How to Back Up Your YouTube Subscriptions (CSV & JSON)
Years of channels, and no export button. Here’s how to keep a portable copy of every subscription — and bring it back if you ever need to.
Updated 29 September 2026 · 6 min readYour subscription list is years of small decisions — the creators you trust, the niche channels you’d never find again by searching, the ones you followed for a single project. It lives only inside one Google account, and YouTube gives you no simple way to keep a copy.
This guide covers when a backup matters, the ways to get one, what a useful backup file should contain, and what you can do with it afterwards.
Why back up your YouTube subscriptions
- Before a clean-up. YouTube has no undo for unsubscribing. A backup turns any mistake into a quick restore.
- Before switching or closing an account. Subscriptions don’t move with you. A backup is the list you rebuild from.
- If an account gets locked or hacked. Getting access back can take weeks; the list you care about shouldn’t depend on it.
- Just to have it. A spreadsheet of every channel you follow is surprisingly useful for sharing recommendations or spotting patterns.
Your options: Takeout, copy-paste, or a backup tool
Google Takeout
Takeout can export YouTube data, including a subscriptions CSV, as part of an archive. It works, but you choose data types, wait for the archive to be prepared and emailed, then dig the file out of a folder structure. Fine once a year; slow for a quick safety copy.
Copy the subscriptions page by hand
You can scroll youtube.com/feed/channels and copy names into a document. Names alone are fragile, though — channels rename themselves, and a name can’t be restored automatically the way a channel ID can.
A dedicated backup tool
Connect your account read-only, click once, and download a file with stable channel IDs, URLs and dates — immediately, not hours later.
Back up your subscriptions to CSV, step by step
Connect YouTube (read-only)
Check what was found
Create the backup
Download
What a good backup contains
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Channel ID | Never changes, so a restore can find the exact channel even if it renamed itself. |
| Channel title | Human-readable, for skimming the list. |
| Channel URL | One click to open the channel from your spreadsheet. |
| Subscribed date | Shows how long you’ve followed each channel. |
| Backup time | Tells you how current the file is. |
Safe to open in a spreadsheet
What to do with the backup
Keep it somewhere outside the account it came from — cloud storage or email to yourself. If you later remove channels by mistake, lose the account, or start a new one, upload the same file to Subscription Restore, which re-subscribes you to every channel you don’t already follow. With a backup saved, a bulk clean-up stops being risky.
How MyFreshTools helps
What the tool does
Subscription Backup reads your full subscription list and exports it as CSV, JSON or a ZIP of both, with channel ID, title, URL, thumbnail URL, subscribed date and backup time.
Who it’s for
- Anyone about to clean up, switch or close a YouTube account.
- People who want a safety copy of a list they’ve built over years.
How to use it
Connect read-only, review the count and cost, create the backup, download your format.
Requirements and limits
- A free MyFreshTools account is required — free credits at signup, no card.
- Cost is 1 credit per 10 channels backed up, rounded up.
- The free plan backs up your first 50 channels; paid plans back up the whole list.
- The file isn’t stored on MyFreshTools servers and contains no login tokens.
Examples and use cases
Before a big clean-up
You’re about to unsubscribe from 150 channels. A backup takes a minute and means that if the clean-up catches a channel you still watch, it’s a quick restore instead of a hunt through your memory for a name.
Moving to a new Google account
You’re retiring an old email address. Back up the subscriptions while you still have access, then either restore the file on the new account or transfer directly if both accounts are available.
A shared list for a team
A marketing team wants everyone to follow the same competitor and industry channels. One person backs up their curated list, shares the CSV, and teammates import it on their own accounts.
An annual snapshot
Some people keep a yearly backup just to see how their interests change. The subscribed-date column makes it easy to sort by when you followed each channel.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| “No subscriptions found” | The connected Google account isn’t the one with your channel. | Disconnect and connect the account that owns your subscriptions. |
| Backup has fewer channels than expected | Free plan covers the first 50. | Upgrade to back up the full list. |
| Odd characters in Excel | Excel didn’t detect UTF-8. | Open via Data › From Text/CSV, or use Google Sheets. |
| Not enough credits | Your list costs more credits than your balance. | Top up, or back up again later. |
Frequently asked questions
YouTube itself has no export button. Google Takeout can include a subscriptions file in a larger archive, or a backup tool connected to your account can export the list straight to CSV, JSON or a ZIP of both in one click.
No. A backup only reads your subscription list. Nothing is subscribed, unsubscribed or modified on YouTube.
Yes. Upload the CSV or JSON to a restore tool and it re-subscribes you to every channel you don’t already follow. It only adds subscriptions — it never removes any.
Before any big change: a mass unsubscribe, switching accounts, or closing an old account. Otherwise every few months is plenty for most people.
No. The file is generated for you to download and isn’t kept. Only a usage record with counts — no channel list — is saved for billing.
The takeaway
A subscriptions backup takes a minute and makes every other change reversible. Save one before you clean up or switch accounts, keep it outside the account, and you’ll never have to rebuild your list from memory.