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defrost

As a general PSA, youtube channels have an RSS feed to alert you when a favourite creator releases a new video.

The form is

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC2wdo5v...

where channel_id is the channel hash code which is buried in the source for the "nicely named" channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@CuttingEdgeEngineering

and can be found without source diving via (say) FeedBro (RSS browser extension) "Find Feeds in Current Tab" function.

https://nodetics.com/feedbro/

View on HN

I worry about YouTube RSS feeds getting popular and Google killing them. Every time I see them discussed publicly I have this "Ssshh! Keep it on the down low!" reaction.

I browse YouTube anonymously, have an ad blocker setup that pretty much eliminates all ads, and track my "subscriptions" with RSS. It's highly usable. I use a fork of tt-rss and actually embed the YouTube videos in the reader pane so I never see any of YouTube's algorithmic recommendation schlock (beyond recommendations at the end of videos, which I ignore). Browsing YouTube, the site, is a jarring nightmare.

I am considering having my podcatcher use a YouTube downloader to just pull down all the videos in the feeds I watch. I believe Google is throttling yt-dlp to realtime speeds, but I figure if my podcatcher is doing it behind the scenes that shouldn't matter. I maintain curated collections of podcasts I like (in case they ever disappear), and since I just added 40TB if storage to my home system I figure it's time to do that with YouTube too.

Ssshh! Keep it on the down low!

Reading your comment this intro started sounding on my mind https://youtu.be/hnlIiDBFlEA

This! I am very sad x/twitter stopped offering RSS and the api price is ridiculous

Somehow there are still a couple of Nitter instances that keep working despite the API shenanigans: https://status.d420.de/

I use that for my ex-twitter RSS feeds.

I run pinchflat [0] to automate yt-dlp and file management behind the scenes. Also can integrate with sponsorblock to remove in-video ads.

0 - https://github.com/kieraneglin/pinchflat

That's good to know. The number of times I have subscribed to someone on YouTube only to not see anything from them in years, and then find tens of their videos YouTube never offered is just insane.

So many times I can't find anything to watch on YouTube and it just isn't showing me any of my subscriptions, it's ridiculous.

The opposite problem is also bad: subscribe to a channel, then get frequent notifications of years-old videos.

By "subscription" do you only mean subscription? Don't notifications need to be enabled in addition (bell button)?

I'm using the RSS feeds, so I'm not sure...

The first three menu items in the navbar of the authenticated YouTube homepage are 'Home', 'Shorts', and 'Subscriptions'. 'Subscriptions' shows exactly what's on the tin, a timeline of videos from your subscribed channels.

A lot of people might not realize this exists because of the way apps for smart tv's and game systems present the content and menus. I'm not sure if that's intentional or just misguided design, but the only reason I knew to see it out on my PS4's YouTube app is because I'd seen it on desktop.

I use RSS for many sources, from YouTube also. I can open yt from there.

I do not understand why people keeps suggesting subscription view, as it is a worse experience for me, than central RSS management

Because it's a heck of a lot better than what some people such as the grandparent are doing, which is ignoring the existence of the Subscriptions view entirely and relying on the home screen to be useful.

Using the Subscriptions view is as simple as changing your bookmark. Setting up RSS is a lot more complicated for someone who isn't already using one.

If you're already on RSS, no one is suggesting you use Subscriptions instead.

Just use Freetube.

Don’t forget the “click the bell” too. Even when I have notifications enabled I rarely ever get any.

For some reason YouTube website never has any kind of notification popup in site either. Instead, the notification icon count increases by one.

Which caps at out 9+. Stupid.

Click the bell also adds many undesirable to me notifications like push notifications or email notifications.

What I want from subscriptions is basically a filtered list I pull from when going to youtube. With maybe some tiering so the people who upload once a year don't get lost in amongst the people who upload 2+ times a day

There is a "Copy channel ID" link on each channel's page, but it's well hidden. Click "...more" in the channel description, then click "Share channel" to open a popup menu that has the "Copy channel ID" link. It does what it says.

Reddit also has feeds that they don't publicise. eg: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/.rss

Adding /.rss on to the end of lots of URLs works all over the place on the site.

It also provides feeds for individual playlists, where `playlist_id` is the `list` URL parameter when you view the full playlist.

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=

It's a really nice way to be able to follow creators/playlists without needing to register an account. I'm surprised that YouTube still allow it, but I hope it stays.

Unfortunately those have a major flaw: they always show the top 15 items in a playlist.

This is a problem because many channels have playlists where they put older episodes at the top and add new ones to the bottom. This makes the playlist RSS useless, because it will always show the same 15 videos.

I just want to contribute by saying that CEE is awesome content and I look forward to every video they post. Happy to randomly see them on HN.

Any half-decent RSS reader will detect the right feed if you give it the channel URL.

Somewhat related, but does anyone know how one can only get RSS for live videos?

Yes, by using Youtube's special playlist id prefixes and the "playlist_id" query parameter instead "channel_id".

Example: For channel id "UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw" replace the first two letters "UC" (channel ids always start with "UC") with "UULV". The feed url then looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=UULVXuq...

For more special playlist id prefixes see this StackOverflow answer by "coco0419": https://stackoverflow.com/a/76602819

Is there a way to get a feed for Videos only? This feed includes Shorts.

Yes, by using Youtube's special playlist id prefixes and the "playlist_id" query parameter instead "channel_id".

Example: For channel id "UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw" replace the first two letters "UC" (channel ids always start with "UC") with "UULF". The feed url then looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=UULFXuq...

It will only contain Videos, no Shorts, but also no Live Streams (in case you want (only) Live Streams use "UULV").

For more special playlist id prefixes see this StackOverflow answer by "coco0419": https://stackoverflow.com/a/76602819

Wonderful, thankyou!

I highly recommend Feedbro as an RSS reader.

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