YouTube channel permissions let the channel owner give other people their own sign-in access to YouTube Studio, with a role that limits what they can touch, so nobody needs the owner's Google password. You add people under Settings, Permissions, Invite in Studio, choose Manager, Editor, Editor (Limited), Subtitle Editor, Viewer or Viewer (Limited), and remove them from that same screen. A channel still run through a Brand Account has to migrate to channel permissions first.
This guide is for the moment you hand work to an editor, a moderator, a bookkeeper or an agency. It sets out what each role can do with uploads, money, comments, live streams and copyright tools, explains where Brand Accounts still matter, and ends with an offboarding checklist for when someone leaves. Setting up a channel from scratch belongs to our YouTube channel setup checklist.
Why roles beat a shared password
The channel permissions help page makes the case plainly: granting a role is safer than handing over a password or other sign-in details, and it lets you set exactly how far each person can go. Each delegate signs in with their own Google Account, which means you can cut one person off without changing anything for everyone else.
Attribution matters too. When a delegate acts for the channel directly on YouTube, public actions such as comments and posts appear as the channel, while private actions such as searching, watching and purchases stay on the delegate's personal account, according to the same page. Anything a moderator types as the channel is your channel speaking, so pick people whose tone you trust.
Two further notes on that page catch teams out. Invited users cannot reach YouTube Music, the YouTube Kids app or the YouTube APIs through their role. And, as the permissions page warns, if you give access to someone aged 13 to 17, a guardian supervising that teen gets a dashboard showing public information about your channel.
Role-by-task permission matrix
YouTube publishes its roles as lists of things each one can and cannot do. Turning those lists around, so each row is a job you might delegate, makes the right role easier to spot. Every cell below comes from the role table on YouTube's channel permissions page, checked on October 1, 2026; “Not stated” means the page neither grants nor denies it.
| Task you want to delegate | Owner | Manager | Editor | Editor (Limited) | Subtitle Editor | Viewer | Viewer (Limited) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upload and publish videos | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Subtitles only | No | No |
| Delete published videos | Yes | Yes | Drafts only | Drafts only | No | No | No |
| Edit channel details | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | View only | View only |
| Invite, change or remove people | Yes | Yes, in Studio | No | No | No | No | No |
| See revenue data, chat revenue and the viewer activity tab | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
| View and act in the Content detection tab | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Not stated | Not stated |
| Manage live streams | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Monitor only | Monitor only |
| Delete streams or reset stream keys | Yes | Not stated | No | No | No | No | No |
| Chat or moderate in Live Control Room | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Create posts and comment as the channel | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Delete Community posts | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Link Google Ads accounts | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Enter into contracts | Yes | Not stated | No | No | No | Not stated | Not stated |
| Delete the channel | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Read the matrix from the job outward. Someone who cuts and uploads videos but has no business seeing earnings fits Editor (Limited), since it matches Editor in every respect except revenue. A person who replies to comments as the channel needs an editing role, because neither Viewer role can comment or chat as the channel. Someone who only moderates live chat may need no role at all, since YouTube assigns chat moderators on a separate screen, Settings, Community moderation. Bookkeepers who reconcile income want Viewer, which shows revenue and lets them build Analytics groups, while a researcher studying retention can work from Viewer (Limited). Reserve Manager for the one or two people who must add and remove others.
Even the Owner role has a ceiling: the page says it cannot transfer ownership to another user through permissions. Ownership changes run through Brand Accounts, covered below.
Inviting and removing people in Studio
Inviting someone is quick. Sign in to YouTube Studio, open Settings, choose Permissions, then Invite, type the person's email address, pick a role from the Access menu and click Done. YouTube's permissions page says an invite expires after 30 days, so resend it if the person sits on the email. Once accepted, delegates can work on YouTube itself and in Studio on both computer and mobile.
Removal sits in the same place. Open Settings, then Permissions, find the person, click the arrow under Role, and either choose a lower role or select Remove access. Only the owner and managers can see the names and email addresses of everyone with access, which also makes managers the people who can tell you who the owner is when a feature needs the owner to verify by phone.
A few habits keep the list clean. Invite people at a work email they control rather than a shared inbox. Start contractors one role lower than you think they need and raise it when a task demands it. When an agency asks for access, apply the same least-access thinking our agency account access checklist sets out for subscription platforms: one named person per seat, a written scope, and a removal date.
Brand Account history, and why it still matters
Before Studio permissions existed, shared channels ran on Brand Accounts: Google accounts that several people manage from their own sign-ins. YouTube now steers everyone away from them. Its Brand Account roles page labels those roles “not recommended” and recommends migrating to channel permissions to avoid password sharing. Google's Brand Account help adds that accounts created after August 4, 2021 can only be linked to YouTube channels.
Migration belongs to the primary owner. The migration guide says that person signs in to Studio, opens Settings, Permissions, clicks Move Permissions and sends invites. Existing Brand Account users are copied across, but you still set each person's level and send the invite yourself. After the move, access is managed only through Studio.
Brand Accounts still matter for one job: changing who owns the channel. A personal channel can change managers but not owners, and the Brand Account page says transferring ownership means converting to a Brand Account after removing all roles in channel permissions. The migration guide says to opt out of permissions only when you need to complete a transfer, and switching back means inviting everyone to the Brand Account again.
- A Brand Account must have one primary owner, and deleting that primary owner's account deletes the channel too, per the Brand Account roles page.
- An owner can make themselves primary owner only after holding owner status for 7 days or more, according to the same page, which also recommends keeping at least one other owner.
- The third Brand Account role cannot use YouTube at all. One Google page calls it Communications manager and another calls it Community manager.
Money and copyright tools: who sees what
Revenue visibility is the line most teams care about. Editor (Limited), Subtitle Editor and Viewer (Limited) cannot open revenue data, and YouTube spells out that this covers chat revenue and the viewer activity tab. Editor, Manager and Viewer all see it. If a freelancer only needs to know which videos earn, consider sharing a monthly summary instead of the role.
Copyright tooling is broader than many owners expect. Managers and Editors, and so Editor (Limited), can view and take actions in the Content detection tab, which is where the Copyright Match Tool for finding reuploads lives. Removal requests filed from there are legal notices, so decide in advance who on your team may send one. The role table lists email notifications about copyright issues only for Managers.
Contracts are the third line. Editors cannot enter into contracts, which matters when YouTube asks channels to accept new terms. The Partner Program changes page asks channels to accept updated terms in Studio by January 31, 2027, so make sure the owner, not an editor, is on the hook for it; our summary of YouTube's 2027 monetization changes explains what those terms change.
Payments sit outside this system. The permissions page never mentions AdSense for YouTube, the account where finalized earnings and payment details live, so treat access to it as a separate decision with its own sign-in.
Offboarding checklist when an editor or agency leaves
Removing the role is one step of several. Work through this list on the day the engagement ends, in this order:
- Open Settings, Permissions and write down the person's role, email address and the date you are changing it.
- If handover work is unfinished, drop them to Viewer (Limited) for the handover window rather than leaving an editing role open.
- Remove access: the arrow under Role, then Remove access.
- If the channel still has a Brand Account, open the Brand Accounts section of your Google Account, choose Manage permissions and remove them there as well.
- If they ran encoder streams, replace the stream key in Live Control Room; Editors cannot reset keys, so an owner or manager has to do it.
- Review any Google Ads accounts linked to the channel, since Editors and Managers can link them.
- Check scheduled uploads, Premieres, scheduled streams and drafts they left behind, and decide what stays.
- Open Settings, Community moderation and review the moderator lists, which live on a separate screen from channel permissions.
- Review third-party apps connected to the owner's Google Account. Delegates cannot use the YouTube APIs through a role, so any tool an agency connected was authorized from an owner sign-in.
- If a password or verification code was ever shared, change the password and recheck 2-Step Verification.
- Note the change in your own access log so the next review starts from facts.
If anything on the channel changed that nobody on your team made, stop treating it as offboarding. Follow our hacked channel recovery steps, which start with the Google Account rather than the channel.
Where YouTube's permission pages disagree
The permissions page opens by promising five different levels of access, then its table lists six roles you can invite plus the Owner. The likeliest reading is that the Limited variants are counted as versions of Editor and Viewer, but the page does not say so, so trust the table. The migration guide, meanwhile, shows the Subtitle Editor role in a column of features that Brand Account roles cannot offer, which confirms it exists only under channel permissions.
Live access is the other gap. Managers can manage live streams, but unlike Editors they are not listed as barred from deleting streams or resetting stream keys, and the page does not grant those powers in so many words either. If a manager needs to rotate keys, test it with them before a crisis. For everything else about going live with a team, our guide to going live on YouTube covers stream keys, latency and chat settings.
Limitations of this guide
Everything here reflects YouTube's and Google's help pages as checked on October 1, 2026. YouTube adds and renames Studio features often, and the permissions page itself warns that some actions may not be available to delegates at all. Before you rely on a role for something sensitive, test it with a spare account and confirm it in your own Studio.
Roles control what someone can do inside YouTube; they do not settle who owns the work, who may sign deals, or what happens when a business relationship ends. Put those terms in a written agreement, and get advice from a qualified lawyer before handing ownership-level access or a channel transfer to anyone outside your business.