Free toolYouTube metadata viewer.The exact publish time, and everything else.
Paste a YouTube link: we read the video from the YouTube Data API and show every public field, with YouTube's values unchanged. The exact publish time in UTC and in your time zone, live start and end, views, likes and comments, every thumbnail size with reverse image search, country blocks, age and made-for-kids flags, topics and the raw JSON. Some call it a YouTube data viewer. Free, no sign-up.
Videos, Shorts and live streams. Free, no sign-up.
The metadata comes from YouTube, through the YouTube Data API. By using this tool you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service.
Publishing
- Published
- 2026-04-01 23:43:37 UTCWhen it went public, which isn't always when it was uploaded
- How it came out
- Live stream or premiere, now ended
- Visibility
- Public
- Live, scheduled for
- 2026-04-01 17:00:00 UTC
- Live, started
- 2026-04-01 16:58:21 UTC
- Live, ended
- 2026-04-01 23:21:01 UTC
- Recorded on
- Not given
- Location set by the owner
- Not given
Numbers
- Views
- 19,254,451
- Likes
- 448,945
- Comments
- Turned off
Video
- Duration
- 6:22:52
- Quality
- HD
- Captions available
- Yes
- Claimed by a content partner
- No
Settings
- Category
- Science & Technology
- Language
- English
- Audio language
- English
- License
- Standard YouTube License
- Made for kids
- No
- Age-restricted
- No
- Can be embedded
- Yes
- Paid product placement
- No
- Country restrictions
- None
Text
- Title
- NASA's Artemis II Crew Launches To The Moon (Official Broadcast)
- Description
- 1,754 characters See and copy it
- Tags
- None
- Hashtags
- #NASA #Artemis #Space
- Topics
- Society, Television program
- Translations
- 1 languages
Thumbnails
- Default
- 120 × 90
- Medium
- 320 × 180
- High
- 480 × 360
- Standard
- 640 × 480
- Maxres
- 1280 × 720
- Fhd
- 1920 × 1080
- Search the largest
- Google Lens · Bing · TinEye · Yandex
Raw JSON from the YouTube Data API
Fetched from YouTube at 2026-10-03 13:10 UTC. Counts can be up to an hour old.
Values from the YouTube Data API, formatted for reading by Breakreach.
Example: a video on YouTube right now
From YouTube
6:22:52NASA's Artemis II Crew Launches To The Moon (Official Broadcast)
NASA · 19.3M views
Watch on YouTubeHow to view a YouTube video's metadata
- Copy the video's linkFrom the address bar, or Share > Copy link in the app. Videos, Shorts, live streams and youtu.be links all work.
- Paste it aboveThe metadata appears in groups: publishing, numbers, the video file, settings, text and thumbnails.
- Dig further if you need toOpen the raw JSON to see YouTube's answer as it is, or search the thumbnail on four image search engines.
Journalists use it to check when a video really went public and where its thumbnail has appeared before. Creators use it to see how another channel set up a video: its category, language, captions, license and live times.
When was this video published?The exact time, in UTC and in yours.
The watch page only shows a date. The metadata has the exact second, in UTC: the viewer shows it as it is, then converts it to your time zone with the day of the week, which is what you need to compare it with a post, a message or an event.
Choosing a time for your own videos is a different question: the best time to post on YouTube guide compares four 2026 studies, for long videos and Shorts.
Publish time vs upload time
YouTube's documentation warns that the published time "might be different than the time that the video was uploaded" (YouTube Data API). The rules it gives:
- Uploaded as private, made public laterThe published time is when it was made public. A video scheduled ahead falls in this case.
- Unlisted, or for members onlyThe published time is the upload time.
- Live streamsThe live details carry the scheduled start, the actual start and the end, separate from the published time. On the NASA broadcast the viewer opens on, the published time comes after the end of the stream.
- PremieresYouTube's documentation doesn't say how they're dated. When a video has live details, the viewer calls it a "live stream or premiere".
So the published time tells you when a video went public. The moment its file was uploaded is in the owner-only part of the data, which no public tool can read.
What each field means
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Published | When the video went public, in UTC (see above) |
| Live, scheduled / started / ended | Only on live streams and premieres: the planned start, the real start and the end |
| Views, likes, comments | YouTube's own counters. Likes are missing when the channel hides them, comments when they're turned off |
| Quality | HD or SD, plus 360° or 3D when it applies |
| Captions available | Whether the video has captions, as YouTube reports it |
| Claimed by a content partner | The video is on a channel linked to a YouTube content partner, who claimed it |
| Category, language, audio language | What the channel picked in YouTube Studio |
| License | Standard YouTube License or Creative Commons Attribution |
| Made for kids, age-restricted, can be embedded | The channel's settings and YouTube's restrictions |
| Country restrictions | The countries where the video is blocked, or the only ones where it plays |
| Paid product placement | Whether the channel declared paid promotion |
| Topics | Wikipedia pages YouTube links to the video, as a broad description |
| Translations | The languages the channel translated the title and description into |
BreakreachChoose your own publish time. Breakreach uploads your video to YouTube at the minute you pick, with its title and description, from a calendar or from ChatGPT and Claude.
Schedule a YouTube videoViews, likes and commentsAnd why there's no dislike count.
The counts are YouTube's, never estimated, and they can be up to an hour old: the viewer says when it asked. Since August 24, 2026, a view counts from the moment a video starts playing, for long videos, live and Shorts alike (API revision history).
Dislikes are private since December 13, 2021: YouTube only returns them to the video's owner. Tools that show a dislike count for other people's videos are estimating it.
Thumbnails and reverse image search
YouTube serves each thumbnail in several sizes, from 120 × 90 to 1280 × 720, and since September 11, 2026 in 1920 × 1080, 2560 × 1440 and 3840 × 2160 for some videos (API revision history). The viewer lists the sizes this video has, each opening YouTube's own image file.
To find where an image appeared before, the viewer sends the largest one to Google Lens, Bing, TinEye or Yandex in one click. It's the check Amnesty International's YouTube DataViewer made popular. To make your own, the YouTube thumbnail size guide has the resizer.
Recording date and location
Both are typed in by the channel, when it bothers: many videos have neither. The location is the place the owner chose to associate with the video, not a GPS reading from the camera, and YouTube has deprecated the field (YouTube Data API). Treat it as a claim to check, not a fact.
Verifying a videoAn alternative to Amnesty's YouTube DataViewer.
Amnesty International's YouTube DataViewer showed two things fact-checkers needed: the exact upload time and the thumbnails to search. Its site no longer answers (we checked on October 3, 2026). This viewer covers both, from YouTube's official API:
- Compare the published timeWith the event the video claims to show, in UTC and in your own time zone.
- Search the thumbnailsAn older copy of the same image elsewhere is the classic sign of a re-upload.
- Read the channel's settingsLanguage, location set by the owner, recording date, topics: each can confirm or contradict the story.
- Keep the raw JSONCopy YouTube's own answer for your notes, with the time it was fetched.
What the metadata can't tell you
- When a scheduled video was uploadedOnly when it went public. The upload and processing details are reserved for the owner.
- DislikesPrivate since 2021.
- The original fileIts name, format and camera details are owner-only too.
- Private or deleted videosYouTube returns nothing for them.
- What changed, and whenThe data is the video as it is now. A title edited yesterday shows its new version.
For the text itself, the title and description extractor and the tag extractor show it in full, ready to copy.
Metadata, answered.
Short answers about reading a YouTube video's metadata.
Paste its link in the viewer: it shows every public field the YouTube Data API returns, from the exact publish time to the thumbnails, with the raw JSON.
Not always. For a video uploaded as private and made public later, it's when it went public. For unlisted and members-only videos, it's the upload time.
YouTube shows a date in your language and region. The viewer shows the exact time in UTC, then converts it to your time zone.
No. YouTube made dislike counts private on December 13, 2021 and only returns them to the video's owner.
The channel hid the like count, or turned comments off. YouTube returns nothing for them in that case.
Unlisted videos work with their link. Private and deleted videos return nothing.
Yes. For live streams and premieres, it adds the scheduled start, the actual start and the end.
From the official YouTube Data API, at most an hour old. The viewer shows when it fetched it.
Yes, with no sign-up and no captcha. It reads up to 40 videos an hour for free.
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