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Getting started

A five-minute walkthrough to take you from empty keys to your first analyzed channel. No prior Google Cloud experience needed.

You still need both a YouTube and a Gemini API key. The steps below walk you through it.

Understand what you need

YT Studio Analyzer is bring-your-own-key. You plug in two free API keys; the app stores them only in this browser and uses them to talk to Google on your behalf. Nothing is sent to a server we control.

  • YouTube Data API v3 key — reads channel and video data. Free for up to 10,000 units / day.
  • Gemini API key — powers the AI analysis, thumbnail review, and Creator Studio. Free tier is plenty for casual use.

Get your YouTube Data API v3 key

  1. Open the Google Cloud Console and sign in with any Google account.
  2. Create a new project (top-left project dropdown → New Project). Any name is fine.
  3. In the search bar type YouTube Data API v3, open it, and click Enable.
  4. Navigate to APIs & Services → Credentials, click Create credentials → API key, and copy the generated key.
  5. (Optional but recommended) click Edit API key and restrict it to YouTube Data API v3 so it can't be reused elsewhere.

Tip: the quota dashboard lives under APIs & Services → Quotas if you ever want to see how much you've spent.

Get your Gemini API key

  1. Open Google AI Studio → API keys and sign in.
  2. Click Create API key. If prompted, pick the same Google Cloud project from step 2 (or a brand-new one).
  3. Copy the key. Keep the tab open — you'll paste it in a moment.

The Gemini free tier covers content analysis, thumbnail review, title / hook generation, and topic clustering for most creators without a paid plan.

Save both keys in YT Studio

  1. Open Your API Keys.
  2. Click the row for each provider, paste your key, and press Save. The app makes a lightweight live call to validate the key before storing it — an invalid key is rejected with a clear message.
  3. Once both rows show Configured, the channel-lookup page unlocks on the home screen.

Keys are saved in localStorage plus a cookie scoped to this site so the server can read them for YouTube and Gemini requests. You can edit or delete a key any time from the same page.

Look up a channel

Head to Channel lookup and paste any of the following:

  • A full channel URL, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/@LearnwithManoj
  • A handle, e.g. @LearnwithManoj
  • A raw channel id, e.g. UCxxxxxxxx

The app resolves the input to a canonical channel id, caches the result for an hour (per-key, in-memory only), and redirects you to the dashboard at /dashboard/<channelId>.

Read the dashboard

The dashboard loads in parallel — you'll see skeletons briefly, then four sections:

Channel header

Avatar, name, compact subscriber count, total views.

Stats cards

Avg views · engagement rate · uploads/week · best day of week (in your browser's timezone).

Performance chart

View counts across the latest 50 videos, oldest → newest.

Video grid + heatmap

Click any thumbnail to trigger AI thumbnail analysis. The publish-time heatmap below highlights the weekday × hour slot where this channel usually performs best.

The dashboard snapshot is also cached in your browser (IndexedDB) so the Recent channels page can show summary stats for anything you've viewed before.

Growth tracking: every time you reopen a dashboard a new snapshot is appended to a local history (up to 30 entries per channel, deduped within 5 minutes). Once you have two or more snapshots the dashboard shows a growth chart and a delta card summarising what changed between them — all stored on this device only.

Explore Creator Studio (optional)

When you want more than analytics, open the Creator Studio for AI tools:

Title Lab

Generate and score alternative titles against your existing catalogue.

Hook, description, chapters

Draft the first 15 seconds, SEO description, and chapter markers for a video you pick from the channel.

Topic clusters

Embed every video in the channel with text-embedding-004 and group them into topical clusters.

Thumbnail generator

Create thumbnail variations with gemini-2.5-flash-image-preview for any video on the channel.

Script Doctor

Stream a structured outline — cold open, hook, beats, CTA, outro — tuned to a target runtime and optional audience note.

A/B Title Scorer

Paste two candidate titles and get axis-by-axis scores (clarity, curiosity, SEO, clickability) plus a rationale for the winner.

A/B Thumbnail Comparator

Upload two thumbnails (or paste URLs) and compare face impact, readability, contrast, and curiosity gap side by side.

Competitor Gap Analysis

After running a /compare session, jump to gap analysis to surface shared topics and each channel's missing angles.

Metric glossary

Avg views
Mean view count across the fetched videos (up to 50).
Engagement rate
(likes + comments) / views × 100, summed across all fetched videos.
Uploads / week
(valid publish dates − 1) / span in days × 7. Counts intervals, not videos, so 2 videos a week apart reads as 1.0 / week.
Best day
Weekday (in your browser's timezone) with the highest total views across the fetched videos.
Outperformer / Underperformer
Median + MAD based outlier: videos > 1.5× MAD above/below the median viewing count for the channel.
Heatmap strongest slot
The (weekday, hour) cell with the highest median view count, so a single viral video can't dominate the grid.

Troubleshooting

"YouTube API key is invalid"

Double-check the key on the API Keys page. If you restricted the key, confirm it allows YouTube Data API v3.

"Quota exceeded — try again tomorrow"

You've used the 10,000-unit daily YouTube quota. Quotas reset at midnight Pacific time. You can raise the quota in Google Cloud if needed.

Channel not found

The handle / URL couldn't be resolved. Verify it opens on YouTube, and try the raw UC… channel id if the handle is very new.

Gemini returns an error

Re-validate the Gemini key on the API Keys page. Free tier has per-minute limits; wait a minute and retry if you've been hammering Studio tools.

Privacy & data handling

  • API keys live in localStorage and a same-site cookie; never on a shared server.
  • YouTube + Gemini requests are proxied through Next.js route handlers running in your session.
  • Dashboard snapshots are cached in IndexedDB on your device. Clearing the Recent channels page wipes them.
  • No analytics or tracking beacons are sent unless you set NEXT_PUBLIC_TELEMETRY_ENDPOINT in your own deployment.

Handy shortcuts

  • ⌘ K / Ctrl K — open the command palette; search any page (including this one) or any recently viewed channel.
  • Esc — close the palette or any open modal.
  • The Toggle theme button floats in the top-right corner on every page.
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