Google Takeout

What this page is for

Mike: export all videos off YouTube so a backup exists even if the channel cannot be kept. About 20 Brand Accounts hang off one Google login. That number is fine — YouTube documents up to 100 channels per Google account. 20 is not a special case.

Two different Takeout jobs live here. Don’t mix them in one export.

Quick pick

True masters are files you kept before upload. Takeout / Studio / yt-dlp are copies of what YouTube still has. Download and verify before any channel delete or handoff.

1. Google Takeout (official bulk)

Google’s data export. Uploaded videos come back as original files for many recent uploads, or high-quality compressed MP4 (H.264 + AAC) for older ones — plus metadata, comments, playlists if you leave those checked.

One channel

1. Open takeout.google.com signed in as the Google account that owns the Brand Accounts.
2. Switch into the Brand Account / channel you want (YouTube avatar → Switch account). Takeout follows the YouTube identity you are currently using. Don’t assume one click dumps all 20 channels.
3. Click Deselect all.
4. Check only YouTube and YouTube Music.
5. Click All YouTube data included → keep Videos (add playlists / comments / history only if you actually want them).
6. Click Next step.
7. Delivery: email link is fine. Frequency: Export once. File type: .zip. Max size: 10–50 GB so huge channels split cleanly.
8. Create the export. Hours to days. Download promptly (links often last ~7 days). Store outside Google (disk / Bunny / another cloud).

Twenty Brand Accounts (the real work)

Official and supported. Annoying because Takeout is per selected YouTube identity, not “all my channels in one zip.”

1. Spreadsheet: handle, Brand Account name, video count, export date, zip location, verified? (Y/N).
2. For each row: switch into that Brand Account → YouTube-only Takeout → label the zip with the handle.
3. Don’t bundle Drive, Gmail, or Photos in the same run.
4. One export at a time until you know how big a typical channel is.
5. Phone verification can get stingy if you create/verify many new channels at once. 20 existing ones under one login is the documented model (cap is 100).

Shared login means shared security and usually one AdSense payout path. That is independent of Takeout.

What you get

• Large channels → multiple zips. Download every part.
• Good enough to re-upload; not always the camera-original master for old videos.
• Most complete official archive of the channel’s YouTube-side data.

2. YouTube Studio (official, one video at a time)

1. studio.youtube.com as that Brand Account.
2. Content → hover a video → ⋮ → Download.

MP4, typically quality-capped, daily limits if you hammer the same video. Fine for five files. Not twenty channels.

3. yt-dlp (third party — say it plainly)

Not official YouTube or Google. Free open-source CLI (maintained fork of youtube-dl). Not affiliated, not endorsed. YouTube can break it; you update the tool. For your own uploads it is generally treated as backing up content you own, still outside Google’s tools.

Use it when you want the highest available streaming rendition, folders that make sense, resume, and “run again, skip what’s already on disk.”

# Whole public Videos tab
yt-dlp "https://www.youtube.com/@YourHandle/videos"

# Organized + skip already grabbed (re-run later)
yt-dlp --download-archive archive.txt \
  -o "%(uploader)s/%(upload_date)s - %(title)s [%(id)s].%(ext)s" \
  "https://www.youtube.com/@YourHandle/videos"

Install ffmpeg too (merge video+audio). Private/unlisted: browser cookies, e.g. --cookies-from-browser chrome. Twenty channels: a text file of twenty /videos URLs, or the same command twenty times with twenty archive files so they don’t collide.

GUI wrappers exist (4K Video Downloader, TubeArchivist, etc.). Same legal category: third party.

Order of operations

1. Takeout for each Brand Account you might lose (official safety net).
2. yt-dlp if you care about streaming quality / incremental grabs.
3. Keep pre-upload masters if they still exist — that is the real archive.
4. Spot-check files before deleting or transferring a channel.

Job 2 — Drive folders as real Office files

Older notes on this URL: Drive will not give you a folder of native Docs/Sheets as .docx/.xlsx in one right-click. Takeout will.

1. takeout.google.com
2. Deselect all → check only Drive.
3. All Drive data included → deselect all → pick the folder(s).
4. Advanced settings: Docs → .docx, Sheets → .xlsx, Slides → .pptx (usually default).
5. Next step → email link, .zip, split size if huge → Create export.

Small folders (10–30 files): Drive itself, select all → Download, often already converts inside the zip. If you still get .gdoc shortcuts, use Takeout. Desktop sync and random third-party converters are worse for a one-shot archive.

Related on this site

• Bunny storage — a place to park the zips that isn’t Google
• GitHub backup — same “don’t keep the only copy in one vendor”
• WP2Static · Studio