How to Make Your YouTube Video Private

Last Updated: February 16, 2023

YouTube is a great service for sharing your videos with the world. However, it is also a great way of sharing videos with friends and family, for their eyes only. Start with step one to find out how to make your video private.

Steps

1
Log in to your YouTube account. You will find yourself on the home page, with a list of recommendations.
2
Go to the sidebar on YouTube. You will see all the people you subscribe to, and your library of playlists. Go to the top of the list, and just under "Home" click "My Channel".

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3
Go to your channel. You will see your uploaded video. Just above your channel art and your profile picture (if you have any of those), you will see your number of subscribers and your number of views overall, and then next to that, the third option will be "Video Manager". Click "Video Manager"
4
Find yourself in your Creator Studio. On the sidebar, where it is now your Creator Studio, click the "Video Manger" button there just under "Dashboard" and you will see two options under "Video Manager" which is "Videos" and "Playlists". Make sure you are on "Videos".
5
Find the video you want to make private. Then look along the tab of the video, and on the right side you will see a blue globe icon which stands for "public". Click on it.
6
Scroll down and below the video you will see a button that says "Public". Click on "Public" and you will get a drop-down list of options, and the three options are "Public", "Unlisted" and "Private". Click "Private"
7
Go to the very bottom of the options and click "Save Changes". Congratulations, your video is now private!

Community Q&A

Question

How do you set up certain emails that can view the video?

Community Answer

You can do this in your channel's dashboard for an existing video or right when uploading a new video. When you click "Share Privately" you just type the email addresses of the people who you want to see the video.
Question

How do you give access to those you want to be able to see the private video?

Community Answer

Go to your channel's dashboard and click "Videos" in the sidebar to the left. Change the video's visibility level to "private" and type their email addresses in the box. They will get a notification in their inbox that has the link to the video. That's the only way someone can view a private video.
Question

Is there a way to add comments on a private video?

Community Answer

No. Private videos don't have a comment section and there's no setting to change that. There's no way to add comments to a private video even with the certain people you shared it with. If you want comments on a video that's not available to the public, change the video settings to unlisted.

Warnings

This is how to change your video from public to private, so the video that you are going to make private must be already uploaded and public.

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