Web Applications Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for power users of web applications. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
The YouTube watch page can accept a staggeringly high number of parameters, but various Google searches on the topic only resulted in every blogger and their dog announcing the #t quasi-parameter for linking to a specific moment.
Is there an at least partial but official documentation on the parameters www.youtube.com/watch accepts?
An attempt to provide the basic queries available for YouTube urls.
Usage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?[Queries]
v=
The v parameter specifies the VIDEO_ID. This field contains an 11-character value that YouTube uses to uniquely identify a video. You can find the video ID for a video in the URL of the web page where you watch that video.
&list=[LIST_ID]
The list parameter specifies the playlist ID when watching a video from a playlist. Entering the ID of a playlist that this video isn't in results in the second video of the playlist getting played next, except if index is given.
There are some special playlist IDs, for example WL for the watch later list and RDMM for the personal music mix (mixes are a special form of playlists).
&index=[INDEX_NO]
The index of the played video in the playlist. Usually causes the video with index+1 getting played next, but there are some special cases when removing videos from the playlist overview on the side or modifying the playlist in other ways while it's being played.
&fmt=
The fmt parameter specifies the return format for the video resolution
&t=
The t parameter allows for deep-linking in the form of #t=1m15s
&hl=
The hl parameter prompts the user(host) to a specific the indicated language
Chinese (Traditional) &hl=zh-TW
Czech &hl=cs-CZ
Dutch &hl=nl-NL
English (Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand) &hl=en-GB
English (United States and Canada)* default value &hl=en-US
French &hl=fr-FR
German &hl=de-DE
Italian &hl=it-IT
Japanese &hl=ja-JP
Korean &hl=ko-KR
Polish &hl=pl-PL
Portuguese (Brazil) &hl=pt-BR
Russian &hl=ru-RU
Spanish (Spain) &hl=es-ES
Spanish (Mexico) &hl=es-MX
Swedish &hl=sv-SE
&gclid=
The gclid parameter is used in auto-tagging for Google Ad Words and will show up in the landing page URL when a user arrives at the page from the ad.
&feature=
The feature parameter is assigned within Youtube to describe certain videos and where display
&feature=watch_response
Any videos in response to a video will have this parameter linked to it. (Assigned within youtube)
&feature=watch_response_rev
The reverse of the above. The "child" video page will have a link to the "parent" page (Assigned within youtube)
&feature=pyv
Promoted Youtube Video (pyv) on a watch page (Must be entered within Google AdWords Editor destination url)
?feature=pyv
Promoted Youtube Video (pyv) on a channel page (Must be entered within Google AdWords Editor destination url)
&kw=
The kw parameter is an indication of keyword insertion. Keyword insertion is an advanced feature that can help make an ad more relevant to a diverse audience. Each time the ad shows, AdWords will automatically replace the code with the keyword that triggered the ad. (Must be entered within Google AdWords Editor destination url)
Unfinished section
&ad= Advertisement Id assigned to an advertisement ?
&feature=recent_shows
&feature=recentu
&feature=recentlik Recently Liked ?
&feature=spotlight
&feature=related
&feature=channel
&feature=branded
&feature=aso
&feature=sub
&feature=fvw
&feature=fvwk
&feature=fvhl
&feature=BF
&feature=topvideos
&feature=more_related
&feature=list_related
&feature=player_embedded
&feature=artistob
&feature=youtu.be
&playnext=[1 or 0]
&list=QL Queue List ?
&shuffle=
&videos=
&playnext_from=
&force_ap=
Sources
Linking directly to a specific point in time of a YouTube video
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2008/10/link-to-best-parts-in-your-videos.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Quality_and_codecs
http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#Localized_Category_Lists
http://www.google.com/support/adwordseditor/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=57752
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74996
index and list parameters. The index will be a simple integer. The list parameter just points to the playlist itself. The shuffle parameter is kind of interesting. It's an integer that somehow encodes the order of the sorted items. But a long playlist could have a huge number of possible sort orders (n! I believe). I believe YouTube uses the shuffle parameter in a sorting algorithm. The page breaks with a 500 error if you put a very large number, so they are not sanitizing input on that param. Whoops.
– Buttle Butkus
Dec 28 '16 at 2:16
Since Youtube removed the button to show all the videos from an uploader, this might come in useful.
If you use the parameter &list=UL you'll get a playlist with all the uploaded videos from that particular channel.
That's very useful when you're watching though older videos, and don't want to have to go to the channel and click "show more" a bunch of times every time you'll want to resume from where you got to.
This way you can bookmark the page and resume from that point later. The parameter watch?v=[VIDEO_ID] defines where you've gotten to in the playlist.
Example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=[VIDEO_ID]&list=UL
While this works well, it doesn't always show the videos in the "publish" order you see when looking at the channel's video list normally. Often, for example, a series of videos can play in reverse order when using it. This is possibly because &list=UL sorts the videos in strict upload order, while many channels upload videos ahead of time and schedule their publish times independently.
You can also use the &stereo=0 or &stereo=1 to define if you want to hear the video in stereo (1) or in mono (0).
