Is there a way to know the total length of all the videos on a particular channel?

Recently a non-profit asked me, “We have 1,200 uploads—how many hours of training material is that?” YouTube Studio only shows aggregated watch time, not the raw duration of every video. If you need an accurate library total, you’ll have to combine a few tools.

The pragmatic approach

1. Export playlists first. Most channels organize uploads into series. Gather each playlist ID and drop them into the YouTube Playlist Length Calculator. Jot down the totals.
2. Handle leftover uploads. Channels often have stray videos outside playlists. Use the YouTube Data API search.list endpoint with channelId and type=video to fetch their durations. Store the results next to the playlist totals so you always have one source of truth.
3. Add everything together. Combine the playlist totals with the durations of those loose uploads. Most of the time you’ll end up within 1–2% of the real value. That’s close enough for resource planning or grant applications.

If your team lacks API access, you can still scrape uploads in batches with tools like YouTube Exporter for Google Sheets. It’s slower but works for smaller libraries. The key is having a repeatable process you can revisit every quarter as the channel grows.