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YouTube Shorts Scraper

Enumerate the vertical Shorts feed of any YouTube channel — title, view-count text, video ID, direct Shorts URL, and thumbnails — in bulk, with one clean JSON record per Short.

Why use this actor

• Channel-level Shorts feed — pulls only the Shorts tab, not regular long-form videos, so you do not have to filter the output yourself.
• Flexible input — accepts handles (@MrBeast), channel IDs (UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA), or full channel URLs in the same list.
• Auto-pagination — walks the entire Shorts catalog for each channel (or stops at maxItems) without you managing cursors.
• Vertical thumbnails included — every Short comes with multiple 9:16 thumbnail resolutions ready for previews, dashboards, or multimodal training sets.
• View-count signal — surface the viewCountText YouTube shows on the Shorts shelf (e.g. "106M views") for quick performance benchmarking.
• Stable JSON output suitable for pipelines, spreadsheets, and databases — every row carries _input, _channelId, _source, and _scrapedAt envelope fields so you can join results back to your input list.
• No account / no login / no API key — just paste the channel list and run.

How it works

1. You provide a list of YouTube channels — handles, IDs, or full URLs all work.
2. The actor resolves each handle to its channel ID, opens the channel's Shorts tab, and reads each Shorts item the same way the YouTube web app does.
3. Pagination continues automatically until the channel's Shorts feed is exhausted or maxItems is reached.
4. Results stream into your dataset, ready to download as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

You do not need to manage scrapers, browsers, or rotating IPs — all handled internally.

Input

{
"channels":[
"@MrBeast",
"@khaby.lame"
],
"maxItems":50,
"proxyConfiguration":{
"useApifyProxy":true,
"apifyProxyGroups":["DATACENTER"]
}
}

Output

Input: @MrBeast, maxItems: 3

{
"videoId":"dqpCvSU-ECE",
"url":"https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dqpCvSU-ECE",
"title":"If This Goes In You Have To Subscribe",
"viewCountText":"2.8M views",
"thumbnails":[
{
"url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dqpCvSU-ECE/oardefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEdCJUDENAFSFWQAgHyq4qpAwwIARUAAIhCcAHAAQY=&rs=AOn4CLAQV3EwU-zVRfZjyXYsuw8bub2ZrQ&usqp=CCk",
"width":405,
"height":720
},
{
"url":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dqpCvSU-ECE/oardefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEgCJUDEOAESFWQAgHyq4qpAw8IARUAAIhCcAHAAQbIAQE=&rs=AOn4CLCEfSlsJpHS4bVo4xt_JVYtX0xOrg&usqp=CCk",
"width":405,
"height":608
}
],
"_input":"@MrBeast",
"_channelId":"UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA",
"_source":"S1-primary",
"_scrapedAt":"2026-05-18T10:44:44.812131+00:00"
}

Error envelope

Channels that fail to resolve or fetch return a structured error instead of crashing the run:

{
"_input":"@this-handle-does-not-exist-xyz",
"_error":"handle_resolve_failed",
"_errorDetail":"could not resolve @this-handle-does-not-exist-xyz",
"_source":"S1-primary",
"_scrapedAt":"2026-05-18T10:45:02.012345+00:00"
}

Filter on _error to triage failed rows. Channels that simply have no Shorts return zero records — that is not an error.

Pricing

This actor is billed per result: $3.50 per 1,000 Shorts (Tier 3). Each Short returned in your dataset = 1 result. Error rows (handle_resolve_failed, fetch_failed, invalid_input) are not billed.

Other Sosmed Actors

Browse the full catalog at apify.com/xtracto.

Notes

• The Shorts tab is ordered newest-first as YouTube serves it; ordering can shift between runs if the creator pins or unpins a Short.
• Only public Shorts are returned — unlisted and private Shorts are not visible on the channel's Shorts tab.
• Channels that have never posted a Short simply yield zero records (no error). The Shorts tab does not exist for such channels.
• viewCountText is text (e.g. "1.2M views"), not a number — parse it client-side if you need an integer.
• Thumbnails are vertical 9:16; the array contains multiple resolutions, sorted largest-first.
• Adult-oriented or age-restricted Shorts may be hidden by YouTube's default safety filter and will not appear.