I’m trying to keep an eye on what my kid watches without him feeling like I don’t trust him, but the normal YouTube history just shows what he’s searched for-not every recommended video he stops on. Has anyone actually used a way to pull that data without installing something obvious on his phone?
Yeah, YouTube’s native history is honestly pretty limited for exactly that reason - it logs searches and watched videos but doesn’t capture every rabbit hole he wandered down.
Realistically your best low-effort option is YouTube Kids (if he’s young enough) or just enabling Google Family Link - it gives you actual watch history and lets you approve apps, and it’s not “secret” but it’s also not weird, it’s just parenting. If he’s on your family Google account you might already have more visibility than you think through the account activity dashboard.
The “secret zero-trace monitoring” tools you’ll find advertised are mostly overblown - the ones that actually work require installing something on his phone anyway, so you’re not really avoiding that step. 