A fake YouTube Studio dashboard that works on your phone

The line you don’t cross

An app that behaves like the real thing is a better prop, and for the same reason a more tempting tool for the wrong job. It connects to no channel and records nothing, so it can’t prove anything about you — and trying to make it, by showing it to a sponsor, a brand or a buyer as your channel, or by filming it as your own results to sell a course, is prohibited under our acceptable use policy. On the free version, a SIMULATED · POZER.COM mark sits on the screen for that reason.

What a picture can’t do here

Creator dashboards are built around one movement: you glance at the summary, then tap through for the detail. The subscriber count and the four tiles are the glance; the chart is the tap. A screenshot can show one or the other but never the movement between them, and on camera the movement is what says someone is using an app rather than holding up a picture of one. The same goes for the smaller things that happen whenever a phone is handled — a row opening under a thumb, a list moving when it’s dragged, a like landing on a comment, the dashboard coming back when you tap it.

It also means the dashboard should look like a dashboard. It’s tempting to put a big chart front and centre, because that’s what people picture when they think of analytics. The real app keeps its charts a tap away and this one follows it, so the chart arriving is something that happens on camera rather than something that was already sitting there.

What responds to a tap

• The tab bar. All five tabs switch screens — Dashboard, Content, Analytics, Community and Earn — and the active one takes your Accent colour, so a viewer sees the tap land. The chart is on Analytics, one tap from a dashboard that carries none.
• The chevrons. Each upload under Latest published content opens to show Ranking by views, Views and Average percentage viewed, and closes again. The first one starts open.
• View all and the back arrows. On Content, View all opens every video or every Short; on Community it opens every comment, once there are more than two; on Earn, View payment activity opens the list of past payments. Each of those screens has a back arrow to the tab it came from.
• The comments. Like adds one to a comment’s count, and Like and Dislike cancel each other. The heart marks a comment with your channel’s picture and a small red heart, and a second tap takes it off. Reply opens a box to answer in, which the take below walks through.
• The list. Latest published content scrolls once it’s longer than the space under the tiles. Six uploads, the most it holds, gives you the longest scroll.
• Pull to refresh. With the list scrolled to its top, pull down on the dashboard and a spinner turns, then the screen settles with every figure where you set it. It works on the Dashboard only.

And, just as plainly, what doesn’t:

• On Analytics, the section names across the top — Trends, Overview, Content, Audience, Revenue — are labels. Overview is the one shown.
• The metric cards don’t swipe. The row starts on whichever card Charted metric names, so if you want the revenue card on camera, choose it before the take.
• The Realtime panel says Updating live, but its bars hold still. Don’t wait on it for a change.
• The plus and bell icons at the top are decoration.
• On Content, the chips across the top — Scheduled, Type, Views and Visibility — and the ⋮ on each card are drawn, not offered, and tapping a card doesn’t open the video.
• On Community, the View all replies lines are text, the ⋮ beside each comment does nothing, and the spotlight cards don’t open.
• On Earn, the ⓘ beside the payment minimum, the rows under What you’re using and the payments in Payment activity don’t open.

Name it, give it an icon, publish it

The editor’s App identity section comes before the template’s own fields. App name (home screen) is what shows under the icon, up to 30 characters; the editor suggests Limelight, Airtime, Broadcast and Frame, or type your own. App icon takes an image you upload — skip it and the editor makes a letter tile from the name — and Splash / status colour sets the colour behind the status bar, and of the launch screen on Android. Don’t use the real app’s name or logo for any of it; publishing asks you to confirm the name and icon are yours to use. Set all three before you install, because the home screen keeps the name and icon from the moment the app is added. Changing them afterwards means deleting the app from the home screen, opening the link in the browser again and adding it again.

Then press Create home-screen app. If you aren’t signed in, publishing asks for an email address and sends a six-digit code; that account owns the app, and it’s how you edit it later from any device. When it’s done, the panel says Your app is live and shows the link, with a code beside it labelled Scan it with your phone. Point the phone’s camera at it and the link opens there. On a free account the same card offers Pro, which takes the SIMULATED · POZER.COM mark off; nothing in this guide needs it.

Install it

iPhone

1. Open the link in Safari. Chrome and the browsers inside Instagram or TikTok can’t add it to the home screen properly.
2. Tap Share.
3. Tap Add to Home Screen.

Android

1. Open the link in Chrome.
2. Tap the ⋮ menu.
3. Tap Install app.

From then on it opens from the home screen fullscreen, with your icon and no address bar, and always on the Dashboard first.

Before the shoot

• It needs a connection. There’s no offline copy: the app loads over the internet each time it launches, so make sure the phone has signal or Wi-Fi where you’re filming.
• Launch it once first. The app is set in Roboto, and on its very first launch the text can show in the phone’s own font for a moment until the typeface arrives. As its owner, you’ll also get the Edit button once, with a hint about finding it again. Open the app once before the camera rolls and both are behind you.
• A co-star can open it too. Send the link to anyone in the scene and their phone shows the same channel, without the Edit button — useful when a second character checks the numbers on their own phone. If you change a figure between takes, reopen the app on their phone and check it before rolling, because another phone doesn’t always pick up a save at once.

Change it between takes

On your own phone — the one you published from, or one signed in to your account — there’s a small Edit button at the bottom right, just above the tab bar, and nobody else who opens the link gets one. In a browser tab it stays on screen. In the installed app it’s hidden, so it never lands in a take: hold two fingers still on the screen for just over half a second and it appears for five seconds. One finger never brings it up, so a thumb resting on the glass mid-take is safe. The first time you open an installed app as its owner, the button shows once by itself, with the hint “Hidden while you film. Hold two fingers on the screen to bring it back.” Tap it and App settings opens. A Membership box comes first, offering Pro on a free app; under it is every field the editor has — the figures, the verdicts, the uploads and their thumbnails, the comments, the Earn figures — as well as the name, icon and splash colour, so a take that needs a bigger month doesn’t send you back to a computer. A thumbnail can go in from the phone as well: the upload opens the phone’s own picker. Save changes updates the app itself, not just your copy: the new figures are on your phone at once, and other phones pick them up too, though not necessarily straight away.

The curve works on the phone too. The Views trend bars drag with a finger as well as a mouse, in the editor and in the app’s own Edit sheet, and the trend up and randomize buttons under them reshape it in one tap.

Two things aren’t saved anywhere: which uploads are open, and anything done to a comment. Every time the app launches, the first upload is open and the rest closed, and the comments are back as you set them, which is where you want a take to start anyway.

A take that uses it

1. Start on the home screen and tap the icon, so the launch is in the shot.
2. Hold on the dashboard long enough to read the subscriber count, then the four tiles.
3. Scroll the list and open a second upload with its chevron: it shows 3 of 10 with the defaults.
4. Tap Analytics. The row of cards opens on your charted metric, with Realtime beneath it.
5. Tap Dashboard. The uploads you opened are still open.

If you’d rather capture the screen directly than film the phone, the phone’s own screen recorder records the installed app like any other, status bar and all, and the same take works as a recording.

Answering a comment on camera

Community is the tab where a creator becomes a character: someone reading what viewers wrote and deciding what to say back. Everything in this take works in the app, and none of it is saved.

1. Before the shoot, set Channel to the character’s channel. Replies are signed with it, in lower case with the spaces taken out, so Your Channel answers as @yourchannel.
2. Tap Community. The card shows the latest upload — the first row of Latest published — with its first two comments.
3. Tap the reply button under the second comment — the speech bubble just before the heart. A box opens with your channel’s picture beside it and Add a reply... inside; tap it and type.
4. Tap the arrow, or the keyboard’s return key. The reply appears under the comment as @yourchannel · now, and View all 1 reply becomes View all 2 replies.
5. Heart it for the last beat: your channel’s picture appears beside the heart, with a small red heart on it. The first comment is hearted already — Hearted by you is on for it — so a tap there would take the heart off.

To run it again, close the app fully and open it: the comments come back exactly as you set them, with no likes of yours and no replies. In a browser tab, reload the page. A comment holds one reply at a time, so posting a second replaces the first. The installed app always opens on the Dashboard, which makes the tap to Community part of the take; for a rehearsal in the browser, the app’s link opens straight onto it with ?screen=community added.

Keep the commenters invented, handles as well as words. A real person’s handle over a comment they never wrote puts words in their mouth.

For a full shot list and the business of filming a screen, see how to film a “my first YouTube paycheck” video. The YouTube Studio-style template page shows the dashboard at its defaults.