Every YouTube channel carries two permanent identifiers and, often, memories of older ones. The @handle (rolled out platform-wide in late 2022) is the human-friendly unique name; the channel ID — a 24-character code starting with UC — is the machine identity that never changes, even if the handle does.
The identifier family
- @handle — unique, changeable, appears in URLs as youtube.com/@name.
- Channel ID — permanent, ugly, unambiguous; what APIs and serious tools key on.
- Legacy custom URLs (/c/Name) and usernames (/user/Name) — older systems that still redirect for many channels.
Why trackers prefer the channel ID
Handles can be edited; IDs cannot. A tracker that stores the ID keeps working through any rebrand — which is exactly how our live counter builds its shareable URLs, so a milestone link you post today still resolves after a name change.
What you can paste into the search box
All of it: full URLs, @handles, bare channel IDs, video links, even a plain channel name. The search resolver normalises whatever you paste to the underlying ID and takes you to the right live page.