YouTube Community Posts Archiver

Caution

Warning: Full on slop ahead. This tool and readme is mostly LLM-generated and has not been intensively tested. Use at your own risk and verify output as needed.

If you are an actual dev, please remake this. I'm too dumb. Free us from this slop. The endpoints is listed at the end.

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Node.js script to archive YouTube Community posts via YouTube's internal youtubei/v1/browse API.

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License

The Unlicense

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Requirements

1. NodeJS
2. This script: yt-ar.js

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Usage

# Bulk archive all posts from a channel by using <channelId>
node yt-ar.js UCJEER74X9kBenMT_x9iK9Mw

# Archive single post by <postId>
node yt-ar.js UCJEER74X9kBenMT_x9iK9Mw --post Ugkx9qQpbiK1HN2NC6HU-EdoiUgX3vkbg26E

# Archive single post by URl <https://youtube.com/post/id>
node yt-ar.js UCJEER74X9kBenMT_x9iK9Mw --post-url "https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkx..."

# Customize
node yt-ar.js UC... --root ./archive --limit 100 --delay-pages 1000 --skip-media --verbose

Note

The API only able to return latest 200 posts. To get past that you need to know and pass the postId itself.
Poll post only retrieves relative total votes. You need to be logged-in to get it's actual values. This script does not support cookie passing for that.

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Options

Flag	Description	Default
--post <id>	Single post mode by ID	—
--post-url <url>	Single post mode by URL	—
--root <path>	Output directory	./archive
--limit <n>	Max posts to fetch (bulk)	250
--delay-pages <ms>	Delay between page fetches	1000
--delay-detail <ms>	Delay between detail fetches	1000
--delay-media <ms>	Delay between media downloads	500
--no-media / --skip-media	Skip image downloads	—
--no-clean-json	Skip saving __metadata.json files	—
--no-raw-json	Skip saving __raw.json files	—
--single-file	Merge all clean records into one posts.json	—
--single-raw	Merge all raw records into one posts_raw.json (not recommended - too big and full of garbage)	—
--archive-file <path>	Custom path for the deduplication ledger	—
--force	Re-fetch already-archived posts	—
--verbose	Debug logging	—

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Output Structure

archive/youtube/
├── .archive                              # Ledger: "UCxxx postId" per line
└── UCxxx Channel Name/
    └── posts/YYYY-MM-DD/
        ├── ...__metadata.json            # Clean JSON data
        ├── ...__raw.json                 # Full API response
        └── ...__img*.jpg                 # Downloaded media

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Clean JSON Output Example

{
  "postId": "Ugkxtly1F3dMcpyMJ81MxtKPd5pzcvkdtklz",
  "channelId": "UCJEER74X9kBenMT_x9iK9Mw",
  "channelTitle": "FIFTY FIFTY Official",
  "channelHandle": null,
  "postUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkxtly1F3dMcpyMJ81MxtKPd5pzcvkdtklz",
  "publishDate": "2025-10-26T08:19:43.147371-07:00",
  "publishedText": "3 months ago",
  "savedAt": "2026-02-24T01:42:45.919Z",
  "text": "FIFTY FIFTY 3rd Digital Single\n[𝑻𝒐𝒐 𝑴𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕 1.] Concept Photo\n\n🌈\n\n#FIFTYFIFTY #피프티피프티\n#FIFTYFIFTY_TOOMUCH_Part1\n#TOOMUCH_Part1",
  "likeCount": "10K",
  "author": {
    "name": "FIFTY FIFTY Official",
    "handle": "/@WE_FIFTYFIFTY",
    "id": "UCJEER74X9kBenMT_x9iK9Mw"
  },
  "images": [
    "https://yt3.ggpht.com/xzS6MXQkvO_R0iWFj2YeGiuOEPyqOIOdRFRgbEiVZvE17sYuFa0YqvEXZ6Vh2kx316qDJInIYbK7GQ=s0"
  ],
  "video": null,
  "poll": null,
  "microformat": {
    "urlCanonical": "https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkxtly1F3dMcpyMJ81MxtKPd5pzcvkdtklz",
    "title": "Post from FIFTY FIFTY Official",
    "description": "FIFTY FIFTY 3rd Digital Single [𝑻𝒐𝒐 𝑴𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕 1.] Concept Photo 🌈 #FIFTYFIFTY #피프티피프티 #FIFTYFIFTY_TOOMUCH_Part1 #TOOMUCH_Part1",
    "thumbnail": {
      "thumbnails": [
        {
          "url": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/xzS6MXQkvO_R0iWFj2YeGiuOEPyqOIOdRFRgbEiVZvE17sYuFa0YqvEXZ6Vh2kx316qDJInIYbK7GQ=s1772-c-fcrop64=1,1fed0000dffaffff-rw-nd-v1?days_since_epoch=20508",
          "width": 1772,
          "height": 1772
        }
      ]
    },
    "siteName": "YouTube",
    "appName": "YouTube",
    "noindex": false,
    "unlisted": false,
    "familySafe": true,
    "tags": [
      "피프티피프티",
      "피프티",
      "하이어",
      "Higher",
      "Cupid",
      "큐피드",
      "어트랙트",
      "Attrakt",
      "#FIFTYFIFTY",
      "#피프티피프티",
      "#KEENA",
      "#키나",
      "#CHANELLEMOON",
      "#문샤넬",
      "#YEWON",
      "#예원",
      "#ATHENA",
      "#아테나",
      "#HANA",
      "#하나",
      "SOS",
      "Gravity"
    ],
    "pageOwnerDetails": {
      "name": "FIFTY FIFTY Official"
    },
    "publishDate": "2025-10-26T08:19:43.147371-07:00",
    "postDetails": {
      "externalPostId": "Ugkxtly1F3dMcpyMJ81MxtKPd5pzcvkdtklz",
      "discussionForumPosting": {
        "@type": "https://schema.org/DiscussionForumPosting",
        "url": "https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkxtly1F3dMcpyMJ81MxtKPd5pzcvkdtklz",
        "datePublished": "2025-10-26T08:19:43.147371-07:00",
        "headline": "Post from FIFTY FIFTY Official",
        "text": "FIFTY FIFTY 3rd Digital Single\n[𝑻𝒐𝒐 𝑴𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕 1.] Concept Photo\n\n🌈\n\n#FIFTYFIFTY #피프티피프티\n#FIFTYFIFTY_TOOMUCH_Part1\n#TOOMUCH_Part1",
        "image": "https://yt3.ggpht.com/xzS6MXQkvO_R0iWFj2YeGiuOEPyqOIOdRFRgbEiVZvE17sYuFa0YqvEXZ6Vh2kx316qDJInIYbK7GQ",
        "author": {
          "@type": "https://schema.org/Person",
          "name": "FIFTY FIFTY Official",
          "url": "https://www.youtube.com/@WE_FIFTYFIFTY"
        },
        "@context": "https://schema.org/"
      }
    }
  },
  "detailError": null
}

---

Landing / Initial Posts Fetch

Get the first page of community posts for a channel. Returns [Posts] + [Continuation Token] for pagination.

POST https://www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/browse?prettyPrint=false
...headers,
{
  "context": {...},
  "browseId": "<channelId>",
  "params": "EgVwb3N0c_IGBAoCSgA%3D"
}

# Protobuf payload:
# {
#     tab: "posts",       // field 2  — selects the Posts tab
#     filter: {           // field 110
#         sort: 0x4a00    // field 1  — sort token (default: latest)
#         }
# }

# The sort token 0x4a00 is the default observed value. Other sort modes (if they exist) would
# swap this byte but YouTube's Posts tab doesn't currently expose alternate sort UI, so 0x4a00
# appears to be the only valid value in practice. - LLM.

---

Pagination Fetch

Fetch subsequent pages using the continuation token. Returns [Posts] + [Continuation Token] for pagination.

POST https://www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/browse?prettyPrint=false
...headers,
{
  "context": {...},
  "continuation": "<token_from_previous_response>"
}

---

Single Post Detail Fetch

Get full metadata for a specific post.

This includes essential post creation timestamp publishDate from microformatthat is missing from posts page.
Posts page only have arbitary X days ago date.

POST https://www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/browse?prettyPrint=false
...headers,
{
  "context": {...},
  "browseId": "FEpost_detail",
  "params": "<base64_protobuf_payload>"
}


# Protobuf payload:
# {channelId, postId}

---

Image URL Handler

Strip the image modifier param to get the original resolution of images =w640-c-... or =s640-c-... into =s0/=w0.

Example:

https://yt3.ggpht.com/xzS6MXQkvO_R0iWFj2YeGiuOEPyqOIOdRFRgbEiVZvE17sYuFa0YqvEXZ6Vh2kx316qDJInIYbK7GQ=s640-c-fcrop64=1,1fed0000dffaffff-rw-nd-v1

into

https://yt3.ggpht.com/xzS6MXQkvO_R0iWFj2YeGiuOEPyqOIOdRFRgbEiVZvE17sYuFa0YqvEXZ6Vh2kx316qDJInIYbK7GQ=s0