Originally created by Amith VP, maintained and extended by N8VENTURES.

NPM Module to check whether YouTube channel is live or not. WITHOUT YOUTUBE API KEY Return object with live status, video title, video url.

Now also returns latest YouTube channel upload with checkVideo(channel) and latest YouTube short with checkShort(channel)

Installation

npm i @n8ventures/isyoutubelive

Usage

const { checkLive, checkVideo, checkShort } = require("@n8ventures/isyoutubelive")

const channel = '@LinusTechTips'; // Can be Channel ID, @Handle, YT URLs

const liveData = await checkLive(channel);
console.log('Live Data:', liveData);

const videoData = await checkVideo(channel);
console.log('Latest Video:', videoData);

const shortData = await checkShort(channel);
console.log('Latest Short:', shortData);

Supported channel formats:

'@LinusTechTips'
'UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw'
'https://www.youtube.com/@LinusTechTips'
'https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw'

checkLive() returns

{
  is_live: boolean,
  is_upcoming: boolean,
  title: string,
  url: string | null,
  videoId: string | null,
  startTime: string | null,
} 

checkVideo() returns

{
  title: string,
  url: string,
  publishedTime: string,
  videoId: string,
  isMembersOnly: boolean,
  latestIsMembersOnly?: boolean,
  warning: string | null,
} 

checkShort() returns the same structure as checkVideo()

{
  title: string,
  url: string,
  publishedTime: string,
  videoId: string,
  isMembersOnly: boolean,
  latestIsMembersOnly?: boolean,
  warning: string | null,
} 

If you want the possibility of including Members Only videos/shorts, you can use mode=false meaning it should try to detect Members Only stuff. Due to how YouTube exposes channel data, detection of members-only uploads is not guaranteed in all cases.

await checkVideo(channel, false);
await checkShort(channel, false);

mode='membersOnly' will only capture Members Only content. However this will not include the latestIsMembersOnly field.

await checkVideo(channel, 'membersOnly');
await checkShort(channel, 'membersOnly');

More info below

Members-only mode

When using:

await checkVideo(channel, 'membersOnly');

or

await checkShort(channel, 'membersOnly');

the returned object will not include:

latestIsMembersOnly

because all returned results are already members-only content.

Additional information

warning contains additional information when the package encounters limitations while detecting content. Otherwise it will be null.

startTime is an ISO 8601 timestamp and is only available for upcoming streams.

Example:

{
  startTime: '2026-06-17T14:00:00.000Z'
}