“Unavailable Videos Are Hidden”: How to See (and Name) Deleted Songs in YouTube Music

You open a playlist you've built over years, and above the track list there's a quiet little banner: "Unavailable videos are hidden." The count at the top says 412 songs. You scroll and count fewer. Something's gone, and YouTube isn't saying what.

If you've hit this, you're not alone. It's one of the most common complaints from long-time YouTube Music listeners. This guide covers what the message means, how to see the deleted songs in your YouTube Music playlist, how to work out what they were called, and how to stop it from catching you off guard again.

What "unavailable videos are hidden" actually means

YouTube Music runs on YouTube's video catalog. Every song in your playlist is really a video (an official upload, a "Topic" auto-generated track, a lyric video, a fan upload) with its own video ID. When one of those videos stops being playable, YouTube hides it from the normal playlist view and shows that banner.

A video can become "unavailable" for a few different reasons:

• Deleted. The uploader removed it, or the channel was closed.
• Removed for copyright or terms violations. Rights holders file takedowns all the time, especially on unofficial uploads.
• Made private. The uploader didn't delete it but switched it to private, so only they can see it.
• Region-blocked. The video still exists but can't be played in your country. This kind sometimes comes back when you travel or when licensing changes.
• Replaced. Labels and distributors sometimes re-upload a catalog, which retires the old Topic video and creates a new one with a different ID.

The banner doesn't tell you which of these happened. It also doesn't tell you what disappeared, and for a music library that's the part that hurts.

How to show unavailable videos on desktop

The quickest built-in way to reveal hidden tracks is through regular YouTube (not the YouTube Music app), because it handles playlists the same way:

1. Open youtube.com in a desktop browser while signed in to the same Google account.
2. Go to Library (or You) → Playlists and open the playlist. Your YouTube Music playlists show up here too.
3. Click the ⋮ (three-dot) menu on the playlist header.
4. Choose Show unavailable videos.

The hidden rows now show up in the list, usually labeled something like [Deleted video] or [Private video], with a grey thumbnail.

Interface labels and menu placement change from time to time, so if you don't see the option exactly there, look for it in the playlist's overflow menu or on the banner itself.

Known quirks and limits

A few things often trip people up:

• The YouTube Music app and music.youtube.com don't always offer the same toggle. Desktop YouTube tends to be the most reliable place to look.
• Long playlists may not reveal everything at once. Users regularly report that very large playlists load in chunks, so you may need to keep scrolling, and some people find that not every hidden row shows up reliably.
• Liked Music behaves differently. Your auto-generated "Liked Music" list isn't a normal playlist in every view, so the toggle may not be there at all.
• The reveal isn't permanent. You'll usually have to do it again next visit.

Why deleted songs still have no name after you reveal them

This is the frustrating part. You've revealed the hidden rows, and what you get is a column of [Deleted video] placeholders. No title, no artist, no channel.

That's because YouTube removes the metadata along with the video. The playlist keeps a pointer (the video ID) but no longer shows what that ID used to be. Private videos are the same: the title is hidden from everyone except the uploader.

So "show unavailable videos" tells you that songs are missing and roughly where they were in the list. It doesn't tell you which songs they were.

DIY: how to find the name of a deleted song

You can often recover a deleted song's title with some detective work. Here's the usual process.

Step 1: Get the video ID

On desktop YouTube, with unavailable videos showing:

1. Right-click the [Deleted video] row and copy the link.
2. Paste it somewhere. It'll look like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXXXXXXXXXX&list=....
3. The 11-character value after v= is the video ID. That's your only clue, so hang on to it.

Step 2: Search the ID

Try these, roughly in this order:

• Google the video ID in quotes, e.g. "dQw4w9WgXcQ". Forum posts, blog embeds, and old playlist mirrors sometimes still mention it next to a title.
• Filmot (filmot.com) is a third-party search engine that indexes YouTube metadata, including some videos that have since been removed. Paste the ID and see if it knows the title.
• The Wayback Machine (web.archive.org): paste the full watch URL. If someone archived the page while it was live, you'll see the original title and channel.

Step 3: Sanity-check the result

If you get a title, check that it fits the playlist: genre, era, and where it sat in the list. Then search YouTube Music for an official version to replace it with.

Where DIY breaks down

This works, but it's slow and hit-or-miss:

• Obscure tracks often leave no trace. If nobody archived or linked the video, there's nothing to find.
• It's one song at a time. Ten missing songs means ten lookups.
• It's reactive. You only find out after the title is already gone from YouTube's side.
• There's no alert. Next week another song can quietly disappear and you'll only notice when you happen to scroll past the gap.

For more on the different recovery methods (old exports, playlist diffs, archive tools), see our guide on how to recover deleted song titles from a YouTube playlist.

The better fix: keep a record before songs disappear

There's one reliable way to always know what a deleted song was called: write down the title while the song is still there.

You can do it by hand. Export or copy your playlists every so often and keep the list somewhere safe. When a [Deleted video] row shows up, compare it against your last copy. It works, but most people stop after the second or third time, and the song that vanishes is always the one from the month you skipped.

That gap is what a playlist tracker is for. It keeps a snapshot of each song's title, artist, and video ID, re-checks your playlists on a schedule, and when a track goes unavailable it still knows what the track was. Why songs vanish in the first place is a topic of its own; we cover it in why songs keep disappearing from YouTube Music.

Where PermaMusic fits

This is why we built PermaMusic. You sign in with Google using read-only access (we never change anything in your YouTube account), choose the playlists you want to track, and PermaMusic syncs them. Once a song is tracked, PermaMusic keeps its name, so when YouTube turns it into a blank row you can still see what it was, find it again and add it back.

The first sync scans every playlist you select and flags what's already disappeared. Titles for those songs are looked up in the background and fill in as they're found, though some can't be identified. That's free, so you can see what your library has lost before deciding whether you want ongoing tracking. The free plan shows the names of a limited number of deleted songs, and a paid plan shows all of them. After that you get background syncs and an email alert when a song disappears. PermaMusic also finds duplicates across playlists and searches your whole library in one place, which helps when you're putting a playlist back together.

An honest note on what "recovery" means

PermaMusic recovers metadata: the title (which usually names the artist) and playlist position of songs that are no longer available. It does not download, store, or restore audio, and it can't make a deleted video playable again. What it gives you is the name, so you can find the track again through legitimate means: an official upload on YouTube Music, a different release, or another service you use. We think that's the right line to draw, and it keeps your library tidy without crossing into piracy.

Quick recap

• "Unavailable videos are hidden" means some songs were deleted, made private, region-blocked, or replaced.
• On desktop YouTube, use ⋮ → Show unavailable videos to reveal them. Expect quirks in long playlists and Liked Music.
• Revealed rows usually have no title. Use the video ID with Google, Filmot, or the Wayback Machine to try to identify them.
• DIY lookups are slow and reactive. Keeping a snapshot of titles before songs disappear is the only way to always know what you lost.
• If you'd rather not maintain that by hand, a tracker like PermaMusic does it for you, and the first scan shows what's already gone.