Will YouTube Ever Run Out Of Video IDs?

Tom Scott · 10.1M views · 2016-03-21 · 5:10

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Overview

Tom Scott explains YouTube's 11-character video IDs, which are base-64 encoded 64-bit numbers, and whether YouTube could ever run out of them. It covers counting systems and base 64 briefly.

On Hacker News

HN links it whenever IDs, base64 or random identifier space come up, as a short and pleasant explainer.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2021–2026

Topics

Software (other)Internet culture & memes

What people said

apocalyptic0n3 · 2021-02 · Recommendation
Him dancing around and celebrating at the end of his 5 minute explanation of YouTube IDs [1] is such an uplifting thing to watch. 1: [VIDEO]
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ekipan · 2026-02 · Reference
I forget the context but the other day I also learned about Snowflake IDs [1] that are apparently used by Twitter, Discord, Instagram, and Mastodon. Timestamp + random seems like it could be a good tradeoff to reduce the ID sizes and still get reasonable characteristics, I'm surprised the article didn't explore there (but then again "timestamps" are a lot more nebulous at universal scale I suppose). Just spitballing here but I wonder if it would be worthwhile to reclaim ten bits of the Snowflake timestamp and use the low 32 bits for a random number. Four billion IDs for each second. There's a Tom Scott video [2] that describes Youtube video IDs as 11-digit base-64 random numbers, but I don't see any official documentation about that. At the end he says how many IDs are available but I don't think he considers collisions via the birthday paradox. [1]: [LINK] [2]: [VIDEO]
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Vicinity9635 · 2024-07 · Joke / meme
>Author and programmer Sam Hughes, by the way, pushed this to the limit and invented Base 65,536, which includes basically every character from every language. It is ridiculous and unnecessary, but when has that ever stopped programmers? [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Tom Scott, played through YouTube.

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