Why did YouTube change my videos to private?

In certain cases, when we detect suspicious activity on your channel, we may take action to set videos to private if we believe that they were uploaded by a hacker. We take these actions in order to better protect your channel and community.

If we do set any of your videos to private, we'll notify you by email. Additionally, we'll sign you out of your account to make sure that both you and our YouTube community are protected.

What should I do?

If you published the videos

Take a look at your private videos before deciding whether or not to make them public again. If you think that they follow our community guidelines, you can change the videos to public.

Note: If you can't change your videos to public, your video may have been marked private for another reason. Learn more about videos made private due to use of unrelated or misleading tags.

If you didn't publish the videos

1. Visit studio.youtube.com and delete any videos that you didn't upload. Even private videos have to follow community guidelines, and we don't want you to be penalised for content that you didn't post.
2. Perform a security check on your Google Account and take any recommended steps. Suggested actions may include changing your password or removing old devices.
3. Review who has access to your channel. Check channel permissions to make sure that there aren't any unwanted users associated with your account.
4. Check if the hacker changed anything else on your channel, like the banner, links in video descriptions or pinned comments.

You can learn more about how to keep your account secure from hackers at our Creator Safety Centre or by visiting secure your YouTube account.