Collecting data from YouTube using the official API: A tutorial and a ready-to-use tool.

Online data from social media platforms provide an observational window into a wide range of psychological phenomena and real-world social interactions. Accessing these data typically requires the use of application programming interfaces (APIs), which are designed to ensure compliance with the legal and ethical frameworks governing the access, processing, and storage of potentially identifiable information. However, implementing API-based data collection within a dedicated program remains a major barrier for many researchers. This article addresses this challenge by introducing a ready-to-use data collection tool based on the official YouTube Data API (v3) and providing step-by-step guidance for its use. Geared toward researchers and practitioners with little or no prior programming experience, the tutorial enables users to implement transparent and reproducible API-based data collection procedures in their research. The tool and a fully documented interactive Python notebook are freely available via a public GitHub repository.