YouTube API Services Terms of Service - Revision History

This page provides a revision history for the following documents:

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Note that, in all cases, the legal documents themselves are the authoritative source of information.

July 1, 2021

All developers using YouTube’s API Services must complete an API Compliance Audit in order to be granted more than the default quota allocation of 10,000 units. To date, both the compliance audit process and requests for additional quota unit allocations have been conducted by developers filling out and submitting the YouTube API Services - Audit and Quota Extension Form.

To clarify these processes and better meet the needs of developers using our API Services, we are adding three new forms and a guide to completing those forms:

  • Audited Developer Requests Form: Developers who have already passed an API Compliance Audit can fill out and submit this shorter form to request an allocated quota extension.
  • Appeals Form: Developers whose API projects have failed a compliance audit (or been denied a quota unit increase) can fill out and submit this form.
  • Change of Control Form: Developers, or any party operating an API client on a developer’s behalf, who experience a change of control (for example, through a stock purchase or sale, merger or other form of corporate transaction) associated with an API project must fill out and submit this form. This enables YouTube’s API team to update our records, audit the new API project’s use case compliance, and validate the developer’s current quota allocation.

Each new form will inform us of your intended usage of YouTube’s API and enable us to better assist you.

More details are available in our new API Compliance Audits guide.

October 15, 2020

Two new sections have been added to the Developer Policies:

  • The new Section III.E.4.i provides additional information about the data collected and sent via the YouTube embedded player. You are responsible for any user data you send to us via any YouTube embedded player before the user has interacted with the player to indicate playback intent. You can limit the data shared with YouTube before a user interacts with the player by setting Autoplay to false.
  • The new Section III.E.4.j relates to checking the Made for Kids (MFK) status of content before embedding it on your sites and apps. You are responsible for knowing when videos that you embed on your API Client are made for kids and treating data collected from the embedded player accordingly. As such, you must check the status of content using YouTube Data API Service before embedding it on your API Client via any YouTube embedded players.

The new Finding the MadeForKids status of a video guide explains how to look up the MFK status of a video using the YouTube Data API Service.

In conjunction with these changes, a reminder has been added to the Embedded Player Parameter documentation to explain that if you enable Autoplay, playback will occur without any user interaction with the player; playback data collection and sharing will therefore occur upon page load.

August 27, 2020

The YouTube API Services Terms of Service and the Developer Policies link, in several places, to a form that you would use to apply for a quota extension, to request YouTube's approval for a user interface change or other modification, or to notify YouTube of a change of control for your API client. Previously, some of these links pointed to different forms specific to a particular type of request, but they have been updated to all point to the same form. For the use cases listed here, please select 'Quota Extension Request' in the form and include any relevant data in the 'Explain in detail how you use YouTube API Services today' input box.

June 30, 2020

The Complying with the YouTube Developer Policies guide begins with a list of policies that developers using YouTube API services must adhere to. The Terms of Service link in that list has been corrected to point to the YouTube API Services Terms of Service rather than the YouTube Terms of Service.

June 15, 2020

The new Complying with the YouTube Developer Policies guide provides guidance and examples to help you ensure that your API clients adhere to specific portions of the YouTube API Services Terms and Policies (API TOS).

This guidance offers insight into how YouTube enforces certain aspects of the API TOS but does not replace any existing documents. The guide addresses some of the most common questions that developers ask during API compliance audits. We hope that it simplifies your feature development process by helping you understand how we interpret and enforce our policies.

January 10, 2020

Section 9.1 of the YouTube API Services Terms of Service has been updated to include new requirements for Child-Directed API Clients and non-Child-Directed API Clients as well as requirements relating to uploading content to YouTube from Child-Directed API Clients and non-Child-Directed API Clients.

Section III.J (Reporting Noncompliance) of the Developer Policies has been (i) renumbered to Section III.K (Reporting Noncompliance) and (ii) replaced in its entirety with a new Section III.J (Child-Directed API Clients). The new Section III.J (Child-Directed API Clients) sets forth requirements for Child-Directed API Clients including specific compliance with the U.S. Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA), E.U. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and any other applicable laws or regulations, and notifying Google of your Child-Directed API Clients. In addition, Child-Directed API Clients and users of Child-Directed API Clients must not take any YouTube API Services write-based actions to YouTube websites, applications, services or products via Child-Directed API Clients. Access to, or use of, YouTube API Services can be suspended or terminated for non-compliance with the YouTube API Services Terms of Service and Developer Policies including non-compliance with Section III.J.

June 18, 2019

The link to the form that you would use to apply for a quota extension, which appears in section D.3 of the Developer Policies, has been updated.

December 18, 2017

Section III.E.4.h of the Developer Policies has been updated to clarify that in addition to not replacing API Data with independently calculated data, you also must not access or use API Data to create new or derived data or metrics. In addition, the updated policy explains a requirement on API Clients to clearly disclose that any information, data, or metrics that are not based on API Data but that display alongside API Data are not from YouTube and are part of your own product.

February 10, 2017

The updated YouTube API Services Terms of Service and related documents such as the Developer Policies, which were originally published on August 11, 2016, now collectively constitute the effective set of Terms for YouTube API Services. The current set of Terms was originally published 180 days before it would become effective to ensure developers had sufficient time to review and comply with the updated set of Terms.

The Terms and related documents, such as the Developer Policies, have been updated so that they no longer mention old and new sets of Terms. To avoid confusion, the prior set of Terms has also been removed.

January 27, 2017

The following changes have been made to the YouTube API Services Terms of Service and Developer Policies that are scheduled to go into effect on February 10, 2017.

  • Section 23 of the YouTube API Services Terms of Service has been updated. The changes limit the length of time and circumstances when the non-assert provision in the Terms is applicable.

  • The following forms linked from the Terms and Developer Policies are now active:

    Document Section Form
    Terms of Service 25.9 Change of control
    Developer Policies III.D.3 Quota extension
    Developer Policies III.F.1 UI approval
    Developer Policies III.G.1 Commercialization approval
    Developer Policies III.J Report noncompliance

  • Developer Policies, section III.E.2.a has been updated to clarify the conditions under which you may aggregate API Data.

  • Developer Policies, section III.G.1.d has been updated so that the provision applies to YouTube API Data rather than YouTube audiovisual content. As noted in the Terms, YouTube API Data includes YouTube audiovisual content.

  • Developer Policies, section III.G.1.d has also been updated to not mention subscriptions, which are already covered under the restrictions in section III.G.1.b.

  • Developer Policies, section III.G.2.c has been updated solely to note that the restrictions in section III.G.1, particularly section III.G.1.d, are particularly relevant to that section.

August 11, 2016

The newly published YouTube API Services Terms of Service (the "Updated Terms") provides a rich set of updates to the current Terms of Service. In addition to the Updated Terms, which will go into effect as of February 10, 2017, this update includes several supporting documents that explain YouTube policies to help guide developers who are integrating YouTube API Services into their API Clients.

This update includes the following documents. All documents are in English unless otherwise noted.

  • The Updated Terms. Versions are available for the following regions and countries:

  • The Developer Policies explain policies that you need to follow when accessing or using YouTube API Services in your service, product, or application.

  • The Required Minimum Functionality defines minimum functional requirements for API Clients that implement or provide access to specific features of YouTube API Services. For example, API Clients that enable video uploads to YouTube must enable users to set a title when uploading a video.

  • The Subject API Services document identifies the Subject API Services discussed in section 14.3 (Special Terms) of the Updated Terms. The new document also explains how that section of the Updated Terms would affect actual deprecation dates for Subject API Services.

  • The Branding Guidelines are not a new document, but they will apply under the Updated Terms just as they apply under the current Terms.

  • This revision history and its accompanying RSS feed.

The following changes were made to a previous version of the Terms of Service.

In addition to these changes, there are a couple of other changes related to the current Terms of Service:

  • Section 7 (Deprecation) has said for a long time that, following a deprecation announcement, Google would use commercially reasonable efforts to maintain YouTube API versions and features identified at https://developers.google.com/youtube/youtube-api-list until the later of (i) one year after the announcement or (ii) April 20, 2015. The text has been updated to remove the reference to the April 2015 date since any deprecation announcements yet to occur are certain to be after that date.

  • We have removed the set of Monetization Guidelines that talked about guidelines for building commercial applications. Those guidelines, which were originally written in 2008, contained references to features that were deprecated years ago as well as to sample implementations that were no longer relevant. The link from the Terms of Service to those guidelines has also been removed.