Importing from Google Takeout

YT Zero has an import wizard that brings your YouTube data over from a Google Takeout export: channel subscriptions, playlists, and watch history. Open it from Settings → Import data, or from the button on the empty home feed.

Exporting from Google Takeout

1. Go to takeout.google.com.
2. Select only YouTube and YouTube Music.
3. Include subscriptions, playlists, and history.
4. Download the archive.

Importing

1. Drop the whole .zip onto the import page — or loose files: subscriptions.csv, playlist CSVs, watch-history.json or .html. You can keep adding files before analyzing.
2. Click Analyze files. YT Zero recognizes the contents (localized exports work too — file names and dates in Polish or German are handled).
3. Pick what to import: toggle whole sections, deselect individual channels or playlists.
4. For watch history, choose Everything or From date. Entries are matched by video, so anything you watched before shows up as watched in YT Zero — including videos that reach your feed later.

Note: in From date mode, entries older than the cutoff (and entries without a readable date) are skipped entirely. Choose Everything if you want your full history marked as watched.

After importing

Everything appears in the library immediately, but titles, thumbnails, and channel data for imported videos are filled in gradually in the background. The pace is deliberately throttled so YouTube doesn't block the requests — the result screen shows an estimate based on your settings (IMPORT_ENRICH_BATCH_SIZE, IMPORT_ENRICH_INTERVAL_MINUTES). Subscribed channels start filling the feed via their RSS feeds, as described in How It Works.