YouTube

Connect and interact with YouTube channels via the YouTube Data API.

Available

Managed connector - SocialAPI handles the Google Cloud project and YouTube Data API access for you. No customer-side Google Cloud setup required. See Platform credentials.

At a glance

Field	Value
Platform slug	youtube
Auth type	OAuth 2.0 (Google)
API	YouTube Data API v3
Best for	Comment moderation and metadata on owned YouTube channels.

Capabilities

Feature	Supported	Notes
List posts	Yes	Returns uploaded videos
Comments	Yes	Scoped to a specific video
Reply to comment	Yes
Comment replies (thread)	Yes
Moderate comment (hide/delete)	Yes	Hide sets moderation status; delete removes permanently
Like comment	No	Not supported by YouTube API
Private reply	No	Not applicable
DMs	No	Not supported by platform
Reviews	No	Not applicable
Mentions	No	Not supported via YouTube API
Create post	Yes	Upload and publish videos
Update post	Yes	Update title, description, tags, privacy, and other metadata
Delete post	Yes

Connecting

curl -X POST https://api.social-api.ai/v1/accounts/connect \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOCAPI_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "platform": "youtube",
    "metadata": {
      "redirect_uri": "https://app.example.com/oauth/callback"
    }
  }'

Response:

{
  "auth_url": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/v2/auth?client_id=...&state=...",
  "state": "4a8f2c1e9b3d7f06a5c2e8b4d1f3a7e2"
}

Redirect your user to auth_url. After they authorize, Google redirects to your redirect_uri with ?code=...&state=.... Then call:

curl -X POST https://api.social-api.ai/v1/oauth/exchange \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOCAPI_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "platform": "youtube",
    "code": "4/0AanRR...",
    "metadata": {
      "state": "4a8f2c1e9b3d7f06a5c2e8b4d1f3a7e2",
      "redirect_uri": "https://app.example.com/oauth/callback"
    }
  }'

Reading samples

List posts

curl "https://api.social-api.ai/v1/posts?account_ids=acc_01HZ9X3Q4R5M6N7P8V2K0W1J" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOCAPI_KEY"

List comments on a post

curl "https://api.social-api.ai/v1/inbox/comments/{videoId}" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOCAPI_KEY"

Sample response:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "sapi_cmt_eW91dHViZTpVZ3h...",
      "platform": "youtube",
      "type": "comment",
      "author": {
        "id": "UCxyz123",
        "name": "Jane Smith",
        "avatar_url": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/..."
      },
      "content": {
        "text": "Great video!"
      },
      "metadata": {
        "post_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
        "like_count": 5,
        "has_replies": true
      },
      "created_at": "2026-03-15T10:30:00Z",
      "account_id": "acc_01HZ9X3Q4R5M6N7P8V2K0W1J",
      "platform_id": "Ugxyz..."
    }
  ],
  "count": 1
}

Publishing

Create a video post by providing a video URL and optional metadata via platform_data. See the API reference for the full request schema.

curl -X POST https://api.social-api.ai/v1/posts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SOCAPI_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "account_ids": ["acc_01HZ9X3Q4R5M6N7P8V2K0W1J"],
    "text": "Check out our latest video!",
    "media_ids": ["https://cdn.example.com/video.mp4"],
    "visibility": "public",
    "platform_data": {
      "youtube": {
        "category_id": "22",
        "tags": ["tutorial", "demo"],
        "made_for_kids": false,
        "embeddable": true,
        "notify_subscribers": true
      }
    }
  }'

PlatformData fields

Pass these inside platform_data.youtube when creating or updating a post.

Field	Type	Default	Description
category_id	string	"22" (People & Blogs)	YouTube video category ID. See YouTube category list.
tags	string[]	none	Video tags for discoverability.
default_language	string	none	BCP-47 language code (e.g. "en", "fr").
made_for_kids	bool	false	Whether the video is made for children (COPPA).
embeddable	bool	true	Whether the video can be embedded on other sites.
license	string	"youtube"	"youtube" for standard YouTube license, "creativeCommon" for CC BY.
public_stats_viewable	bool	true	Whether view counts and likes are publicly visible.
publish_at	string	none	RFC 3339 timestamp for scheduled publish (e.g. "2026-04-10T15:00:00Z"). Only applies when visibility is "private".
recording_date	string	none	Date the video was recorded, in YYYY-MM-DD format.
contains_synthetic_media	bool	false	Whether the video contains AI-generated or synthetic content.
notify_subscribers	bool	true	Whether to send a notification to channel subscribers.
playlist_id	string	none	YouTube playlist ID. The video is added to this playlist after publishing.

Limitations and gotchas

• No DMs or mentions. YouTube does not expose a messaging or mention API. These endpoints return 501.
• No webhook handler. YouTube does not push real-time events. Posts and comments are fetched on demand.
• Comment moderation. Hide sets the comment’s moderation status (held for review). Delete removes it permanently. Like is not supported.
• Token refresh. Google OAuth tokens expire. SocialAPI handles refresh automatically. If you receive 401 with code: "invalid_token", reconnect the account.

Permissions

SocialAPI’s managed Google Cloud OAuth app already requests YouTube Data API v3 scopes for reading and managing comments on your owned channels. You don’t need to set up a Google Cloud project. See Platform credentials.

Related

• Platform credentials
• OAuth flows
• Errors
• Interaction IDs