YouTube Playlist Search • Chrome Store 2026
A Chrome extension that searches inside YouTube playlists
- Role
- Product Design, Development
- Timeline
- September 2024 to July 2026
- Team
- Solo
- Tools
- Chrome Extension APIs, JavaScript, Cursor, AI-assisted development
- Live
- Visit project ↗
- Permissions asked for: storage, the active tab, and youtube.com
- 3
- Of JavaScript, small enough to audit in a few minutes
- ~6 KB
YouTube Playlist Search adds a search bar inside any YouTube playlist. It's been live on the Chrome Web Store since July 2026.
I built it alone, starting in September 2024.
Problem
Scrolling through long playlists for one video shouldn't cost big permissions.
I keep playlists with over a thousand videos. YouTube has no search inside them.
Extensions that fix small problems often ask for access to every page. So the rule was simple: ask for almost nothing.
Process
YouTube kept deleting my search bar. Only daily use showed me why.
My first version was a search bar on the playlist page that filters as you type.
But YouTube swaps its page without a full reload. So my bar vanished when you changed playlists. I added code that puts it back. I only found the bug by using it every day.
Final Design
Live since July 2026, asking only for storage, the active tab and youtube.com.
It sat finished for a year and a half. The store paperwork felt bigger than the product.
It has no server, no analytics and no third party. A reviewer can read the whole thing in minutes.
Reflection
The best privacy feature is asking for less, not promising more.
A tool that fixes a small annoyance shouldn't make you take on risk. The safe way is needing less access, not writing a longer policy.
One change: I'd publish in the first month, not after eighteen.