Playlists

Bulk operations on YouTube playlists from the terminal. YouTube Studio is fine for tweaking one playlist; this set of commands is for the cases where you want to add a search query's worth of videos at once, reorder by views, or sync a manifest across many channels.

List and inspect

ytstudio playlists list                                  # your playlists
ytstudio playlists list -n 200 -o json                   # 200, JSON
ytstudio playlists list -o csv > playlists.csv           # export

ytstudio playlists show PL_xxx                           # one playlist
ytstudio playlists show PL_xxx --items                   # plus the first 50 items
ytstudio playlists items PL_xxx                          # full item listing
ytstudio playlists items PL_xxx -n 500 -o csv            # paginated CSV

list sorts locally with --sort date|title|count. items shows the playlist item id (PLPLI...) you need for remove --item and reorder.

Create, update, delete

ytstudio playlists create --title "Best of 2026" --privacy public --execute
ytstudio playlists update PL_xxx --title "Best of 2026 (final)" --execute
ytstudio playlists delete PL_xxx --execute              # asks to confirm
ytstudio playlists delete PL_xxx --execute --yes        # no prompt (CI / agents)

Mutations are dry-run by default; add --execute to apply. update only sends the fields you pass; everything else is re-specified from the current snippet so YouTube does not silently nuke a field by omitting it.

The channel's auto-uploads playlist (UU... belonging to your channel) is always refused. The check resolves the canonical uploads id via channels.list(mine=True).contentDetails.relatedPlaylists.uploads, so a random other playlist id that happens to start with UU is not blocked.

Bulk add

add accepts explicit video ids, a search query, or both. The combined batch is capped by --limit.

ytstudio playlists add PL_xxx -v vid_a -v vid_b --execute
ytstudio playlists add PL_xxx --from-search "shorts compilation" -n 20 --execute
ytstudio playlists add PL_xxx -v vid_a --from-search "topic" -n 10 --execute
ytstudio playlists add PL_xxx -v vid_a -v vid_b --position 5 --execute

--from-search calls search.list(forMine=True, type=video, q=...). --position N inserts the first video at position N, the second at N+1, and so on, so the on-playlist order matches the CLI order. --note "text" attaches a per-item note.

Quota cost

playlistItems.insert costs 50 quota units per video. The default daily quota (10 000 units) covers ~200 inserts. search.list costs an additional 100 units per call. See API quota.

Bulk remove

ytstudio playlists remove PL_xxx --item PLPLI_a --item PLPLI_b --execute
ytstudio playlists remove PL_xxx --video vid_a --execute

--video resolves to every playlist item for that video in the playlist and removes all occurrences; pass the same id once even if it appears multiple times.

Reorder

reorder sorts the playlist by views, likes, publish date, or title.

ytstudio playlists reorder PL_xxx --by views --execute
ytstudio playlists reorder PL_xxx --by title --order asc --execute

The playlist must be set to Manual sort in YouTube Studio (Settings -> Sort by -> Manual). If it is not, YouTube returns manualSortRequired and the command stops with an actionable message.

Writes that become no-ops once earlier moves have shifted neighbouring items are skipped, so a full reverse on N items costs at most N - 1 writes instead of N.

Output formats

All read commands take --output table|json|csv. CSV uses Python's csv.writer, so titles with commas, newlines, or quotes survive round-trips through Excel and pandas.read_csv.

Recipes

# Build a themed playlist from a search
ytstudio playlists add PL_rust --from-search "rust async" -n 30 --execute

# Move the all-time top by views to the front
ytstudio playlists reorder PL_pinned --by views --execute

# Promote a single video to the top of an existing playlist
ytstudio playlists add PL_pinned -v <video-id> --position 0 --execute