Tutorial
Connect your channel
From a ready tray to a connected channel: what starts on its own, and what waits for you.
Drawn from the product as it works today. The pictures are sketches, not screenshots.
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Step one
Your tray, before a channel
A tray arrives empty. You sign in, give it a name, and until a channel is connected the tray keeps exactly one next step in front of you: connect your YouTube channel. There is no separate activate switch hidden in the settings to find later; this button is the whole door.
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Step two
Sign in on Google's consent screen
The button takes you to Google. You sign in with the Google account that owns your channel and grant the tray your channel's own authority: the same authority you use in YouTube Studio, and the tray uses it on your channel and nowhere else. We never see your password. You can revoke the grant at any time in your Google account's security settings, and revoking it stops the tray for that channel. Wiping the imported archive is a separate, deliberate Disconnect inside the app.
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Step three
Coming back is the start
The moment you land back in the tray, the channel is active. Connecting is the activation; there is no second button to press and nothing further to switch on for the channel itself.
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Step four
Your history starts arriving on its own
Without being asked, the tray begins walking your channel's existing comments into your private archive. That walk starts itself the moment you connect, and if it is interrupted it carries on from where it stopped rather than starting over. What arrives is whatever YouTube still returns at the time, not a complete history. Nothing you already published is moderated after the fact; the import is for reference, and you can pause it whenever you like.
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Step five
A few questions, and a little practice
Next comes a short set-up walk: what your channel is about, what your comment section is like, whether you have sponsors to watch, and how hard your timed probation should bite. Then the tray deals a small practice round from your own real comments so you can try sorting them. Practice is label-only: a practice swipe changes nothing on YouTube and nothing in your live tray. You can put the walk down at any point and come back to it.
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Step six
Start my tray
The walk ends at one button: Start my tray. Pressing it starts your tray with everything set to Test: the tray asks you before it holds a comment. The one thing that holds without asking is probation, for a viewer on it. Removing a comment always needs you. Hold for review shows what the asking looks like.