Striver's Binary Search Playlist: study plan and how long it takes
The take U forward playlist is 29 videos and 10.5 hours long. Here's how long it takes at different paces, a week-by-week schedule built from the real videos, and a planner that turns it into your own daily plan.
29 videos · 10.5 hours · take U forward
Striver's binary search bootcamp goes from lower and upper bound to rotated arrays, binary search on answers (Koko eating bananas, aggressive cows, book allocation, painter's partition) and binary search on 2D matrices, ending with the median of two sorted arrays.
Binary search on answers is one of the most common interview patterns, and this playlist teaches it better than almost anything else on YouTube.
Who it's for: Interview candidates who know basic binary search but struggle to recognise when a problem needs it.
How long does it take?
The full playlist is 10.5 hours across 29 videos. Here's roughly how many days that is at different daily watch times and speeds, counting video time only:
| Daily time | At 1x | At 1.5x | At 2x |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 min a day | 21 days | 14 days | 11 days |
| 1 h a day | 11 days | 7 days | 6 days |
| 2 h a day | 6 days | 4 days | 3 days |
Make your own schedule
The playlist link is already filled in. Press Plan, set how much time you have each day and your speed, and you'll get a day-by-day schedule with a finish date and a calendar file. It reads the live playlist, so new videos are included.
Week-by-week schedule
A sample plan at 1 hour a day and normal speed, using whole videos so none is split across days. That's 2 weeks in total. For a different pace, start date or speed, use the planner above.
Week 1Videos 1–17 · 5h 55m
Day 1 · 46m
- 1Launching Binary Search Bootcamp - C++, Java, Python, Notes, Contest, Doubt Support 🔥13m
- 2BS-1. Binary Search Introduction | Real Life Example | Iterative | Recursive | Overflow Cases33m
Day 2 · 58m
- 3BS-2. Implement Lower Bound and Upper Bound | Search Insert Position | Floor and Ceil32m
- 4BS-3. First and Last Occurrences in Array | Count occurrences in Array25m
Day 3 · 52m
- 5BS-4. Search Element in Rotated Sorted Array - I17m
- 6BS-5. Search Element in Rotated Sorted Array II13m
- 7BS-6. Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array17m
- 8BS-7. Find out how many times array has been rotated5m
Day 4 · 55m
- 9BS-8. Single Element in Sorted Array22m
- 10BS-9. Find Peak Element33m
Day 5 · 59m
- 11BS-10. Finding Sqrt of a number using Binary Search17m
- 12BS-11. Find the Nth root of an Integer21m
- 13BS-12. Koko Eating Bananas21m
Day 6 · 42m
- 14BS-13. Minimum days to make M bouquets | Binary Search26m
- 15BS-14. Find the Smallest Divisor Given a Threshold | Binary Search16m
Day 7 · 43m
- 16BS-15. Capacity to Ship Packages within D Days21m
- 17BS-16. Kth Missing Positive Number | Maths + Binary Search23m
Week 2Videos 18–29 · 4h 32m
Day 8 · 54m
- 18BS-17. Aggressive Cows | Binary Search Hard27m
- 19BS-18. Allocate Books or Book Allocation | Hard Binary Search27m
Day 9 · 11m
- 20BS 19. Painter's Partition and Split Array - Largest Sum11m
Day 10 · 59m
- 21BS-20. Minimise Maximum Distance between Gas Stations | 3 Approaches | Heap | Binary Search59m
Day 11 · 51m
- 22BS 21: Median of two Sorted Arrays of Different Sizes | Brute and Better Approach16m
- 23BS-21. Median of two Sorted Arrays of Different Sizes | Binary Search Approach With Intuition35m
Day 12 · 53m
- 24Bs-22. K-th element of two sorted arrays | Binary Search Approach12m
- 25BS 23. Row with maximum number of 1s | Binary Search on 2D Arrays10m
- 26BS-24. Search in a 2D Matrix - I | Binary Search of 2D16m
- 27BS-25. Search in a 2D Matrix - II | Binary Search on 2D15m
Day 13 · 43m
- 28BS-26. Find Peak Element-II | Binary Search20m
- 29BS-27. Median in a Row Wise Sorted Matrix23m
Tips for finishing
- The 'binary search on answers' block (BS-12 to BS-20) is the heart of the playlist. Give it the most time.
- Write the search space and the condition before coding each problem. That's the pattern Striver drills.