Get the view count of YouTube Video (without api key) and title and anything else

Update: this only works in your browser in developers console if you're on the youtube page (otherwise you'll get a cors error). This is super useful for chrome extensions in which you execute content-script.js on the youtube page!

You can get the view count of a YouTube video without an api key. Here is the secret formula and quick solution:

async function getViews(videoId) {
  const response = await fetch(`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=${videoId}`);
  const html = await response.text();
  const viewCount = html?.split('viewCount":"')?.[1]?.split('"')?.[0];
  return viewCount ? parseInt(viewCount) : null;
}

]

Get more data from the video

Every Youtube page has a very useful ytInitialPlayerResponse variable. In this you can find subtitles, view counts, etc.

Go to any YouTube video
Open developer console
Refresh the page (important)
past ytInitialPlayerResponse in the developer console
you'll have lots of info at your disposal now!

The view count is under videoDetails. In my solution i'm just searching (with split) on viewCount: " and I'm taking the first result.

It would be better to be able to work with this ytInitialPlayerResponse variable. I found out that it's this part up to var meta = document.createElement('meta')

JSON.parse(html.split('ytInitialPlayerResponse = ')[1].split(`;var meta = document.createElement('meta')`)[0])

You could get the complete video data with this:

async function getYouTubeVideoData(videoId) {
  const response = await fetch(`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=${videoId}`);
  const html = await response.text();
  const ytInitialPlayerResponse = JSON.parse(html.split('ytInitialPlayerResponse = ')[1].split(`;var meta = document.createElement('meta')`)[0]);
  return ytInitialPlayerResponse;
}

Get video Title

async function getYouTubeVideoTitle(videoId) {
  const response = await fetch(`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=${videoId}`);
  const html = await response.text();
  const ytInitialPlayerResponse = JSON.parse(html.split('ytInitialPlayerResponse = ')[1].split(`;var meta = document.createElement('meta')`)[0]);
  return ytInitialPlayerResponse.videoDetails.title;
}

await getYouTubeVideoTitle('dQw4w9WgXcQ');
// will return 'Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music Video)'

You can return any parameter from the ytInitialPlayerResponse object:

You could even retrieve the subtitles in two steps

// if no languageCode is given, then return first subtitle from the list
async function getYouTubeSubtitle(videoId, languageCode) {
  const response = await fetch(`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=${videoId}`);
  const html = await response.text();
  const ytInitialPlayerResponse = JSON.parse(html.split('ytInitialPlayerResponse = ')[1].split(`;var meta = document.createElement('meta')`)[0]);
  const captionTracks = ytInitialPlayerResponse.captions. playerCaptionsTracklistRenderer.captionTracks;
  const captionTrack = languageCode ? captionTracks.find(c => c.languageCode === languageCode) : captionTracks[0];
  return await fetch(captionTrack.baseUrl);
}

await getYouTubeSubtitle('dQw4w9WgXcQ');
// will return 'Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music Video)'