YouTube puts two kinds of comment in the Held tab: the ones your own settings held, and the ones it suspects are spam. Some carry a Likely spam label. YouTube's spam guidance explains the tab. It does one job well: it lets you publish a comment, reject it or, for some items, hide the user who wrote it. It doesn't keep a history of that person, a note of why anything was held, or a temporary standing.
If the Held tab is the only place you moderate, every decision rests on the one comment in front of you. For obvious spam, that's plenty. It's much less to go on when the account has been commenting for months, or when the comment only makes sense next to a thread on another video.
How to find held comments
In YouTube Studio on the web, open the Community area and choose Held. That's where you'll find the comments caught by your settings and by YouTube's likely-spam checks. The labels can vary from one account to another, so check YouTube's guidance if yours look different. From a held comment you can publish it, reject it, or hide the user from the channel.
You don't need another tool to fill this queue. Your comment settings, YouTube's likely-spam checks, your blocked words and the option to hold comments with links or hashtags all send comments here. That's YouTube working as designed: it filters comments one at a time and gives you a list to review. What it doesn't give you is a way to follow one account from comment to comment.
What the Held tab does well
Use it when you want everything YouTube has held in one place. That includes comments your blocked words or a strict comment setting caught before any connected tool saw them. If a held comment is harmless, publish it. If it shouldn't go public and you don't need a record of it afterwards, reject it.
Hide user from channel is a different thing. It acts on the whole account, and YouTube doesn't tell the person. It's too much for a comment that only needed a second look.
What it does not do
- It does not keep a dated probation standing for the account.
- It does not show that account's comments on your other videos in one place.
- It does not keep the reason a previous moderator, or a connected tool, held an earlier comment.
- After you hide a user, their past comments stop showing on the Comments page in YouTube Studio, so it can't remind you why you hid them.
- It does not pause a third-party tool that is still allowed to request holds.
Comments
This hides the comment and its replies on YouTube.
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What the tray's YouTube Studio: Held tab adds
The tray collects YouTube-held comments that the API makes available, including likely-spam items, in its Studio tab. It offers Publish, Delete comment, or confirmed Delete and ban user against those items, so a creator can clear Studio-held comments without maintaining a second unrelated workflow. The tab can distinguish a tray-owned hold from a hold YouTube or another moderator placed. Replies are shown as context; they are not a second action target.
Keeping a Studio-held comment hidden can put its author on probation for the configured default duration. That is an owner-led route, not YouTube's native standing. Banning from this tab still requires confirmation. The daily reject cap and confirmation still apply to removals.
Needs review is a different list: it's the tray's questions, waiting for you. YouTube Studio: Held is for comments YouTube is already holding. Run the two together in your head and a spam comment YouTube caught gets the same hurried click as a question from your own rules.
What this still does not do
- It does not replace YouTube Studio. The Held tab there is still where YouTube-held comments come from.
- It does not import the complete hidden-user list.
- It does not write replies: it posts only the replies the creator writes.
See YouTube Studio: Held, hold for review, and review a held comment.
Correction, 20 September 2026: Corrected the description of YouTube Studio’s Held tab: likely-spam comments are included there.