How to Delete YouTube Comments You’ve Written (Old Ones Too)

To delete YouTube comments you’ve written, find them in your comment history (YouTube’s history page links to it, and it also lives in Google’s My Activity under your YouTube comments), then open the menu next to each comment and choose delete. You can also delete a comment directly under the video by opening the three-dot menu beside it. Deleted comments disappear from the video for everyone, and replies to them generally go with them.

The hard part is rarely the delete button. It’s finding comments you left years ago, on videos you’ve forgotten, sometimes under an old channel name. This guide covers how to track them down, how to clear a lot of them without handing your account to a stranger’s app, and what deleting can’t reach.

Why old YouTube comments matter

YouTube comments feel throwaway, but they’re attached to your channel name and profile picture, and your channel is usually tied to your Google account. If that name is your real name, a comment from a heated argument, a joke that has aged badly, or a remark about a former employer can be found by anyone who looks.

Recruiters, clients and journalists don’t usually scroll through comment sections, but people who already have a reason to dig do. A comment can also be quoted in a reply, screenshotted, or embedded in a reaction video, which is where it starts to spread beyond YouTube.

How to find every comment you’ve left

Your comment history

YouTube keeps a record of the comments you’ve posted. You can reach it from the history section of YouTube, where there’s an option to manage your comments, or directly from Google’s My Activity, which lists your YouTube comments with a link to each video. Our guide to Google My Activity explains how that dashboard is organized and what else it stores about you.

The list is usually sorted newest first. Scroll down to reach older comments, and use your browser’s find function to search for specific words, names or topics on the page once enough of it has loaded.

Other places your words appear

• Community posts and replies. Comments on channels’ community posts are tracked separately from video comments in some views, so check both.
• Live chat messages. Messages you sent during live streams and premieres are also part of your activity history, and some remain visible in replays.
• Old channels. If you had more than one channel or brand account, each has its own comment history. Switch to each account in turn.
• Your data export. Google Takeout can export your YouTube data, including comments, as a file you can search offline. That’s the most complete list you’ll get.

How to delete YouTube comments one at a time

1. Open your comment history on a computer or in the YouTube app, signed in to the right channel.
2. Find the comment you want to remove.
3. Open the menu beside it (usually three dots) and choose Delete. From My Activity, you can also remove the item with its delete option.
4. Confirm. The comment is removed from the video.
5. Check the video in a private browser window a little later to make sure it has gone.

You can also delete a comment from the video page itself, which is useful when you’ve landed on the video and spotted it. Labels and menu positions change from time to time, so if something looks different, YouTube’s help center has the current steps.

Edit instead of delete

If a comment was useful but contains something you regret, such as your town or your employer’s name, you can edit it instead of deleting it. YouTube marks edited comments as edited. This keeps any helpful conversation under it intact while removing the problem detail.

Deleting lots of comments at once

YouTube and Google don’t offer a single button to wipe every comment you’ve ever written. For most people, the realistic native options are:

Method	Good for	Limits
Comment history, one by one	Dozens of specific comments	Slow for large histories
Google My Activity	Working through comments by date	Still mostly item by item
Hiding the channel	Clearing comments while keeping your videos (made private)	Check YouTube’s current description; comments don’t come back if you unhide
Deleting the channel	Removing everything tied to that channel	Also removes your videos, playlists and subscriptions
Deleting the Google account	Leaving Google entirely	Removes Gmail, Drive and everything else

If you want every comment gone and don’t care about keeping the channel, deleting the channel is the cleanest native route, because it removes the content attached to it, including comments. Our guide on how to delete a YouTube channel explains the difference between hiding and permanently deleting, and what you lose. Deleting the whole Google account is a much bigger step and rarely necessary just to clear comments.

What deleting a comment does and doesn’t do

Where it appeared	After you delete it
The video’s comment section	Removed for everyone
Replies to your comment	Generally removed along with it, since they sit in the same thread
Other people’s replies quoting you	Stay up; they’re separate comments
Screenshots and reaction videos	Unaffected
Third-party archives and comment trackers	May keep a copy
Search results	Usually drop out after the page is recrawled

Individual YouTube comments rarely rank in Google on their own, but a video page’s snippet can occasionally show comment text. Once the comment is gone, the snippet updates when Google next crawls the page. If it doesn’t update, Google’s Refresh Outdated Content tool lets you request an update, which our guide to removing outdated content from Google walks through. There’s no Google cache to clear anymore, so that tool and a bit of patience are the route.

Private or hidden options instead of deleting

Unlike posts on some platforms, a YouTube comment can’t be made private. It’s either visible on the video or gone. A few settings still help:

• Change your channel name or picture. Comments display your current channel name, so renaming the channel changes how every old comment appears. That can reduce the link to your real name, though anyone who already knows the channel can still find it.
• Keep your subscriptions and playlists private. These are separate settings in YouTube’s privacy options, and they stop your viewing habits being tied to the same identity.
• Hide your channel, knowing what it does. Hiding a channel makes your videos and channel details private, and you can restore it later. YouTube’s help center has said that hiding a channel permanently deletes your comments and replies, so it is a way to clear comments while keeping your videos, not a way to hide them temporarily. Check the current wording before you use it.

A worked example

This scenario is illustrative, not a real client. Tomasz used his full name as his YouTube channel name for a decade and commented often on sports and politics videos. He’s about to start a job in local government and wants the argumentative comments gone.

1. He requests a YouTube export through Google Takeout so he has a searchable list of everything.
2. While it prepares, he opens his comment history in My Activity and works back through the most recent months, deleting anything heated.
3. When the export arrives, he searches it for team names, politicians and a few swear words, and builds a short list of older comments to find and delete.
4. He edits two helpful comments on repair tutorials to remove his town’s name rather than deleting them.
5. He renames his channel to his first name and a hobby word, and sets his subscriptions to private.
6. A week later he searches his full name in a private window. Nothing from YouTube appears.

Common mistakes

• Forgetting other channels. An old brand account or a second channel keeps its own comment history.
• Handing over your Google login. Your Google account is far more valuable than any comment. Don’t give a bulk-delete service your password.
• Deleting the channel by accident. Deleting a channel removes your videos too. Make sure that’s what you want, or hide it instead.
• Assuming deletion reaches screenshots. If someone captured a comment and posted it elsewhere, that’s a separate piece of content on another platform.

If a comment has been screenshotted and spread, or someone has made a video about you, deletion on your side won’t fix it. Our guide on removing a YouTube video about you covers the reporting routes, and our content removal service can help when copies have spread across several sites. For a wider clean-up across platforms, see our guide to deleting old social media posts.

Frequently asked questions

Can I delete all my YouTube comments at once?

There’s no single native button that deletes every comment while keeping your channel. You can work through your comment history or Google My Activity item by item, or delete the channel, which removes the content tied to it. Third-party tools exist but need access to your Google account.

Where do I find my YouTube comment history?

YouTube’s history section links to your comments, and they’re also listed in Google’s My Activity under your YouTube comments. A Google Takeout export of your YouTube data gives you a searchable file of them.

If I delete my comment, do the replies disappear?

Replies sit in the same thread as your comment, so they generally disappear with it. Separate comments elsewhere on the video that quote or mention you stay up, as do screenshots.

Can the video creator see a comment I deleted?

Once you delete a comment it’s removed from the video, including from the creator’s view in the comment section. If the creator received a notification or took a screenshot before you deleted it, that copy is outside your control.