YouTube is a great way to showcase your video skills or post your favorite cute cat videos. However, there are times when you don't want the entire YouTube world seeing them. The simple solution is to either go private or go unlisted.
How do you tell the difference? First, you need to determine the level of security for your videos. Do you want just friends and family to see them? Do you have a business that wants to share a webinar? Are you comfortable sharing links with prospective customers or your friends? There are many questions to unpack here, so let’s take a closer look.
Difference Between Private and Unlisted YouTube Videos
Before we dive into private vs unlisted, let’s examine what YouTube public video offers.
Public
The YouTube public setting is the default for all videos. If you’re comfortable with everyone seeing your video, and you don’t mind it coming up in Google search results, stick with the public setting.
Plus, there are some advantages to being out in the open:
- A huge subscriber count is great for a business, and it can attract more customers.
- It creates effective brand awareness.
- It's profitable with the right company or creative strategy.
- It can make you a superstar on YouTube.
If the public forum makes you nervous, you are not alone. Some disadvantages:
- It attracts trolls.
- It can jeopardize future job prospects if you have compromising videos.
- Anyone can find your YouTube videos, even if you delete them.
Private
Private is the most secure type of video on YouTube. They are only visible to people [up to 50 in total] that you invite. Private videos don’t appear in video recommendations, search results, and video tab sections for uploading.
Plus, invitees can’t share the video with other people. Also, even if someone has the link, they still can’t see your video unless they have the invite.
Unlisted
YouTube’s unlisted video setting is somewhat of a cross between private and public. Unlisted videos are invisible in search results, subscriber feeds, suggestions, and user video tabs. However, with unlisted videos, anyone with the link can see and share your video.
That’s the basic gist of private vs unlisted. Let’s go a little deeper and list the advantages for each.
Advantage of Making a Video "Private"
If your videos are very personal to you, or, for example, you have a secret company project, then YouTube private is ideal.
Here are some more advantages:
- Sharing videos with loved ones: If your relatives live far away, it’s a perfect forum to share special moments privately.
- Your own private video library: Personal collections like art, comic books, or records are important. It’s no different with videos. They belong to you—nobody else.
- Storing company information: This is an excellent option if you have business strategies you want to share with employees, but you don’t want your competitors to see them [like important training videos].
- Saves storage space: The private setting is a great place to store tons of videos [hello cats] instead of running out of room on your phone.
Advantage of Making a Video "Unlisted"
If you want to share your videos to a large group, but you don’t want it to appear in search results, then YouTube unlisted is the best choice for you.
Here are some more advantages:
- It’s great for co-worker feedback: If you have a large company [with over 50 employees], then sharing unlisted videos is perfect.
- Sharing your portfolio with prospective employers: Use this option if you need to share your video resume with more than one job prospect.
- Field testing a potential public video: Unlisted videos are ideal for collecting reviews and positive comments from a small group before going public. If the reviews are bad, just press delete!
- Cleaning your YouTube page: You want to organize your page and get rid of those old embarrassing videos. However, what if you still want anyone who has embedded or shared those videos to retain access? No problem. You change the video to unlisted, which removes the visibility from your channel.
We must stress two major points about unlisted: First, these type of videos sometimes end up shared on other sites. There’s even a dedicated site to unlisted YouTube videos. Second, your unlisted videos will appear publicly if they are on a playlist.
How to Change Your Video Privacy Settings
Once you log into your Youtube account, go to the upper right corner to the camera icon to upload a video:
You then go to the Upload Page where you have the option to go public, private, or unlisted:
Now you can select the video you want to upload from your computer. That’s it!
Conclusion
Protecting your privacy is important when you’re on the internet. You want to enjoy the freedom to create and enjoy videos without intrusions from unwanted users. YouTube private and Youtube unlisted provide a barrier from the public. Making your YouTube videos private is best if you want to ensure that your videos are as secure as possible. But ultimately, it’s up to you to decide which level of security you need.
Further Reading
Learn more about how to stay safe online with our Ultimate Guide to Online Privacy and read up on the Best VPNs Overall.
You might also be interested in reading How to Access YouTube TV From Anywhere.
Private, Unlisted, and Scheduled videos on YouTube all serve a different, but important purpose. Knowing why and when to leverage these videos types can benefit you and your business.
Let’s take a look.
PUBLIC
As a quick starting point, PUBLIC is the default setting for all YouTube videos. Anyone can search for, view, or share a public video.
PRIVATE
Now, here's where things start to get interesting. One of the first privacy options YouTube offers is that of PRIVATE videos. These videos can only be viewed by those who are invited to view them by the uploader.
The uploader can choose up to 50 people to share the video with. However, those invited must have an active Google Account [and must be logged in] to view the video. If an invitee has multiple Google Accounts, they will have to be signed into the account the uploader has shared it with to see the video.
Private videos will not appear in any search results, video recommendations, or the uploader’s video tab section, and subscribers to a channel won’t receive a notification when a private video is uploaded. If one of the uploader’s invitees tries to share the video with their friends, it won’t matter - only the invitee will be able to see the video.
So why would you choose to use the private video setting? There are so many great ways of benefitting from this setting on YouTube.
Family content:
If you live far from your loved ones, sharing videos is a powerful way to stay connected. Your child’s first step, a weekly check-in, or footage from a family holiday - you want to share these milestones, but not with the whole world. Private videos are a great way to ensure the right people are the only ones who can view these treasured moments.
Organizational Internal Uses:
Many larger organizations use video as an effective training tool, to share new company policies, or even to provide updates or congratulations. Using the private video setting ensures internal messages and content stay internal. It also means a company can create an entire internal library of videos to help employees as they grow or switch roles in the organization.
Online Resumes and Portfolios:
Video resumes have grown in popularity over the past few years, as more and more job candidates are looking to stand out from the crowd. Private videos allow the user to upload their video resume to YouTube and share it with potential employers only.
Using YouTube to share these video resumes means that your potential employer won’t have to download large video files, they can simply click a link in your online C.V. and of course there’s no hassle with file formats.
As a videographer, an online portfolio is key to gaining new clients. But maybe your previous clients haven’t signed off on public sharing of their videos, or some of the videos have featured sensitive topics. By uploading the portfolio to YouTube as a private video, videographers can then share with potential clients, while preventing unwanted comments from appearing and avoiding any confidentiality issues.
UNLISTED
YouTube’s UNLISTED video option gives users something between the Public and Private settings. Unlisted videos can be seen and shared by anyone with the video link, including those who do not have a Google Account.
This means that while unlisted videos will not come up in search results, a user’s video tab, a subscriber’s feed, or in suggestions, the video can still be seen by anyone who comes across the link. There are, in fact, entire sites dedicated to listing unlisted YouTube videos. Another note: YouTube treats unlisted videos like public videos in many ways —the video can be flagged for inappropriate content, and uploaders need to avoid using copyrighted audio or video.
Many people remain confused about the benefits of unlisted videos, so we’re here to point some of them out.
On Your Website
Do you run a site or a blog? Do you, perhaps, embed videos in your website on occasion? Maybe you want to keep the content exclusive to that platform. In this case, unlisted videos are a great option. You’re still able to upload and host the videos on YouTube and then embed them onto your site, but they won’t be visible on your YouTube page.
Cleaning Up Your YouTube Page
You’re trying to clean up the content you’ve posted to YouTube over the years - we get it! Many users began posting to the platform in their early teens and continue using it well into adulthood. If you want to ensure that anyone who has embedded or shared one of your videos retains access, but want to remove its visibility on your channel, changing it to an unlisted setting is the best course of action.
Surveying
Unlisted videos are a great way of collecting a small sampling of reactions, or ensuring that a video already has positive comments, before making it available to the broader public. They’re perfect for gaging reactions to tutorial videos, or even sharing music videos with fans first.
Scheduled
If you work in social media or marketing, you know that scheduling content is of immense strategic importance! When you publish information has a huge impact on who sees your content - certain times of day and days of the week are definitely more ideal than others.
You’re probably already scheduling tweets and Facebook posts, but did you know you can also schedule video publishing on YouTube? If you’re not already doing so, you need to. Scheduling can be done through YouTube itself, or through a social media distribution platform like Hootsuite.
Summary
As more and more people switch to mobile browsing, video is increasingly the most engaging content on the web... But few platforms can offer what YouTube does - an audience made up of more than a fifth of the world population!
YouTube offers many great ways of sharing your videos, so whether you’re scheduling them as public, listing them as private, or ensuring they’re unlisted - it’s time to get posting!