A practical YouTube check

YouTube Category Checker

Find the category assigned to a public YouTube video. TubePilot reads YouTube’s metadata and shows the category name, category ID and channel.

Use your own YouTube Data API key. No account with 42.uk is required.

Check a video

Three steps

Enable YouTube Data API v3 in your Google Cloud project and create a key restricted to that API and this website.
Paste one public video URL and the key above.
Select Check category. Read the live category and follow the video link to confirm the video.

Google’s official setup guide · Restrict your API key

The key is cleared when you leave this page. Clear it manually when you finish on a shared device.

Illustrative example — not a live lookup

What a result means

Video: Example learning tutorial
Category: Education
Category ID: 27

This demonstrates the result layout. It does not classify a real video or predict how YouTube will recommend it. Enter a video and a valid key above for a current result.

What this checker can tell you

YouTube exposes a category ID in a video’s snippet.categoryId field. TubePilot requests that video record, then looks up the category name from YouTube. This is the assigned category at the time of the request.

A category is metadata. It is not a ranking score, audience profile, content-quality assessment or guarantee of recommendations.
Private, deleted, restricted or otherwise unavailable videos may return no result. This checker does not sign in as a video owner.
A channel can publish videos in different categories. One result does not establish a category for the whole channel.
API quotas, key restrictions and network failures can prevent a check. TubePilot displays the error and does not fill in an estimated answer.

Compare several relevant videos when auditing a channel. Record the video URL and check time alongside your notes; metadata can change.

Use the evidence

For a repeatable review, note the video, channel, returned category and UTC check time. Recheck before publishing a claim about another creator. This tool reads public metadata and does not edit any video.

YouTube video category field · Category-name lookup

Explore 42.uk

Browse the library for more games and tools, or read our practical guides.

Open the existing advanced workspace for other TubePilot tools. Its separate tools have their own setup requirements.