Finding YouTube channel ID for API integration

Other Questions YouTube
1

I need help finding my YouTube channel ID so I can use it with the YouTube Data API V3. I want to fetch information about my channel but I can’t figure out where to get the correct channel ID from my YouTube account.

I’m making API calls to get channel data but I need the proper channel ID parameter. I’ve tried using my username, display name, and email address but none of these work as the channel ID.

The API endpoint I’m working with looks like this:

https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?id=CHANNEL_ID_HERE&key=MY_API_KEY&part=snippet,contentDetails,statistics

I have my API key set up correctly in Google Console, but I’m stuck on getting the right channel identifier. My channel username is something like “johnsmith123” but that doesn’t work as the ID parameter.

What’s the easiest way to locate the actual channel ID that the YouTube API expects?

2

Yeah, you’re hitting YouTube’s embedding restrictions. I ran into this exact issue with a Flash video gallery I was running. The chromeless player still follows YouTube’s embedding rules, but instead of showing the usual blocked message, you just get that black screen with the logo. It’s YouTube’s way of blocking restricted content without completely breaking your player. What really sucked was that the API calls would work fine - you could cue the video successfully, but then playback would just fail silently. I ended up building a fallback that redirected users to the actual YouTube page if videos didn’t start playing within a few seconds. Never figured out how to detect these restrictions ahead of time through AS2 though.