How to Make a Collaborative Playlist on YouTube

Collaborative playlists are one of YouTube's most useful sharing features and one of its least known. A group of friends can build a party playlist together, a team can collect training videos in one place, or a class can pool research. Everyone adds what they find, and YouTube shows whose picture is on each video so you know who added what.

How to make a YouTube playlist collaborative

1. Create a new playlist or open one you've already made.
2. Select Share.
3. Select Invite collaborators.
4. Choose who to invite.
5. If the playlist is private, YouTube asks you to make it shareable (public or unlisted) before the invite goes out.

That privacy step is the one that catches people. A private playlist can't be collaborative. If you don't want strangers finding it, choose unlisted: only people with the link can see it. Public playlists can show up in search and on your channel, which is fine for a community project but not for a playlist of your team's internal training. Decide who should be able to find it before you send a single invite, because changing it later means telling everyone the rules have changed.

What collaborators can and can't do

Action	Playlist owner	Collaborator
Add videos	Always	Yes, once they accept
Remove videos they added	Yes, anything	Only their own
Remove videos other people added	Yes	No
Invite more people or turn collaboration off	Yes	No
Leave the playlist	Not applicable	Yes

YouTube says only you and the playlist owner can remove content you've added. So a collaborator can't delete everyone else's picks, which keeps a shared playlist from being wiped by one person.

How collaborators add videos

1. Accept the invite.
2. On any video, select Save and tick the shared playlist.
3. Or open the playlist, select Add, search for a video and choose Save to playlist.

Once a video is added, the collaborator's profile picture appears on it in the playlist. That little picture is more useful than it sounds: in a busy playlist it tells you who to thank for a great find, and who to ask when a video doesn't fit.

Let people vote on the order

This is the feature most people miss. YouTube has ranked voting, where signed-in users can upvote or downvote videos to change their order. Voting is anonymous and everyone gets one vote per video. It's perfect for a party playlist where you want the crowd favourites at the top.

1. Go to the You tab.
2. Find the playlist and select the three dots.
3. Select Edit.
4. Under Voting, choose Everyone, Collaborators only or Off.
5. Select Save.

How to stop collaboration or leave a playlist

As the owner: select the collaborators' profile photos at the top of the playlist and turn Collaborate off. Be aware that this removes every collaborator at once. You can't remove just one person this way.

As a collaborator: open the playlist and select the bookmark icon to remove it from your library. You can't add new videos after that, but anything you already added stays in the playlist.

Ideas for collaborative playlists that work

• A party or wedding playlist. Guests add their requests, voting pushes the favourites up, and nobody has to manage a list of song titles in a chat.
• Team training. Colleagues add the tutorials that helped them, so new starters get a ready-made library of the best how-to videos for the tools you use.
• A class or study group. Everyone adds sources on the topic, and each video shows who found it, which makes it easy to ask the right person about it.
• Holiday planning. Friends add travel guides and food videos for the place you're going, all in one spot.

For anything work-related, keep the playlist unlisted and set voting to collaborators only, so outsiders who stumble on the link can't reorder it.

How big can a collaborative playlist get?

Bigger than you'll need. YouTube says you can add hundreds of people and include thousands of videos or songs. If you're running a playlist for a community or a course, size won't be the problem. Keeping it tidy will, which is where the voting and the owner-only removal rules help.

Collaborative playlist not working?

• The playlist is private. Switch it to unlisted or public.
• The person isn't signed in. Collaborators need a YouTube account.
• Collaboration was turned off and on again. That removes everyone, so send fresh invites.
• Your channel has a strike. YouTube's Community Guidelines strike rules block creating, editing or adding collaborators to playlists for 1 week after a first strike.

If you're on YouTube Music rather than the main app, collaboration works in a similar way. And if you want the same thing for music on another app, here's how to make a collaborative playlist on Spotify. For sharing without collaborating, read how to make a Spotify playlist public for the Spotify side of things.

My verdict

Make the playlist unlisted, invite your people with the Share button and switch on voting if the order matters. It takes a minute, and it's far easier than collecting links in a group chat.

For the rest of the series, see the YouTube Help: 30 Guides to Channels, Subscribers, Monetisation, Thumbnails and Fixes.

Frequently asked questions

Can you make a collaborative playlist on YouTube?

Yes. Open the playlist, tap Share, choose Invite collaborators and send the invite. The playlist must be public or unlisted.

Why can't I invite collaborators to my YouTube playlist?

Private playlists can't be shared for collaboration. Change it to unlisted or public first.

Can collaborators delete videos on a YouTube playlist?

Only the ones they added. The owner can remove anything.

How do I remove collaborators from a YouTube playlist?

Select the collaborators' profile photos at the top of the playlist and turn Collaborate off. This removes all of them.