Remove All YouTube Watch Later Videos

YouTube does not currently ship an official "Remove all" button for the Watch Later playlist. Google's own help documentation covers only two paths: bulk-removing videos you have already watched, and removing unwatched videos one at a time. This page documents the official method, then a browser-console script that automates full removal — watched and unwatched — for large playlists.

1. Official Method (Google Support)

Per Google's Add & remove videos from Watch later support page, the documented desktop flow is:

  1. Open YouTube → You → Watch Later.
  2. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) under the playlist title — in the video-count header, next to the download arrow, underneath the video count (e.g. "198 videos").
  3. Select Remove watched videos to delete everything you have already watched.
  4. Remaining unwatched videos must be removed individually: click ⋮ beside each video → Remove from Watch later.

2. What "Remove Watched Videos" Does Not Do

Remove watched videos deletes only videos YouTube has recorded as watched. It leaves every unwatched video in place. YouTube provides no official "Remove all" command for the full playlist — Google's help page documents individual per-video removal (three dots beside each row) as the only supported way to clear unwatched entries. For a playlist with hundreds of saved videos, that means hundreds of manual clicks.

3. Console Script — Remove All Automatically

The script below drives the same UI Google's own instructions describe — it opens each video's three-dot menu and clicks Remove from Watch later — just automatically, one video at a time, until the playlist is empty. It requires no extension and no API key; it runs entirely in the browser's developer console against the page already on screen.

(async () => {
  const wait = ms => new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms));

  while (true) {
    const video = document.querySelector("ytd-playlist-video-renderer");

    if (!video) {
      console.log("Finished removing visible videos.");
      break;
    }

    const menuButton = video.querySelector(
      "ytd-menu-renderer button, #menu button"
    );

    if (!menuButton) {
      console.log("Menu button not found.");
      break;
    }

    menuButton.click();
    await wait(500);

    const removeButton = [...document.querySelectorAll(
      "ytd-menu-service-item-renderer"
    )].find(item =>
      item.textContent.includes("Remove from Watch later")
    );

    if (!removeButton) {
      console.log("Remove option not found.");
      break;
    }

    removeButton.click();
    await wait(800);
  }
})();

4. How to Run It

  1. Open youtube.com/playlist?list=WL (your Watch Later playlist).
  2. Open the browser's developer console — Firefox: ⌘ + Option + K (Mac) or Ctrl + Shift + K (Windows/Linux); Chrome: ⌘ + Option + J (Mac) or Ctrl + Shift + J (Windows/Linux).
  3. If the browser blocks pasting into the console, type allow pasting and press Enter first (Firefox and Chrome both show this prompt on first paste).
  4. Paste the script above and press Enter.
  5. Keep the tab open and in the foreground until the console logs "Finished removing visible videos." The loop re-queries the first visible row each pass, so it keeps working as YouTube lazy-loads further pages of the playlist into view.

5. Caveats