YouTube Integration

What this page is

The page connects a YouTube channel to the app — as its description puts it, "Configure YouTube integration to receive chat messages and manage broadcasts." It exists in two variants: the channel itself, and a separate account the bot answers from.

How to set it up

1. Open Connections → Channels and open the YouTube page. Its header reads YouTube Channel (Reads events, broadcast).
2. Connection Status shows where you stand: Disconnected, or Connected as {username} once the channel is in place. The hint beside it names what is being asked for: "Requires authorization to check active broadcasts and send messages to YouTube chat."
3. Press Authorize via Browser. The page has one button and no field for a token — sign-in opens in your usual browser and finishes there.
4. Sign in to the Google account that owns the channel and agree to the permissions. Leave every checkbox ticked. Google lists its permissions one by one and lets you untick them, and unticking one is the single most common reason YouTube ends up connected and silent: without the permission to see your broadcasts the app never learns that you are live, and a chat it cannot find is a chat it cannot read. Since 0.9.2 the app refuses such a sign-in and says so on that page; before it, the connection simply went green and nothing arrived. On success the browser page says Authorization successful! — "Account {username} has been successfully connected to YouTube", and below, "You can close this window. It will close automatically in a few seconds."
5. The module page reports YouTube configuration successfully saved! and closes itself a moment later. Account Name (login) now shows the connected channel; the field is read-only.
6. Chat arrives together with a broadcast: the module reads the live chat of a broadcast that is running. With nothing live there is nothing to read. A public broadcast is picked up within a minute; an unlisted one can take up to half an hour, because it is not shown on the channel page and the app has to ask Google about it — rarely, to stay inside a request limit shared by everyone using strAImer. Pressing Authorize via Browser finds it at once.
7. If the sign-in stops working later, open this page and press Authorize via Browser again — the same button renews it. The status badge going back to Disconnected is what tells you.
8. The arrow at the top left, Back, leaves the page.

The bot account

The same page under Connections → Bots is headed YouTube Bot Account (Sends replies to chat), and it works differently from the channel page above: one button, not two.

1. Press Connect the bot. A window opens inside the app: "sign in to the bot's Google account, then pick the YouTube channel it writes as. One account can hold several channels, and the app cannot tell which one you mean."
2. Sign in as the account the bot should answer from — not the channel's own account.
3. Pick the channel on the page that follows. That choice is what viewers will see as the author of the bot's messages.

Once it is connected the button changes to Sign in again or change the channel and the line under it explains why the sign-in exists at all: "The bot writes the way a browser does, so its replies and moderation do not spend the shared YouTube request limit." Press the same button to move the bot to another channel of the same account.

Make the bot a moderator of your channel. Without it YouTube refuses bans, time-outs and message deletion, no matter what the app does — moderation is a right the platform grants, not a setting here.

If the saved sign-in stops working, the page says so: "The saved sign-in stopped working, so the bot is not writing. Press the button to sign in again." Sign-ins do expire — this is the normal way to renew one.

One thing to expect while the bot's own path is unreliable. When a message cannot go out through the bot's sign-in, the app does not drop it — it sends it through the official interface under your own channel's name. Viewers see the message from you rather than from the bot. It is a deliberate stopgap: silence would mean timers, command replies and the agent all going quiet on YouTube. The app writes a warning in the log every time this happens, so a bot suddenly writing under your name is a sign its sign-in needs renewing.

What it cannot do

• There is nowhere to paste a token, an access key or a refresh key. Authorize via Browser is the only way in, and it is also how an expired sign-in is renewed.
• Account Name (login) cannot be typed into. To connect a different channel, sign in with the account that owns it.
• The page shows no per-feature permission list — YouTube hands over its set at sign-in and the page reports only whether the account is connected.
• There are no Google Client ID and Google Client Secret fields — as the module puts it, "authorization goes through the strAImer app itself, no keys needed".
• The page has no Save button: everything is stored at the end of the browser sign-in.
• A broadcast cannot be picked here, and nothing on the page starts one. The page has no field for a broadcast address or a video link.
• The page neither disconnects the account nor deletes the connection, and it does not turn the module off.
• The channel and the bot account are set up separately: one sign-in does not fill in the other, and they use different windows — the channel signs in through the browser, the bot inside the app.
• The bot's channel cannot be typed in. It is picked from the list the sign-in window shows, and only channels of the account you signed in with are on it.