WatchHistory for YouTube™ by GurgyWurgy

WatchHistory for YouTube™: Private History & Auto-Resume

Take control of your YouTube experience. WatchHistory is a lightweight, privacy-focused extension that tracks your watch progress locally. Whether you have official history disabled, are browsing signed-out, or are simply tired of YouTube "forgetting" your place in a long video, WatchHistory has you covered.

🕒 Never Lose Your Place Again

Precision Auto-Resume: Automatically saves your timestamp as you watch. When you return, the extension jumps you back to the exact second you left off.

Continue Watching Section: A dedicated section on your Subscriptions page that surfaces your recent progress, letting you resume instantly without searching.

Visual Progress Badges: See "Resume" or "Watched" tags directly on YouTube thumbnails across your Home feed, Subscriptions, and Search results.

Mark as Watched from Any Feed: Hover any thumbnail on Home, Subscriptions, or Search to reveal a quick menu — mark a video as watched (or reset its progress) without ever opening it.

Smart Completion Tracking: Once a video passes your watch percentage threshold, it is automatically marked as "Watched." This threshold is fully customizable in Settings (default 95%), so it's tailored to exactly how you watch.

Active Watch-Time Tracking: The extension records time actually spent watching or listening in buffered 60-second sessions, while updating resume position and video duration more frequently. Partial watch time is saved when you pause, finish, navigate away, or leave the page.

Background Playback Option: By default, only a visible, playing YouTube tab contributes watch time. Enable the optional setting to count background playback for music, podcasts, livestreams, livestream replays, and regular videos while you use another tab.

Livestream Support: Livestreams and livestream replays are identified separately, retain their channel information, and contribute active viewing or listening time to your statistics.

📊 Know Your Habits

Stats Dashboard: A dedicated Stats page showing your total watch time, videos watched, current and longest watch streaks, most active day, and how many videos you've watched this week.

Top 5s & Records: See your top 5 most-watched videos, top 5 channels, favorite channel, and your longest and shortest fully-watched videos.

Watch Timeline: Explore your saved videos in a chronological day-by-day feed. Jump straight to an archived month and year, and see inactivity gaps between viewing days.

Shareable Stats: Copy a concise YouTube stats summary for today, the last week, month, year, or all time.

🔒 Privacy First, Always

Ghost Mode (Incognito): Need to watch off the record? Toggle Ghost Mode to instantly pause all history and progress tracking for your current session.

100% Local-First Architecture: Your data never leaves your device. We use native, high-performance IndexedDB to store your history securely on your machine. There is no cloud syncing, no tracking, and no external servers — just your data, exactly where you left it.

No Analytics: We don't track what you watch. Your history is stored safely and privately within your browser.

Complete Control: Export your history to JSON for backup or clear your entire database with one click.

🛠 Powerful Local Features

Smart History Management: Store an unlimited watch history locally on your device. You remain in full control — keep everything forever or set your own custom cleanup rules to keep your workspace exactly how you like it.

Instant Search & Sort: Find any video in your history by title. Sort by newest, oldest, or alphabetical to manage your archive your way.

Clean Feed (Optional): Hide Shorts or already-watched videos from your feeds to keep your YouTube experience focused and fresh.

Smart Redirects: Optionally redirect the official YouTube "History" or "Home" links to your new, private local dashboard.

✨ Seamless Integration

Automatic Setup: New user? We'll guide you through a quick configuration process so you can start tracking in seconds.

Dark & Light Mode: Automatically adapts to your system theme for a native look and feel.

Dashboard & Popup: See your most recent videos in a quick-access popup, manage your full history in a dedicated grid, explore it chronologically in Timeline, or check your Stats dashboard for a full breakdown of your watching habits.