How to find a YouTube comment

1. 1

   Open your comment history while signed in

   Go to youtube.com/feed/history/comment_history. Make sure you are signed in to the account you commented from — if you have several Google accounts, the comment only appears under the one that posted it.

2. 2

   Or use Google My Activity

   The same records are available through Google My Activity, which is useful if you want to search across a longer span of your Google account history rather than just YouTube.

3. 3

   Follow the link back to the video

   Each entry shows the comment and the video it was posted on, so you can jump back to the thread and read the replies it collected.

Everyone tries this first, and it fails for a structural reason. YouTube does not put the whole comment section on the page: it loads a batch of comments, then loads more as you scroll, and keeps reply threads collapsed until you click to expand them. Your browser’s find command can only search text that has actually been rendered.

So on a video with 30,000 comments, Ctrl+F is searching maybe the forty you have scrolled past — and none of the replies. Scrolling to the bottom to force everything to load is not realistic on a busy video, and the replies stay hidden regardless.

A comment search tool solves this by fetching the whole thread through the YouTube Data API and indexing it, so the search runs against all of it at once, replies included.

This is the case the history page handles badly: you know exactly which video it was, but you have commented a lot recently and scrolling your history is slower than searching the video.

1. 1

   Copy the video URL

   Any form works — the full watch URL, a youtu.be short link, or a Shorts link.

2. 2

   Paste it into Hadzy

   Drop it into the search box on the Hadzy home page and let the comments load. Large comment sections take a moment on the first load, and are instant afterwards.

3. 3

   Filter by your channel name

   Use the author filter with your display name. It matches partial names, so you do not need to get the handle exactly right. Every comment you left on that video — including replies buried inside threads — comes back in one list.

4. 4

   Sort to narrow it down

   If you commented several times, sort by date to find the one from the right day, or by likes if the one you want was the one that took off.

Nothing on YouTube lets you list another person’s comments across the site, and that is by design. What you cando is search one video’s comment section thoroughly:

1. 1

   Load the video in Hadzy

   Paste the URL as above. Comments and replies are both indexed.

2. 2

   Search the words you remember

   Type a distinctive phrase from the comment. Short, common words match half the thread; an unusual word or a proper noun cuts it down fast.

3. 3

   Or filter by the author

   If you know who wrote it, the author filter is more reliable than trying to remember their wording. Partial names work.

4. 4

   Sort by likes if it was a popular comment

   A comment you remember reading is often one many people liked. Sorting by likes puts it near the top even if your search terms were vague.

People paraphrase what they read, so an exact-phrase search often returns nothing even though the comment is right there. Two things help. First, search the shortest, oddest fragment you are confident about — one unusual word beats a full sentence you have reconstructed from memory. Second, combine a loose search with sorting: if you know it was posted around the time the video came out, sort by date and scan.

If you remember the comment but not the video, there is no shortcut — comment search works one video at a time. Your watch history is usually the fastest way to identify the video, and then you can search it.

• Deleted or removed comments. If the YouTube API no longer returns it, no tool can show it.
• Private videos or videos with comments disabled. There is nothing public to load.
• One person’s comments across all of YouTube. Search is per-video; only your own history is account-wide.
• More than 250 results from one free search. A free search returns up to 250 results per query, so narrow your terms rather than paging through everything. Deep pagination and date filters come with the supporter tier.

• YouTube comment finderSearch every comment and reply on a video by keyword or author.
• Export YouTube commentsDownload a video’s comments as CSV, or JSON for supporters.
• YouTube giveaway pickerDraw a random comment winner and share a public proof page.
• Support HadzyUnlock deep pagination, date filters, and 500,000-row export for $5 a month.