If you've been an active consumer of YouTube video, How many comments do you think you’ve posted over a lifetime? Is it a whopping number like 7,000 or just a handful?

If your number is closer to, or exceeds 7,000, being able to review and delete your comments is important. We live in a fast-paced world, which means your opinions won’t always age well online. They can sound offensive, off-topic, or downright cringey when you re-read them several weeks later.

Luckily, there’s a simple way to take inventory of the comments you post. To view and delete your riskier discussions, let’s dive into a step-by-step tutorial.

How to View the Comments You’ve Posted on YouTube

Go to the YouTube homepage and find the left-hand navigation menu. Click ‘History’.

On the right side of this screen, you’ll see a panel called History Type. Select the ‘Comments’ option.

The next thing you’ll see is a collection of comments you’ve posted on YouTube. These will be in chronological order, starting with your most recent comments. If you see any cringey ones, hover over the comment to reveal three circles. Click that icon, and the option to either edit or delete the comment will appear.

If you’d rather see these instructions in real time, watch our video tutorial below:

Now that we’ve taken care of these comments, let’s review the ones in your live streams. To do this, return to the History Type panel and switch your selection from ‘Comments’ to ‘Live Chat’. Now you can cycle through any live stream chat messages you’ve posted.

Three Drawbacks of Using YouTube’s Comment Review Tool

On the surface, this tool for viewing past comments is very useful. In the most basic sense, it does what it promises and allows you to review and delete comments. But here’s the catch (and it’s a pretty big one): If you want to do any of this with ease or speed, you’re out of luck as this tool is slightly unfinished.

First of all, there are no filters or search parameters to narrow your results. All you can do is scroll the comments in chronological order until the page has to dynamically load, which takes forever.

Secondly, this YouTube tool doesn’t display all the comments you’ve posted. I know this because we at vidIQ reply to hundreds of comments every time we post new videos. It feels like this tool only collects the comments we post from a YouTube watch page and not all the comments we reply to within the YouTube Studio.

Lastly, the comments displayed by this tool don’t have channel icons or thumbnail images next to them. It’s a small thing to overlook, but their absence makes a huge difference in the user experience.

I say all that to say this: If your goal is to dig through years of YouTube comments to find your most embarrassing ones, the task won’t be easy or efficient.

Oddly enough, this presents a legitimate question: Why would I tell you about a tool that’s not very useful? Well, it’s better than nothing of course. But the other reason is that it opens the door to a powerful tool you shouldn’t ignore.

The Gateway to Managing Your Privacy on YouTube

YouTube’s comment review tool might be unfinished, but the Watch History tool in the same panel feels pretty complete. With this tool, you can review the videos you’ve watched and decide whether to erase that history. It’s a great way to manage your data and privacy on YouTube.

Furthermore, if you want to review and delete activity that Google tracks as a whole, this is where you can start to fix all of that (when you use Google services).

But having said that, indulge me here for a moment. Looking back at the comment review tool, can you imagine if it actually worked well? It would be useful for creators and viewers who 

Knowing this, let's hold YouTube accountable. If enough people speak up and express the need for better tools, maybe YouTube will listen and fix them.

And if they don't, maybe we at vidIQ can create a much better tool for you in the future.

Want To Learn More YouTube Tips and Tricks?

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If you post lots of comments on YouTube, you might want to review and delete those every now and then. Here’s how.

Dicas e Truques

How to View Any Comment You've Ever Posted On YouTube