YouTube Playlist Search

Chrome extension · Free · Open source

Find your playlists, instantly.

A tiny extension that adds a real-time search field everywhere YouTube shows a list of your playlists — the Save-to popup, the Playlists library page, and YouTube Music. Native design. Adapts when YouTube redesigns.

Get the extension View source

What it does

Real-time filter

Type to filter. Diacritics-insensitive. Esc clears the field. The New playlist option always stays visible.

Looks native

The field mirrors YouTube's typography, spacing, border-radius and theme by reading computed styles from sibling elements. Light and dark mode work without configuration.

Works in multiple places

The Save-to-playlist popup (under any video, in search, in your library), the Playlists library at /feed/playlists, and YouTube Music's add-to-playlist dialog.

Survives redesigns

Layered selector fallbacks (semantic tag → ID → ARIA role → structural heuristic) keep the extension working when YouTube ships new markup. No class-name pinning.

How it works

A content script watches the DOM with a single MutationObserver and hooks YouTube's SPA navigation events. When it sees a playlist list — either inside the Save-to popup or on /feed/playlists — it injects a search input above the list and filters items by their label as you type. Filtering is purely a classList.toggle; YouTube's own selection and scroll behavior keep working untouched.

The extension uses zero permissions, talks to no servers, and stores nothing. The full source is one ~10 KB JavaScript file. Read it before you install.

Install

  1. Download the repo (or git clone it).
  2. Open chrome://extensions in Chrome.
  3. Turn on Developer mode (top right toggle).
  4. Click Load unpacked and select the extension/ folder.
  5. Open any YouTube tab and start saving videos.

A Chrome Web Store listing is on the way. In the meantime, loading unpacked is the fastest path — no review, no waiting.