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Filter your YouTube comments by sub status, questions and more

YouTube is has introduced new comment search filters in YouTube Studio. The new filters let you find comments on your channel that you haven't responded to yet, questions, the commenter's subscriber count, subscription and membership status. You can combine filters to fine tune your search.

Also, comment keyword search will no longer be limited to exact matches to your search terms. For example, if you search your comments for "subs", the results will not only include comments with the word "subs", but also the words "subscriber" and "subscribers".

I think the new filters are quite useful, especially for channels that get a lot of comments.

But I also expect that the minimum subscriber count filter will get some criticism. It feels like it encourages elitism, giving channels with more subscribers special attention. Of course, in practical terms, it's probably politic to make sure more popular creators do get a response if they ask you a question in your comments. It's not so much that channels with more subscribers deserve attention, it more that it can be useful to make connections with channels that have a wide audience.
Fortunately I've responded to all the comments from channels with more than 10 million subscribers.

How to use YouTube comment search filters

YouTube is gradually rolling out the new filters so you may not see the new options in your account yet.   When the new filters are available on your channel, you should see a popup message when you open the Comments page in YouTube Studio. The "Comments I haven't responded to" filter will be added by default.

To use the new filters:
  1. Sign in to YouTube
  2. Open YouTube Studio (studio.youtube.com)
  3. Click Comments on the left menu
  4. Click the space next to the Filter icon (where it says Filter)
  5. Select a filter
    The new filters - which you can use singly or combine - are:
    • Search: Comments with particular keywords. Find comments by a specific channel by adding their username as a keyword.
    • Contains questions: Comments with a question
    • Subscriber status: Comments from users publicly subscribed to your channel. Note that this will not find comments from subscribers who have made their subscriptions private.
    • Channel member status: Comments from channel members. Membership is only available to channels in the YouTube Partner Program that have at least 30,000 subscribers (or 1000 subs for gaming channels).
    • Subscriber count:  Comments from channels with a minimum number of subscribers (1k, 10k, 100k, 1M, 10M).
    • Response status: Comments you have either responded to or haven't responded to
  6. Click the Public, Held for review, or Likely Spam tab to view filtered comments for each category
  7. Fine tune your search by adding more filters or removing filters by clicking the X to the right of the filter name
If you have ideas for other filters, be sure to send feedback to YouTube directly.

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