ChannelBackup: Back Up Your Entire
YouTube Channel, Automatically, Free

YouTube owns your content in the most practical sense that matters: they can take it down, restrict it, demonetize it, or lose it — and you have no recourse if you don't have your own copy. Channels get banned for terms of service violations they didn't commit. Entire video catalogs disappear when creators pass away or abandon accounts. Copyright bots strike valid videos. And YouTube's own data doesn't always survive platform changes.

The solution is simple: have a local copy. Not in the cloud, not on a service that could itself disappear — on your own hard drive, under your control. That's what ChannelBackup does.

Just want the open-source desktop app? The ChannelBackup-Desktop tool page has the features, install steps, and FAQ in one place.

What ChannelBackup Does

ChannelBackup is a free desktop application for Windows and Mac. Install it, connect your YouTube channel, and it backs up everything — on a daily automated schedule, without requiring you to babysit it.

Your Data Stays Local

ChannelBackup does not upload your videos anywhere. There is no cloud component, no ChannelBackup server that receives a copy of your content, no account you need to create on channelbackup.app to use it. The files land on your machine, in a folder you specify, organized by video.

This means you're responsible for storing it — an external hard drive, a NAS, a cloud storage service of your own choosing. But that's also the point: you control the destination. Your backup isn't subject to whatever policy changes a third-party service decides to make.

Free to Download & Use

ChannelBackup is free to download and use — no subscriptions, no premium tier, no features locked behind a paywall. The desktop script is available on GitHub at VAROIndustries/ChannelBackup-Desktop — written in Python, auditable, and forkable. The channelbackup.app website itself is not open source.

Download links and documentation are at channelbackup.app.

Why Bother Backing Up?

Here's a non-exhaustive list of things that can cause a YouTube channel's content to become inaccessible:

• Account termination for ToS violations — accurate or mistaken
• Copyright strikes that escalate to channel removal
• Google account compromise or lockout
• The creator becomes incapacitated and the account lapses
• YouTube deprecates or removes content types
• Platform policy changes that retroactively affect existing content
• You simply want to leave YouTube and go somewhere else

In all of these cases, the only version that survives is the one you kept. ChannelBackup is how you keep it.

For YouTube Creators

If you run a YouTube channel — especially a channel you've invested significant time in — you should have a local backup strategy. ChannelBackup automates that. The New Janky Workshop channel uses it; so do the other VARØ-adjacent channels. If you're making content, protect it.

ChannelBackup is listed on the VARØ apps page under Creator Tools, alongside the rest of the tools built here.