Yeah, me too. It was useful. You could get a quick sense of a tutorial's quality, or if a news video was controversial. It wasn't perfect, but it was information.

Then they removed it. The public dislike count, I mean. They said it was to protect creators from harassment. I get that. But it also took away a useful signal for viewers.

So, this tool is a simple workaround. It's a YouTube dislike viewer. You give it a video link, and it tries to show you an estimate of the dislikes. It's not magic, and it's not official. But it's something.

How can it show dislikes if YouTube hides them?

This is the important part. The tool doesn't hack into YouTube. It can't get the real, current number directly anymore.

What it does is use an archive. Before YouTube removed the counts, a bunch of people saved the data for millions of videos. This tool checks that saved data.

If the video was popular and had its dislikes counted before the change, the data is probably there. For newer videos, or very obscure ones, there might not be any data. Then it shows "Data not available."

It also uses some public APIs and estimates to guess for newer videos, but that's less reliable. The archive data is the most solid part.

What you'll actually see

You paste a URL. The tool fetches what it can. It usually shows a few things:

  • The video title and thumbnail.
  • The public like count (which YouTube still shows).
  • An estimated dislike count (from the archive or an estimate).
  • A simple ratio or percentage. Like what percent of the total engagements were likes.

Sometimes the number will be very precise. That means it's from the archived data. Sometimes it will say "Estimate: ~5.2K". That means it's a guess.

You have to take the estimate numbers with a grain of salt. They're a best guess, not a fact.

Why bother looking at dislikes?

It's not about being negative. For me, it's about saving time.

Let's say I'm looking for a software tutorial. I find three videos with similar titles. One has a high like-to-dislike ratio. The other has a ton of views but the ratio is terrible. Which one am I going to click first? Probably the one the community seemed to approve of.

For product reviews, it can highlight controversy. If a review of a popular phone has a huge number of dislikes, maybe the reviewer missed something, or the audience disagrees strongly. It makes me watch more critically.

It's just one more data point. It doesn't tell you everything, but it tells you something.

The limitations (and there are a few)

I don't want anyone to rely on this tool for anything super important. It has flaws.

New videos are a problem. The archive doesn't have them. The estimates are just that—estimates based on view patterns, comments, and other signals that might not be accurate.

YouTube itself can change things anytime and break how the tool works. I have to update it when that happens.

Most importantly, a dislike count doesn't tell you *why* people disliked. Maybe the video is bad. Maybe it's good but controversial. Maybe the title is clickbait. You still have to use your own judgment.

How to use the dislike checker

It's straightforward.

Go to YouTube and copy the link of the video you're curious about. Come back here and paste it into the box. Hit the button.

Wait a second. It needs to look up the data. The results will pop up.

If you see "N/A" or "Data Unavailable," it means the tool couldn't find any archived data and can't make a reliable estimate. This happens a lot for very new or very small videos.

You can use it as much as you want. There's no limit. It's all done through your browser.

Questions people usually have

Here are the answers I find myself giving most often.

Is this tool against YouTube's rules?

Not to my knowledge. It uses publicly available data (like the dislike archive) and public APIs that YouTube provides for developers. It's not bypassing any paywalls or stealing content. It's just displaying data from other sources.

Why is the number different from what I remember before the change?

The archived data is a snapshot from before December 2021. If you're looking at the dislike count from that time, it should match. But the video may have gotten more dislikes (or likes!) in the time between that snapshot and when YouTube hid the counter. The archive won't show those.

Can creators see their own dislike counts with this?

Creators have always been able to see their exact dislike counts in YouTube Studio. This tool doesn't give them any new information. It's designed for viewers.

Does this work on YouTube Shorts?

Usually, no. The archive and methods are for standard YouTube videos. Shorts are a different system, and dislike data for them is almost never available.

Is the data 100% accurate?

No. The archived data is accurate for the moment it was captured. The estimates are not accurate; they are educated guesses. Always treat the numbers as informative, not definitive.

Will this tool stop working someday?

Probably, yes. If the archive goes offline or YouTube changes its APIs significantly, the tool might break. I'll try to keep it running, but I can't promise it will work forever.