Ed Zitron diagnosed the causes and timing of the rot:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

to play devil's advocate, personalizing does get results the user more often wants

I've been using Kagi since February and it's been superb. I typically find what I need in the first 5 results and the ability to customize it is really nice.

It costs a little money, but honestly it's saved me so much time over the 12,000 or so searches I've conducted that it's worth it. Previously I'd sometimes have to hit up some combination of Google, Bing, DDG, Brave, etc. just to get somewhere.

I've been using Startpage for a few years. Uses Google and Bing as sources I think, but it's been usable for my simple use cases.

Kagi is the real deal, but it costs money. You get what you pay for.

I use Ecosia (which uses Bing results) and it seems decent, although I haven't used Google or DDG in a while so I can't compare.

It's going to destroy so many businesses. Imagine when only one software company can afford that ad? Or one real estate agent. Or one shoe repairer. It's a literal bidding war for the one and only answer / result. It's despicable.

I'll click on the link you sent me, and start reading carefully, trying to find the answer. Here's how it went. I am not faking or deliberately trying any wrong things here. I'm just grabbing the most central solution it's presenting me on any given page, and trying it.

Here's the progress:

or those who come across this after the latest Data API revision (31st January, 2024), they provided the forHandle query parameter to get data of a handle/username. You can refer to this answer for details here: stackoverflow.com/a/78074066/2665606 – Saqib Ahmed Commented Feb 29 at 10:01

Cool. I click on that question.

YouTube released a revision on 31st January 2024 to add a forHandle parameter in the channel list API that does exactly what OP asks.

You can call the channel list API with forHandle to get the channel ID and the upload playlist for that user/handle that you can subsequently use to fetch the videos.

GET https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels

Query parameters:

forHandle=FolkartTr OR @FolkartTr OR %40FolkartTr (this allows the '@' sign as well as URL encoding of it) key= part=contentDetails

Cool.

$ wget -O - https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels\?forHandle=Lindybeige
--2024-10-01 01:19:52--  https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?forHandle=Lindybeige
Resolving www.googleapis.com (www.googleapis.com)... 2a00:1450:4009:822::200a, 2a00:1450:4009:826::200a, 2a00:1450:4009:823::200a, ...
Connecting to www.googleapis.com (www.googleapis.com)|2a00:1450:4009:822::200a|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
2024-10-01 01:19:52 ERROR 403: Forbidden.

Oh. I need an API key. Okay, that one's useless.

I read another answer.

If I understood correctly, your problem is that you can't do anything from such a c/ channel id with the Channels: list of the YouTube Data API v3. If you're just looking for the channel id linked to this id then because as YouTube Data API v3 doesn't work for this, I would recommend you to use my open-source YouTube operational API, indeed by requesting https://yt.lemnoslife.com/channels?cId=FolkartTr you'll receive a JSON with id equals to the channel id linked to the provided cId value.

That means nothing to me.

I hit back. We're back at the original page you linked me to:

To obtain the channel id you can view the source code of the channel page and find either data-channel-external-id="UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg" or "externalId":"UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg".

UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg will be the channel ID you are looking for.

Already covered. It doesn't work.

An easy answer is, your YouTube Channel ID is UC + {YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID}. To be sure of your YouTube Channel ID or your YouTube account ID, access the advanced settings at your settings page

And if you want to know the YouTube Channel ID for any channel, you could use the solution @mjlescano gave.

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?key={YOUR_API_KEY}&forUsername={USER_NAME}&part=id If this could be of any help, some user marked it was solved in another topic right here.

Are you getting sick of reading these? So am I! I want to remind that DDG gave me the answer at the top of the page, as a tool that would solve the problem for me.

At any channel page with "user" url for example http://www.youtube.com/user/klauskkpm, without API call, from YouTube UI, click a video of the channel (in its "VIDEOS" tab) and click the channel name on the video. Then you can get to the page with its "channel" url for example https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfjTOrCPnAblTngWAzpnlMA.

Edit:

Above is not working any more. But we can open Developer Tools (cmd + option + I) and try to find the URL there. Search by channel_id for some channels, it will show you, but NOT for all the channels.

By the way, if this is your own channel -- you can go here https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/channels/list and make request with part snippet and mine true.

Oh, I found this answer. Thank you, just works!

Edit:

Just in case you need UC channel id of any channel by the "YouTube handle", you can also use 'API Explorer' on the right of this page https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/channels/list and enter forHandle with your 'API key' (let me share screenshots below)

Sure, let's try the Cmd+Option+I solution.

Hey! Look at that. www.youtube.com wants to use my microphone. I can:

• Allow while visiting this site
• Allow this time
• Never allow

I think we're done here. For all I know I would have been able to find it in the network tab of developer tools while searching for the channel, but I think the point is made. I didn't say that the answer didn't exist anywhere on SO, I said that the things I was trying because either Google or SO were telling me they were the answer were not working.

Edit: I reread your comment and got confused. For me, the screenshot you're showing has 26 points, and shows up below all of the answers that I showed above, which have 259, 79, 32, and 30 points respectively. How many points does it have on your page, to show as the second highest answer? I didn't deliberately stop reading right before the answer. I absolutely made a sincere effort to find the answer on that page, documenting my progress as I went.

Weirdly channel pages don't seem to have that About tab for me, had to click More... on the channel description to get a popup thing where you could then share the channel and get Channel ID as described in your steps

In fact, that's what the second SO answer says.

Edit: See comment below

It's search. I'm copy-pasting the content going down from the top of the page, adding my own commentary.