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Comment by ftk_ | Hacker News Reader

Little known but you can "subscribe" to YouTube channels without Google account by using RSS https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=${channe...

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In fact there are 3 RSS feed types

User : https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=<XXX>

Channel : https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<XXX>

Playlist : https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=<XXX>

thanks, but the feeds are not updated, it looks like? for example https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=mkbhd lists some old videos!

Confusingly, mkbhd the user and channel are different:

https://www.youtube.com/user/mkbHD

https://www.youtube.com/c/mkbhd

For some reason though using channel_id=mkbhd doesn't work. This is a working link: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCBJycsm...

It is embedded on the channel page as <link> element, your RSS reader should accept the web page link and figure it out.

Yes, it is best if you use the "unique ID", available in the source HTM in case the URL contains a "human readable" version.

My utility format the feed url by extracting the relevant suffix from the url slug when it includes:

"/user/"

"/channel/"

"/playlist?list="

I think the newer slug format for channels is "/c/" in which case I think you do have to extract it from the HTML source, but they now include the feed URL anyway.

Are there any apps (other than Google’s own) that use these?

Any RSS app can use these feeds.

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