How to see your YouTube Music stats on Android and iPhone

We make Listenality. Everything said about it here is limited to what it does today, and it is named alongside free options that may suit you better.

What YouTube Music shows you on its own

YouTube Music has three built-in views of your listening. None of them is a full stats page with play counts you can sort.

• Recap. Seasonal recaps and a year-end recap with your top songs, artists and podcasts, personalized playlists, and share cards. Open it from your profile photo, then Your Recap. Google says you need at least 4 hours of music listening per season, or 10 hours between January 1 and November 15 for the year-end one (YouTube Music Help).
• On repeat. Your channel page lists the songs, artists, playlists and videos you have on repeat. Google says these are based on your watch history across all YouTube services and refresh daily, and they are private by default (YouTube Music Help).
• Watch history. Tap your profile picture, then Settings, Privacy & location, Manage watch history (YouTube Music Help). It is a list, not a count.

All three depend on watch history being on. YouTube and YouTube Music share that setting, so pausing history on YouTube also pauses it on YouTube Music. Recap also needs auto-delete set to keep more than 3 months.

Why a stats app cannot just read your plays

Since 2016, the YouTube Data API returns an empty list when an app asks for your watch history (YouTube Data API revision history). So an app you sign into cannot pull a play log the way stats apps do for Spotify. Every YouTube Music stats tool uses one of three routes instead:

1. Read a Google Takeout file. You download your history from Google, then give the file to a tool. This reaches back years.
2. Count plays on the device. On Android, a scrobbler reads what is playing through media notifications and logs each song from the day you install it.
3. Read your library. A connected app can read supported saved music and available add dates, which shows taste but not plays.

Android and iPhone compared

Route 1: Google Takeout, for your history back years

Google Takeout gives you a file called watch-history.json. It holds one entry per play with the title, the channel, and a timestamp. Plays from YouTube Music carry the header "YouTube Music", so a tool can separate them from ordinary YouTube videos (Playback Stats field guide). Our step-by-step guide covers the export: how to download your YouTube Music history.

The honest limit: the file does not record how long you listened. Any "minutes listened" figure built from it is an estimate from song lengths, not a measurement. It also contains nothing from periods when history was paused or deleted.

Free web tools read the file for you. Playback Stats summarizes it inside your browser and says the file never leaves your device. YT Music Stats is free and open source and shows top artists and most played tracks.

Route 2: count plays from today on Android

Pano Scrobbler is free, open source and ad-free. It logs plays to Last.fm, ListenBrainz and similar services using notification access. Its FAQ advises using the YouTube Music app rather than YouTube for music, because it cannot tell a music video from any other video by title alone (Pano Scrobbler FAQ). Now Playing: Stats & Scrobble keeps a private journal on your phone and can scrobble to Last.fm if you want. Both log new plays after setup. Coverage depends on permissions, battery restrictions and each tool's counting rules; neither guarantees a complete record.

On a computer, Web Scrobbler is a free browser extension with a YouTube Music connector, so plays at music.youtube.com can reach Last.fm too.

Route 3: Listenality, on iPhone and Android

Listenality connects to YouTube Music on iPhone and Android. It reads your liked songs and YouTube Music playlist tracks with available add dates for top artists, genres, moods, eras, a musical personality and a roast, with the songs behind each claim. Import Google Takeout for older plays on either phone. On iPhone, fresh Takeout imports supply monthly recaps; there is no weekly YouTube Music recap. On Android, enable play tracking to record new plays for weekly and monthly recaps. Coverage depends on permissions and background access.

Which route to pick

• You want a quick look, free, once a season: use Recap and On repeat.
• You want years of history: export Takeout and open it in a stats tool.
• You are on Android and want a play log from now on: install a scrobbler today.
• You want taste analysis plus your Takeout history in one place on iPhone or Android: try Listenality.