Where to look

Every link opens in a new tab, and checked ones get marked.

// How it works

Deleted isn't
the same as gone.

When a video disappears from YouTube, pieces of it usually survive somewhere: an archived watch page, a cached thumbnail, a reupload on another site, a forum post with the title. We help you collect them.

Pull the video ID

Every YouTube video has an 11-character ID. We take it from any link format, and archives index it far more reliably than titles.

Run live checks

We ask whether YouTube still serves it, whether the thumbnail is still cached, and whether the Wayback Machine has a saved copy of the watch page.

Search the archives

Then we give you ready-made searches across archive mirrors, metadata databases, other video sites and communities that hunt lost media.

Got the title from the archive? Switch to "By title" and search it. Reuploads usually keep the original title.
No link at all? Look through old emails, Reddit comments, Discord logs and browser history exports for "watch?v=".
Got an old playlist? Deleted entries in your own playlists often still show the ID in the page source.
Still stuck? Post it on the Wanted board below so other hunters can keep an eye out.

// Community

The Wanted board

Videos people are still looking for. Add yours, upvote the ones you remember too, and mark one found if you track it down.

Post a lost video

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// FAQ

Questions from fellow hunters

Can this actually download a deleted video?

Not directly. We don't host or rip any video. We point you to public archives that may have kept a copy, such as the Wayback Machine, Ghostarchive, PreserveTube and reuploads on other sites, and you take it from there.

What's a video ID and where do I find it?

It's the 11 characters after watch?v= or youtu.be/, for example jNQXAC9IVRw. Paste the whole link and we'll pull the ID out for you.

The thumbnail check says "cached". Does that mean the video exists?

Not always. YouTube's image servers sometimes keep thumbnails of removed videos for years. A cached thumbnail does tell you the ID was real, and it gives you a picture to use in reverse-image searches.

The Wayback Machine has the page, but the video won't play.

That's normal: most snapshots only save the page, not the video stream. Read the title, channel, description and comments from it, then search those with "By title" mode. Try the experimental "Wayback video file" source too, because a few popular videos were saved in full.

Is the Wanted board moderated?

It's an open community board. Please don't post personal information, and only share links to material that's legal to share.

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