If you have lots of YouTube uploads, managing them becomes a real issue, as YouTube seriously lacks in obvious bulk operations.
You may have seen a couple of videos where I show how to make your own scripts to manage YouTube videos in bulk. Unfortunately, YouTube changes UI layout quite often, so those scripts stop to work and you have to create them again and again. So I turned to third party means like this site. It has a script to bulk manage annotations in videos. Even though it does was it is supposed to do, there are still a lot of tiny configurations you need to apply, which may not be feasible if you have hundreds of uploads like I do. And then I stumbled across this little treasure – YouTube Annotations website, which recently launched their own plugin named TubeBuddy. Go to the TubeBuddy website, wait while it checks for the plugin and install one if needed. All major browsers are supported. Now you will have to restart the browser, go back to TubeBuddy website and allow TubeBuddy access to your YouTube channel. Yes, surprisingly TubeBuddy is not a plugin per se, not a standalone app, which runs locally and independently. It only works in conjunction with TubeBuddy website. When you connect the channel, TubeBuddy will automatically create an account for you, linked to the channel’s email account. If you ever decide to uninstall TubeBuddy, do not forget to revoke TubeBuddy access in Google account settings, just in case. So now you are all set and ready, and just open Your Videos at YouTube. And nothing changes, though it should. The FAQ page says nothing about that, so I had to discover for myself why the TubeBuddy plugin doesn’t work on my channel. Turned out I was accessing YouTube via plain http, while TubeBuddy only works via https. So just add the s in the address bar, and now we talking – you can see all the new icons added by TubeBuddy. TubeBuddy has a few features, and they regularly add new ones. Personally I like the copy tags function – a feature that was removed by YouTube for some reason. I also enjoyed the bulk mass copy of annotations from one video to multiple others. It took TubeBuddy about 20 minutes to process 1666 uploads, while I had my sandwich and tea. If I copied 1666 annotations manually it probably would take me an eternity. Most of the features are free, there is a limitation on mass operations with a few trials, after which you either have to subscribe for paid account or join TubeBuddy MCN to get unlimited access. In general, I really like TubeBuddy, mostly for the lack of alternative. I would like to see a similar plugin, but standalone.