Videos in your album: how YouTube Unlisted works and why it is free
In this guide
Why videos are a problem to storeWhat "Unlisted" meansHow to upload a video as UnlistedWhy it is freeKeep your own copy tooAdd a caption while you rememberMistakes to avoidHow Album helpsMost families have a few videos that matter more than any photograph: a grandmother singing at a wedding, a father giving a speech, children laughing at a birthday. They sit on a phone, and phones get lost, break or fill up. Moving them somewhere safe is worth an hour of your time.
One of the easiest ways is also free: upload the video to YouTube as Unlisted, and share only the link with your family.
Why videos are a problem to store
A few minutes of phone video can take more space than a thousand photographs. That is why free storage plans fill up so fast, and why many people end up deleting videos to make room. A video you delete to free up space is usually gone for good.
What "Unlisted" means
When you upload a video to YouTube, you choose who can watch it. There are three main choices.
- Public. Anyone can find it in a search.
- Unlisted. Only people who have the link can watch it. It does not appear in searches or on your channel.
- Private. Only you, signed in to your own account, can watch it. You cannot share the link with the family.
For family videos, Unlisted is the one to choose. Nobody can stumble on it, but an aunt in Mombasa or a cousin abroad can watch it with one tap on the link.
How to upload a video as Unlisted
- Open YouTube on your phone or computer, signed in with your Google account.
- Choose to upload a video and pick it from your phone or computer.
- Give it a title that will make sense in ten years, such as "Grandmother's 80th birthday speech, 2025".
- Under Visibility, choose Unlisted.
- Finish the upload and copy the video's link.
Large videos can take a while, so use Wi-Fi if you can and let the upload finish before you close the app.
Why it is free
YouTube does not charge you to keep videos on your account, so you do not pay by the gigabyte as you would with many storage plans. That makes it a sensible home for family videos that are too big for a phone or a paid plan.
Keep your own copy too
One honest warning: a video on YouTube is only as safe as your YouTube account. If you lose access to the account, you lose the videos. So keep the original file as well, on your computer or an external drive, in a second place. Two copies in two places is the rule that saves families from heartbreak. Our guide on how to back up the photos on your phone explains the same idea for photographs.
Add a caption while you remember
A link on its own is not much use in twenty years. When you share a video, write down who is in it, where it was filmed, the year and the occasion. Better still, ask the oldest person in the video to say it out loud at the start. Our guide on how to name the people in old photographs works just as well for video.
Mistakes to avoid
- Choosing Private. The video will not play for your relatives, and it will not play inside a family album.
- Choosing Public by accident. Check the visibility before you press publish, especially with videos of children.
- Deleting the original once it is uploaded. Keep it until you are sure you have another copy.
- Leaving a video with no title. Name it while the memory is fresh.
How Album helps
In Album, videos live on YouTube and play right inside your album. Upload the video to YouTube as Unlisted, copy its link, open the Videos tab in your album, press Add video, paste the link and add a caption. If you choose Private instead of Unlisted, the video will not play in the album, because Private videos only play for the account that uploaded them. Album keeps only the link, so a video is not in the nightly backup or in Download my album: keep your own copy of the original. If your family does not need videos, the owner can switch the Videos section off under Settings, and nothing is deleted.
