YouTube API: uploading videos with videos.insert, step by step

1. YouTube API: get an OAuth token with an upload scope

The videos.insert page accepts four scopes: youtube.upload, youtube, youtubepartner and youtube.force-ssl. The narrowest that fits is youtube.upload.

The token has to come from the channel owner approving your app, so you need a Google Cloud project and a consent screen of your own.

2. Send the file

The only required query parameter is part, which names the properties you are writing, such as the title and description. The file goes by media upload to the upload endpoint under googleapis.com/upload/youtube/v3/videos.

The documented size ceiling for that upload is 256 GB.

3. Watch for the private-mode rule

Google’s page says videos uploaded through videos.insert from unverified API projects created after 28 July 2020 are restricted to private viewing mode until the project goes through an audit.

So a script that works on your own channel can still publish nothing the public can see until that audit is done.

4. Decide who owns the app

Writing against the API yourself makes sense when YouTube is the only place you post. When a video also goes to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads or X, each has its own app and review to run.

Through Dripost instead

Dripost’s REST API (dripost.com/docs/api) takes a post with a video and a list of platforms, YouTube among them. You connect your channel once in Dripost; there is no Google Cloud project for you to run.

You get the link to the live video back, or the platform’s own reason if it refused. Each post goes to each platform once, and when a result is unclear Dripost asks a person instead of sending again.

Sources

• YouTube Data API: videos.insert
• Dripost API reference (OpenAPI)