Why YouTube Hid the Dislike Count
In December 2021 YouTube made dislike counts private, visible only to the channel owner in YouTube Studio. The stated reason was reducing targeted dislike campaigns against small creators. The practical effect was that viewers lost a fast, honest signal about whether a tutorial actually works, whether a product review is trustworthy, or whether a trailer landed.
Where the Numbers Come From
The Return YouTube Dislike project archived dislike counts from YouTube's public API while it was still available, so every video that existed before the change has an exact historical figure. For videos published since, the project estimates counts from the voting behaviour of its extension users, scaled against total views. Older videos are therefore precise; newer ones are approximate but generally directionally right.
This page queries that same public archive, which means you get the numbers without installing a browser extension or granting any permissions.
How to See Dislikes on YouTube
There are three ways, and only one of them needs nothing installed. Paste the video link into the field above and the count comes back in the page — no extension, no sign-in, nothing added to your browser. That is the whole method, and it works on any device including a phone, where browser extensions are not an option at all.
The second way is a browser extension that puts the number back under the video on youtube.com. It is convenient if you are on a desktop all day, though it means granting an extension access to the pages you visit. The third way only works for your own videos: YouTube Studio still reports dislikes to the creator under Analytics, and always has — the 2021 change hid the count from viewers, not from the person who uploaded it.
Whichever route you take, the number is an estimate rather than YouTube's own figure. The section below explains where it comes from and how far to trust it.
Counting Likes as Well as Dislikes
The like count is the half YouTube never hid, and this tool reports it alongside the dislike estimate — so the same lookup works as a like counter when that is all you need. Likes come straight from YouTube's public data, which makes them exact, unlike the dislike figure. Refresh the page on a video that is currently trending and you will see the like count move, which is the closest thing to a live counter without polling YouTube continuously.
Reading the Like-to-Dislike Ratio
The ratio matters more than the raw dislike count, because a video with 50 million views will collect more of everything. As a rough guide: above 95% likes is a strong reception, 90–95% is normal for most content, 80–90% suggests a divisive topic or a flawed execution, and below 70% usually means something went genuinely wrong — a misleading title, a broken tutorial, or a community that felt let down.
Using Dislikes as a Creator
If a video of yours is collecting dislikes, the comments plus the transcript usually tell you why within minutes. Pull the full transcript and read the section where your retention graph drops — the mismatch between what the title promised and what the video delivered is nearly always visible in the first ninety seconds of the script.