How to Watch Deleted Youtube Videos

If you are looking for a video online, chances are you will search for it on YouTube. YouTube is, by far, the largest streaming site on the internet. People upload all kinds of videos on the platform to entertain and inform viewers as well as make some money. But while you can get any video you want, that is not always the case. In some cases, you may find that a video you watched some few minutes ago is no longer available. YouTube may have deleted it or the channel that uploaded it may have removed the file. That means you will have to figure out how to watch deleted YouTube videos in another way.

Figuring out how to watch deleted YouTube videos may sound impossible. Although it may be to some extent, the whole process is easy. One thing to understand is that nothing on the internet gets deleted. One reason is that database administrators rarely use the delete function. Instead, they use the “hide” function.

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So, when a channel requests YouTube to delete a video, the service removes the file from its searches. But that data is still there. By using the delete function, this will force the DBAs to re-index the whole database. Since such databases can be large, it can cause several challenges that can slow down some systems to make them inoperable for some time. That is why it is possible to watch deleted YouTube videos through the methods explained below. But if YouTube removed the video from its servers, you will never watch it.

1. Use Internet Archive Wayback Machine

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is the largest digital archive of the World Wide Web. It is the centre of information where you can get any data uploaded on the internet. As a digital archive, it uses advanced software to crawl the web and download publicly accessible WWW pages. The software almost works the same as Google, which crawls websites to index them on its search engine.

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Since it caches web content, it becomes easier for you to watch videos on Wayback Machine. That can also happen even if the content is no longer available on YouTube's public platform. The machine will allow you to:

  • View the older version(s) of YouTube
  • Find the title of deleted YouTube video
  • Download files that existed on the live YouTube page
  • See a summary of the website
  • Add a page to the machine
  • View website changes between two different dates

To use the machine to find deleted YouTube videos, follow the steps below.

  • Go to archive.org
  • Enter the URL of the deleted file into the search field labelled "Enter URL or keywords.”
  • Press Enter on your keyboard to display the results

The results will display in the form of a calendar or bar graph. The calendar view maps the number of times the machine crawled the link or the website you provided. It is a number that does not depict how many times YouTube updated its website.

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  • Click on any link on the calendars or a date. You will see a small blue circle around the dates. A circle means the machine has a snapshot of the website you are looking for.
  • After clicking on the date, the tool will display an archived version of the YouTube link you provided.
  • If there is an error, go back and click on a different date if available.

Sometimes YouTube deletes videos immediately a user uploads it. The site may take such a move if it violates its copyright terms, among other reasons. Also, they may delete it upon request from the person uploading it.

In such cases, you may not find URL of a deleted YouTube video if the Wayback Machine has not archived it. Also, it will be impossible to retrieve the file if the site cannot archive it.

You will also notice that the deleted video is available on the Wayback Machine, but it is not playing. In this case, the solution is to use Internet Download Manager. IDM allows you to download videos from any streaming website. In simple terms, you will download any video on any site as long as you have the IDM software or plugin. Therefore, install the software to allow you to download the deleted YouTube video from Wayback Machine.

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2. Check on other video hosting sites

In some cases, YouTube may have removed the video you are trying to watch because it has breached its terms. When that happens, the user or the channel that uploaded the video may decide to upload it on other similar sites like Dailymotion, Vimeo, and 9Gag. Therefore, go to any of those channels and search the title. If you are lucky, you will watch a video YouTube deleted from its platform.

Marcus Vance

Marcus Vance

Cybersecurity & Digital Privacy Researcher

Marcus Vance is a cybersecurity auditor and technology writer dedicated to educating the public about online safety, data privacy regulations, enterprise security, and emerging cyber threats.

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