YouTube Playlist Management: Reorder, Remove, and Combine Playlists

YouTube’s playlist tools are spread across a few different menus, which is why simple things — reordering, removing a video, merging two playlists — often feel harder to find than they should be. This guide covers all three, for both desktop and mobile, plus what to do when you don’t own the playlist.

Reordering a Playlist (Including Reversing It)

By default, YouTube plays playlists in the order videos were added — usually oldest first. For a series you’re building as you go, that’s often backwards from what viewers want.

If You Own the Playlist

1. Open your playlist on YouTube and click the three-dot menu.
2. Select Playlist settings.
3. Find the “Order videos by” dropdown.
4. Switch between “Date added (oldest)” and “Date added (newest)” to flip the play order.

Other sort options are usually available too — by publish date, by most popular, or fully manual. Manual ordering lets you drag and drop individual videos into any sequence, which is what you want for a structured course or a story-driven series where neither date order works.

If You Don’t Own the Playlist

YouTube doesn’t let you reorder someone else’s playlist — the order is set by the owner, and there’s no personal-view override built into YouTube. Your realistic options:

• Copy it into your own playlist and reorder your copy (see the merging section below — same process).
• Play videos manually in the order you want, one at a time.
• Use a browser extension that changes the display order in your own browser only. This doesn’t affect what other viewers see, quality varies a lot, and extensions break whenever YouTube changes its layout — stick to well-reviewed ones from the Chrome Web Store, and treat this as a temporary workaround rather than a reliable solution.

Removing a Video From a Playlist

Removing a video from a playlist does not delete the video itself — it only takes it out of that one list.

On Desktop

1. Open the playlist from your Library or the channel’s Playlists tab.
2. Find the video and click the three-dot menu next to it.
3. Select Remove from this playlist.

On Mobile

1. Open the playlist in the YouTube app.
2. Tap the three-dot menu next to the video.
3. Select Remove from playlist.

The video disappears from that playlist immediately but stays on YouTube and in every other playlist it belongs to — each playlist’s contents are independent.

Deleting the Video Entirely Is Different

If it’s your own upload and you want it gone from YouTube completely, that’s a separate action: YouTube Studio > Content, find the video, and delete it there. That removes it everywhere at once, including from other people’s playlists, and it isn’t reversible.

Combining Two or More Playlists

There’s no one-click “merge playlists” button on YouTube. Combining means adding videos from each source playlist into a single destination playlist, one at a time.

Step 1: Create the Combined Playlist

1. Go to any video you want in the new playlist and click Save below it.
2. Select Create new playlist, name it, and set its visibility (Public, Unlisted, or Private).

Step 2: Add Videos From Each Source Playlist

1. Open the first playlist you want to merge in.
2. For each video, use Save (or the three-dot menu) and add it to your new combined playlist.
3. Repeat for every video across each source playlist.

On mobile the flow is the same: tap the Save icon under a video, then pick your combined playlist or create a new one.

Things to Know Before You Start

• Duplicates are handled automatically — if a video appears in several source playlists, it’s only added once to the combined one.
• There’s no bulk “add all” option, including for your own playlists. For a playlist with hundreds of videos this gets genuinely tedious, with no official shortcut.
• Sort order resets — videos land in the combined playlist in the order you add them, not the order they had in their source playlists. If sequence matters, add them deliberately or reorder afterward using the steps above.
• Consider whether you actually need to merge. Multiple focused playlists are often better for viewers than one giant one, and they’re easier to feature separately on your channel page.

Playlist Privacy Applies Separately

Each playlist you create has its own visibility setting, independent of the videos inside it. A Public playlist can contain videos that are themselves Unlisted, and a playlist you made years ago could still be Public without you realizing. It’s worth reviewing your playlists’ visibility if privacy matters to you.

FAQ