Can I relink Youtube channel from non gmail account to gmail?

[Merlin5]

Apologies for a very long post. Any experts here with Google account linking?

I've had a bit of a confused Google account situation for a while that I think is about time I sorted out. I sign into my gmail account with my gmail address and password to sync my calendar, contacts and get my gmail emails.

But in order to sign into my YouTube channel, I have to sign out of gmail and sign in with a different password and non gmail address (my virgin media email) which shows as a gtempaccount when signed in. I don't recall how I created this mess, but I did! So I've been swapping between the two with no issue. But it's not ideal.

I want to be signed in to just one gmail account for YouTube, gmail, contacts and calendar. But I don't see how I can do this.

To further complicate things, my YouTube account somehow has three channels all under the same user name. I don't remember how or why I created them, but I only need one of them which has my 145 videos that I want to keep, the other two channels are empty and useless. All those channels are under an umbrella of a single virgin media gtemp account. Basically, it's my virgin media email address followed by gtempaccount.com.

The channel I want to keep that has my videos was created Nov 2006. My understanding is that channels created pre 2009 can be unlinked and relinked. The other two channels that I don't want were created 2013 and 2014, but as I say, come under the same non gmail tempaccount, which may or may not make it difficult to unlink the 2006 channel, I don't know.

I've tried moving my YouTube channel (with the videos) by going into YouTube settings/advanced but it only shows me my other two unused brand account channels with the tempaccount, it doesn't show my gmail account since I'm obviously not signed into gmail, so I can't move my channel that way. And the screenshot below says my data can't be moved into my existing gmail account anyway.

Any options from this screenshot that I should go for?



I might be leaving virgin media and that would mean losing the virgin media email address. In which case, I'm not sure if that would affect my YouTube virgin media gtempaccount email address and stop me signing in at all. So if that's the case, and I can't link my channel to my existing gmail account, should I create a second gmail account to move my channel to?

 

[demonix]

From the looks of that image, Google has made it impossible to do what you want and you can only create a new account to move everything to that and I don't think that the second option would work for moving to a google account since it'll probably not give that option, but you might be able to be logged into both at the same time on a regular computer at least by removing any youtube related cookies which will then leave you logged in to google generally but have you logged out on youtube which might allow you to log into your account that has your active youtube channel and might allow you to move it to your google account (I'm bolding the mights to make it really clear that even I'm not sure if it will work).

 

[Merlin5]

Thanks for the suggestion, demonix. I think I'll at least create a second gmail account though to move my youtube channel to. Do you mean possibly be logged in to both at the same time by just deleting youtube cookies, or by also creating a second gmail account?

Would you happen to know if my non gmail virgin media mail address (example [email protected]) that I log into to access my youtube channel would remain if I left virgin media? What I mean is, I sign in using '[email protected]' plus my password, then my YouTube channel shows me signed in as a temp account like this, 'example.me%ntlworld.com@gtempaccount'. Would this suggest that my gtemp account login details are now exclusively google and independent of virgin media even if I leave virgin media and lose my ntlworld.com email address? The reason I'm asking is that if leaving virgin media doesn't affect my temp login, then obviously there's no urgency to move my channel to a second gmail account. Although, I'll do it anyway.

 

[demonix]

I mean that it's possible that you can be logged into your gmail account and your virgin media account on youtube by just removing the cookies for youtube (again, I'm not sure if this is even possible but I did remove the youtube cookies and clicking the log in link in youtube took me to a standard google log in screen and didn't auto log me back in with my currently logged in google account) and it is possible to keep the email address active by just accessing it regularly but with a youtube channel I wouldn't rist it and I would just move it to a google account just to in case it does end up being fully closed.

 

[Merlin5]

Seems like you were onto something demonix. I've mostly been using my phone to browse the internet and use YouTube. I use YouTube from two sources on my phone, in my opera browser and also from the default YouTube app.

I noticed last night that for some reason, I couldn't log in to my temp non gmail account anymore in the YouTube app. The app only lets me log into my gmail account. So I deleted youtube cache and data from the phone apps settings page. Now in my browser, I'm logged in to my gmail and non gmail at the same time.

I've saved two pages in my speed dial favourites. One is google logged into gmail and is keeping my calendar, contacts and gmail synced and accessible, and the other is youtube in the browser giving me access to my channel. So that's all good. And if I click on my icon next to the alerts bell at the top right of my youtube page, it shows I'm logged into my temp account and underneath that says 'other accounts' and shows I'm also logged into my gmail account.

The YouTube app however hasn't changed though. It's still only giving me the option to log into my gmail account, and logging into that doesn't allow me to switch to my non gmail channel. I'd like to be able to sort that out, but not the end of the world because at least I'm now logged into everything I want via the browser.