So, you’re looking to move your YouTube subscriptions from one account to another? Maybe you’ve got a new Google account or just want to consolidate everything under one roof. It’s definitely a pain to re-subscribe to all those channels manually, so here’s how you can transfer them using a third-party tool called Subscriptions Importer for YouTube.
Getting your list of subscriptions
First, you’ll need a list of all the channels you’re currently subscribed to. To do this, you’ll download your Google data using Google Takeout.
- Open your browser and go to the Google Takeout page.
- Sign in with the Google account that holds your YouTube subscriptions.
- You’ll see a list of all your Google data. Click “Deselect all”.
4. Scroll down, find, and select “YouTube and YouTube Music”. Then, click on “All YouTube data included”.
5. In the window that pops up, deselect everything except “Subscriptions”, and click “OK”.
6. Click on “Next step”.
7. Make sure that “Send download link via email” is selected under “Transfer to” and that the “File type” is “.zip”.
8. Click “Create export” at the bottom right.
9. You’ll get an email with a download link. Download the .zip file; you may need to verify your identity first.
Getting the subscription URLs ready
Now that you have downloaded your Google data, let’s get your subscription list prepared for import.
- Open your file explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) and go to where you downloaded the file. Extract the Google Takeout .zip file.
2. Inside, you’ll find a
subscriptions.csv file. Open this file using a program like Microsoft Excel.
3. This file has three columns: Channel ID, Channel URL, and Channel Title. You only need the “Channel URL” column.
4. Delete the “Channel ID” and “Channel Title” columns. This will make it easy to copy the URLs.
Transferring subscriptions
Alright, you’re ready to move those subscriptions to your other YouTube account.
- Go to the Chrome Web Store and install the Subscriptions Importer extension. Make sure you pin the extension to your Chrome toolbar for easy access.
2. Open the .csv file and copy the channel URLs. The free version of the extension only allows 50 channels at a time, so copy only 50 URLs at a time if you have a large number of subscriptions.
3. Now, open Chrome and sign in to the YouTube account where you want to move the subscriptions.
4. Click on the Subscriptions Importer extension and make sure you’re on the “Importer” tab.
5. Scroll down, paste the copied URLs in the box provided and click “Import”.
6. The extension will open the pasted URLs in new tabs and subscribe to the channels automatically. It’ll also let you know if it can’t subscribe to any channels, so you can manually subscribe.
7. Once the process is done, head to your YouTube Subscriptions page to confirm.
Things to consider
- The free version of Subscriptions Importer limits you to 50 channels per import, so you might need to repeat the process if you have more subscriptions.
- Upgrading to the premium version removes this limit and lets you import directly from a .csv file. It also allows you to choose specific channels during import.
- The free version is slower compared to the premium one.
- Subscriptions Importer is an open-source extension, so you can check out its source code on its GitHub page if you’re curious.