YouTube Metadata
& Rights Viewer
Every public field on a video, including the four that decide whether you may reuse it — licence, embeddable, rights-managed and region. And a straight answer on the one people actually search for, which is not public at all.
- ● Creative Commons detection
- ● Embeddable and rights-managed flags
- ● Definition, captions, category, live
- ● One API call, nothing stored
Licence, embeddable, rights-managed flag, blocked countries, captions, definition.
Copyright claims, strikes, monetization status, revenue. Visible only to the uploader in Studio.
A "copyright checker" that reports a claim status for someone else's video is reporting a guess.
Any watch URL, youtu.be link, Shorts link or the bare 11-character ID. One API call, nothing stored, no account.
Creative Commons videos are genuinely reusable with credit. This is the only field on YouTube that grants permission, and hardly anything surfaces it.
The first row answers the question people came for — and answers it 'not public', because it is. Burying that under green ticks would be the dishonest version.
Rights-managed flag, projection, dimension, made-for-kids, whether real captions exist rather than auto ones, live start and end times.
A single API request per video, shared through the same cache as every other tool. No account, no storage, no upload.
How to
How to check whether you can use a YouTube video
Watch URL, youtu.be link, Shorts link or the bare ID. One request reads every public field.
Creative Commons means you may reuse it with credit. Standard YouTube licence means you may not, whatever else the page says.
Embedding is allowed on most videos and is a different permission from reuse. If it is off, an iframe will error wherever you put it.
Rights-managed and region blocks suggest licensed music or footage inside the video. They are warnings, not verdicts.
Read this first
No tool can check a video's copyright claims
Including this one. What it can do is tell you what the uploader actually permitted.
Content ID claims and copyright strikes live in YouTube Studio, for the uploader only. They are not in the API, not on the watch page, and not derivable. A page promising to check them for someone else's video is inferring — usually from whether ads appeared, which varies by viewer.
What is public is more useful than it sounds. The licence field is a real grant: a video marked Creative Commons may be reused, including commercially, with credit. That is the difference between guessing and knowing, and almost nothing surfaces it.
One trap worth naming. A Creative Commons licence covers only what the uploader owns. A CC BY video with a commercial track in it does not make that track reusable — the label's Content ID will still find it in your re-upload, and the CC licence will not help you.
The safest reuse of anyone's video remains embedding it. The view counts for them, nothing is copied, and the embeddable field above tells you whether it is allowed.
Limits
What this viewer cannot do
Private to the uploader, permanently. The page answers this first rather than leaving you to assume the green rows covered it.
Nothing public names the tracks in a video. A rights-managed flag hints that something is claimed; it does not say what.
The licence field is a fact about what the uploader selected. Whether your particular use is lawful is a question for someone qualified.
Private returns nothing. Unlisted works with the exact ID, since unlisted means unsearchable rather than hidden.
The captions field counts uploaded or authored tracks only. YouTube's automatic captions do not register, so 'no' means nobody wrote any.
It is not, in almost every case. Even Creative Commons requires attribution, and the re-upload takes the view away from the creator.
One tool, every intent
However you searched for it, this is the page
People arrive wanting a metadata viewer, a copyright checker, or an answer to "can I use this clip". One paste answers all three — two of them properly, and the third by saying what is actually knowable.
Sourcing footage you may legally use
The licence row is the whole answer. Creative Commons with credit, or nothing — there is no middle ground and no amount of "fair use" reasoning changes the field.
Debugging an embed that will not load
Two causes, both here: embedding disabled by the uploader, or the video blocked in the viewer's country. See also how to embed a YouTube video.
Checking your own upload went out right
Category, audio language, made-for-kids and captions are all set at upload and all easy to get wrong. This is the fastest way to confirm what YouTube actually recorded.
Research and archiving
The copy button gives you the whole field set as JSON, which is usually what someone searching for a "metadata viewer" wanted in the first place.
Also known as
- youtube metadata viewer
- youtube video metadata
- yt copyright checker
- youtube licence checker
- youtube creative commons checker
- can i reuse a youtube video
- is a youtube video creative commons
- yt metadata viewer
- youtube embeddable check
- what is licensed content youtube
- youtube video category checker
- does this video have captions
Related YouTube tools
Keep the workflow going
Get the full country list for a blocked video, pull the tags out, or see how the video actually performed.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Can I check if a YouTube video has a copyright claim?+
No — and neither can any other tool. Content ID claims and strikes are visible only to the uploader, inside YouTube Studio. What is public is the licence the uploader chose, whether embedding is allowed, whether YouTube flags the video as rights-managed content, and where it is blocked. This page shows all four and says plainly that the claim question is unanswerable.
How do I tell if a YouTube video is Creative Commons?+
The licence field, which this tool reads directly. 'creativeCommon' means the uploader published it under CC BY: you may reuse it, including commercially, as long as you credit them. Anything else is the standard YouTube licence, which grants you nothing beyond watching and embedding.
Does a Creative Commons licence mean the music in the video is free too?+
No, and this catches people out. The uploader can only license what they own. A CC BY video containing a commercial track does not make that track reusable, and the rights holder's Content ID will still find it in your re-upload.
What does 'licensed content' mean?+
A YouTube flag meaning the video is claimed by a content owner — typically a label, studio or network. It is a strong signal that reusing any part of it will be detected automatically. Its absence is not permission; it just means no owner has claimed the whole video.
Why does the tool show no captions when the video clearly has subtitles?+
The caption field reports whether a real caption track was uploaded or added. Automatic captions, which YouTube generates itself, are not counted. So 'no' means nobody wrote captions, not that no subtitles appear.
Is this different from the tag or description extractors?+
Yes. Those pull one field out so you can copy it. This shows the technical and rights surface — licence, embeddable, definition, dimension, projection, category, made-for-kids, live timings — which the extractors deliberately leave out.