YouTube is a fantastic video service, but perhaps the time has come for you to delete your YouTube account. Maybe you want to wipe all of your comments or delete your videos. Or perhaps you want to temporarily pause the account so you can resume it later.
Whatever the case, we’re going to show you how to temporarily or permanently delete your YouTube channel and account.
What Do YouTube Channel and Account Mean?
When it comes to deleting or hiding content on YouTube, both your “channel” and “account” are considered one and the same.
You might use “channel” to refer to the videos you’ve uploaded, while “account” is for preferences or comments. For this guide, that distinction is not applicable and the terms are interchangeable. That’s because, for example, there is no way to delete your channel but keep your comments.
If you simply want to delete a specific video, rather than the entire account, check out our guide on how to delete or restore a YouTube video.
How to Temporarily Hide Your YouTube Channel
You can hide some of your YouTube content temporarily, with the intention of activating it again later.
This process will hide your public videos and playlists. It will not hide your channel page or any of the images on it, nor your likes and subscriptions.
However, a word of warning: it will permanently delete all your comments. These will not reappear when you reactivate the channel.
To hide your content, follow these steps:
- On YouTube, click your profile icon in the top-right.
- Click Settings.
- Click Advanced settings from the left-hand menu.
- Click Delete channel.
- Enter your Google password when prompted and click Next.
- Click I want to hide my content.
- Click the checkboxes to confirm you understand what this process will do.
- Click Hide my content.
How to Delete Your YouTube Channel
You can delete your YouTube channel completely. This is not reversible.
Doing this will delete your videos, comments, playlists, and watch history. It will remove your channel from search and render its URL unavailable.
Any data associated with your channel, like viewing time, will remain part of aggregate reports but will not be associated with your channel specifically.
If you’re serious about deleting your channel, here’s how to do it:
- On YouTube, click your profile icon in the top-right.
- Click Settings.
- Click Advanced settings from the left-hand menu.
- Click Delete channel.
- Enter your Google password when prompted and click Next.
- Click I want to permanently delete my content.
- Click the checkbox to confirm you understand what this process will do.
- Click Delete my content.
This process can take some time to fully complete, so may still see some of your content on YouTube for a while after.
How to Delete Your Google Account
YouTube is owned by Google, which means that your YouTube account is linked to your Google account.
While you can delete your YouTube account and keep your Google account, you cannot do the opposite—the Google account is the overarching one.
If you want to delete your Google account, bear in mind that this is a nuclear option. It will not only delete your YouTube details, but also every other Google service you might use like Drive, Gmail, Google Play, and so on.
Rather than doing this, and if privacy and data retention is a concern, you might want to just set your Google account to auto-delete data instead.
If you do want to delete your Google account, and therefore your YouTube account, here’s how you do that:
- On Google, click your profile icon in the top-right.
- Click Manage your Google Account.
- Click Data & personalization on the left-hand menu.
- Beneath Download, delete, or make a plan for your data, click Delete a service or your account.
- Click Delete your account.
- Enter your Google password when prompted and click Next.
- Click Download your data if you wish to store a local backup of your Google account data.
- Click the checkboxes to confirm you understand what this process will do.
- Click Delete account.
Video Sites to Use Instead of YouTube
Now that you’re done with YouTube, what should you use instead? There are loads of other video sites out there just waiting to be discovered, and you might find that they’re even better than YouTube.