You remember reading a brilliant comment under a video. Maybe it had a recipe tweak, a timestamp for the best part, or an answer to the exact question you had. You go back to find it and there are 40,000 comments, sorted in an order that seems to change every time you scroll.
YouTube itself doesn't give you a search box for comments. Our free Comment Search tool does. This guide walks through how to use it, plus a few tricks that make finding a specific comment much faster.
What you need
- A link to the video. Any format works: a normal
youtube.com/watch?v=link, a shortyoutu.belink, a Shorts link, or just the 11-character video ID. - That's it. There's no sign-in and nothing to install.
Step 1: Paste the video link
Open the video on YouTube and copy its address from your browser bar, or tap Share → Copy link in the app. Then go to the Comment Search page and paste it into the box at the top. On most browsers you can press the Paste button inside the box and the comments start loading straight away.
Press Load comments. You'll see the video, its view, like and comment counts, and the first batch of comments underneath.
Step 2: Decide whether to load everything
By default the tool loads comments in pages, just like YouTube does. That's quick, but a search only covers what's been loaded so far.
Every comment and reply loads automatically, so you're always searching the whole thread. A progress bar shows how many comments and replies have arrived and roughly how far through you are. On a video with tens of thousands of comments this can take a minute or two, and you can press Cancel at any point to keep what's loaded so far.
Tip: For a quick look on a huge video, skip "load all" and use the Search whole video button described in Step 4 instead. It asks YouTube to do the searching, which is much faster.
Step 3: Type what you're looking for
Once comments are loaded, a search box appears above them. Start typing and the list filters as you type. Matching words are highlighted so you can spot them at a glance.
A few things worth knowing about how matching works:
- Every word must appear, in any order. Searching
banana bread ovenfinds a comment that says "I baked the bread in a fan oven with two bananas". - It isn't case sensitive.
Recipe,recipeandRECIPEall match the same comments. - Partial words count.
bakematches "baked", "baking" and "bakery". If you get too many results, use a longer or more specific word.
Step 4: Search the whole video
If you haven't loaded every comment, the count line under the search box will say how many of the loaded comments match, and remind you that you can press Search whole video.
That button sends your search to YouTube, which looks through every comment on the video and returns the matches. It's the fastest way to search a video with a very large comment section. When you're done, press Back to all comments to return to the normal list.
Step 5: Include replies, sort and narrow down
Next to the search box there's a drop-down with two choices:
- Comments only searches top-level comments.
- Comments and replies also searches inside reply threads, and shows the parent comment with the matching replies underneath it.
Below that you can:
- Sort by newest, oldest or most liked. "Most liked" is great for finding the comment everyone agreed with.
- Filter by date with the From and To boxes. See our guide on finding old comments by date for more on this.
- Tick Also search usernames to match the commenter's name as well as their words. Our guide on finding comments by username covers that in detail.
Step 6: Open the comment on YouTube
Found it? Hover over the comment (or look for the small arrow on a phone) and click the arrow next to the date. It opens that exact comment on YouTube, highlighted at the top of the comment section, so you can like it, reply or share the link.
Common questions
Why don't the numbers match YouTube's comment count? YouTube's count includes comments that are held for review, removed, or hidden as spam. Those can't be loaded by anyone, so the loaded total is usually a little lower.
Why does it say comments are turned off? The creator has disabled comments on that video, or it's a video made for kids, where YouTube always turns comments off. There's nothing to load in either case.
Can I search comments on a private video? No. The tool can only see what's public.
Is it really free? Yes. There's no account, no limit on how many videos you can search, and nothing to install.
Wrapping up
Searching comments turns a frustrating scroll into a few seconds of typing. Paste a link, load the comments, type a word or two, and use the sort and date options to narrow things down. Give it a try on the Comment Search page.
