPlayerResponse.microformat.playerMicroformatRenderer.liveBroadcastDetails.startTimestamp

This will print out a timestamp for the start of the stream like the following:

'2024-03-30T01:01:28+00:00'

Note that this has +00:00 baked into it meaning it is in GMT rather than local time.

Caveats

This information is populated when youtube first loads its player so it is recommended that you open the link you want in a new tab before doing this. When navigating around youtube it skips updating this variable when loading other videos.

Also note this approach is unlikely to be stable for too long. When it stops working at some point you can try looking around at the global variables that have the word "player" in their names. That is how I found this info.

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