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A tiny, dependency-free helper for working with YouTube links. It parses the video ID out of standard, short, embed, and Shorts URLs, then lets you generate clean embed, watch, and thumbnail URLs. Every function accepts either a full URL or a bare video ID and returns null when the input can’t be resolved.

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Installation

Add the package to your project with Bun. 
bun add @ooneex/youtube-utils

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Usage

Import the function you need and pass it a URL or an existing video ID. Extract the video ID from any supported YouTube URL: 
import { getId } from "@ooneex/youtube-utils";

getId("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"); // "dQw4w9WgXcQ"
getId("https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ"); // "dQw4w9WgXcQ"
getId("https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dQw4w9WgXcQ"); // "dQw4w9WgXcQ"
getId("not a youtube link"); // null
Build an embed URL for an iframe player. You can pass a full URL or just the ID: 
import { getEmbedUrl } from "@ooneex/youtube-utils";

getEmbedUrl("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ");
// "https://www.youtube.com/embed/dQw4w9WgXcQ"

getEmbedUrl("dQw4w9WgXcQ");
// "https://www.youtube.com/embed/dQw4w9WgXcQ"
Generate a canonical watch URL: 
import { getWatchUrl } from "@ooneex/youtube-utils";

getWatchUrl("https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ");
// "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
Get a thumbnail image URL for a video: 
import { getThumbnailUrl } from "@ooneex/youtube-utils";

getThumbnailUrl("dQw4w9WgXcQ");
// "https://img.youtube.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/hqdefault.jpg"
Each builder returns null when the input is neither a recognizable YouTube URL nor a valid-looking video ID, so you can guard before rendering: 
import { getEmbedUrl } from "@ooneex/youtube-utils";

const embedUrl = getEmbedUrl(userInput);

if (embedUrl) {
  // safe to render the iframe
}

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When to use it

  • Resolving a YouTube video ID from mixed link formats (watch, youtu.be, embed, /v/, Shorts).
  • Rendering responsive iframe embeds from user-submitted YouTube links.
  • Normalizing arbitrary YouTube URLs into a canonical watch?v= form.
  • Displaying video thumbnails without calling the YouTube Data API.
  • Validating that a string is a usable YouTube URL or ID before storing or rendering it.