Limit access to your Youtube clips

Youtube is all about video sharing. However, you might want only your friends and family to view your clips. Alternatively, you may wish to keep the videos to yourself and make use of Youtube as a handy place to store copies online. Either way, Youtube offers a variety of ways to limit access to uploaded videos. If you don’t yet have a Youtube account but would still like to follow our instructions then head to www.youtube.com, click the Create Account link at the top and follow the prompts to get started. We will start by showing how to make a videos private as they are uploaded. Click the Upload link at the top of the Youtube page then either click the yellow Upload video button or drag and drop a video file into the upload box.

On Youtube’s Video File Upload page, fill in the video details as usual – type in a title, a description, one or more tags and select a category from the dropdown menu. Now click to select the Private radio button then click the Save changes button and then allow the video to finish uploading, as normal. We’ll explain how to share this private video in Step 4, but read Step 3 to find out how to get to the necessary option.

Marking existing videos as private is easy. Click your username at the top-right of the Youtube page and choose My Videos from the dropdown menu. Now click the Edit button next to a video and, if necessary, scroll down the Info and Setting page to find the Broadcasting and Sharing Options box. Click the Private radio button. If you cannot see this, click the little black arrow on the Broadcasting and Sharing Options header to expand the box.

With the Private radio button selected, two new fields will appear in the Broadcasting and Sharing Options box. In the To (Username) box, type in the usernames of up to 50 Youtube users with whom you would like to privately share the video, adding a message if you want. When you click Send, the named Youtube account-holders will receive a link that will let them – and only them – view the video when they are signed in to their own Youtube accounts. However, this is a one-way process and Youtube does not currently allow videos shared in this way to be ‘unshared’. So, if you later wish to revoke access, the video will need to be deleted from your account (this process is explained in Step 6).

The recipients will receive a notification of the shared video in their Youtube inboxes – to view the video, they just need to click the contained link. The video will load as normal, with a unique Youtube video URL displayed in the web browser’s Address or Location bar. But a yellow alert above the video-playback window warns that this is a private video: if the user attempts to share the Youtube URL then it will not work (unless the recipient also happens to be on your original invite list).

Finally, and as noted in Step 4, Youtube does not allow you to unshare videos. The only way to prevent a shared video being viewed by previously invited Youtube users is to delete the clip from your account. To do this, click your username at the top-right and choose My Videos. In the My Upload Videos list, click to place a tick alongside the relevant clip and then click the Delete button at the top. Click OK to confirm and the video – along with other people’s ability to view it – will be no more.