TubeVault Preserving YouTube's early history
  1. TubeVault
  2. Overview
    1. Features
      1. Hide View Count
      2. Channel Hiding
      3. noindex
      4. Recommend Itself
      5. Redirects
    2. Validation
      1. Channel IDs
      2. Incremental IDs
      3. Video IDs

Channel Hiding

There are two ways to hide a channel on YouTube - /youtubeoptions and the Channel Visibility feature.

/youtubeoptions

This feature is available for all channels that are not tied to a Brand Account. When a channel is hidden in this way, the channel page claims that it does not exist, however visiting any of the channel's videos would show that they are set as private. It's been suspected that a channel cannot be suspended when it is in this hidden state.

To unhide the channel, you have to create a new channel, and this action will restore the channel.

Channel Visibility

Until 2012, every channel used to be able to be able to hide their channel with this. However, in October 2012, YouTube sent out a notice to all "invisible"/hidden channels urging them to re-enable their channel. Today, channels that remained hidden kept the feature.

At some point recently, this feature was enabled for channels with high sub/view counts. Channels hidden using this feature in the past did not have the videos set to private. As a result, their videos are still viewable. However, the channel description and comments do not load, leaving a floating video player:

Channels hidden using Channel Visibility can still be resolved to their display name and profile picture, as well as listing all of their public videos using certain YouTube API endpoints.