Of late I have subscribed to a lot of channels on YouTube. Recently I was going through my list of subscribed channels. I was not able to find a few channels in the list, which I distinctly remember subscribing to.
Thinking I have accidentally unsubscribed from them, I thought of locating them again.
I opened YouTube in a new browser tab, searched for the channel and opened the channel web page. And lo, the channel was subscribed.
Case in point, the same case has happened with various channels that I actually (still) am subscribed to but they are not showing up in list of subscriptions. I have tried going through the list on Web client, iOS as well as Android app.
It seems to be a YouTube API/Backend bug.
Now my concern is, have I technically lost access to many other such subscribed channels that I can't recall at the moment. Keep in mind I have over 1k subscriptions.
Has anyone come across this bug? If yes, is there a workaround to recover lost subscribed channels?
I came across this page while doing a Google search. Appears to discuss the same issue, but I was not able to find any solution there.
UPDATE: I opened YouTube today and voila! the missing subscribed channels showed up. I remember writing a feedback to YouTube with the link for this question. Not sure if that led to the issue getting fixed. But nice to have my subs back.
Best Answer
For the channels that are not listed under subscribed section with you being subscribed to them, check if you also subscribed to the bell (notifications). A lot of voodoo happened when YouTube re-designed the whole subscription process a year ago.
Currently, your options are:
Track down and re-subscribe to those channels, so YouTube could update their database with your subscriptions.
Contact YouTube support with your issue, and ask them to fix it for you. You can do this by clicking on the Send Feedback link shown in the left sidebar.