lectio.news is a service I (blog.ielliott.io/about) created to aggregate my YouTube subscriptions into a news feed, so that I can view them in a feed reader.
I haven't built a way for you to try it out yet, but if you'd be interested in using it then let me know.
Why?
I like using my feed reader for things like this because it's pull-based, which means I choose when to look for new content. Previously, my options for keeping up with my YouTube subscriptions were either to rely on notifications, or to browse YouTube directly. I found both of these options too distracting.
Features
- RSS and Atom feeds for a YouTube account's subscriptions
- Separate feed for account administration (e.g. YouTube authorisation was revoked)
- Feed-reader-compatible privacy via HTTP basic auth
- Post-processing of video descriptions (e.g. adding video duration)
Exploring the design space
Manually subscribe to channels
YouTube publishes Atom feeds for channels (as of 2025-06-28) and makes them available via <link rel="alternate">1.
Your feed reader should let you subscribe to the feed by providing the YouTube channel URL.
If you have many subscriptions, you can use a tool like
github.com/jeb5/YouTube-Subscriptions-RSS
to generate an OPML
feed list, from which many feed readers can batch-add feeds.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Reuses existing technology | Subscribing to a new channel is tedious |
| No YouTube authentication required | YouTube is not the source of truth for subscriptions |
Build a feed list from YouTube subscriptions
To use YouTube as the source of truth, an authorised server can query your YouTube subscriptions. The server can use the channel IDs to create feed links for each channel, and expose the feed list via an OPML resource. lectio.news can expose subscriptions this way. If a feed reader can sync feeds from an OPML list in the same way it can sync entries from a feed2, then it can use this stay up-to-date with your YouTube subscriptions.
Unfortunately not many feed readers can do this. One workaround is to to weave the individual channel feeds into a "river of news". Another way (the approach taken by lectio.news) is to construct a single feed by pulling directly from the YouTube API. After subscribing to a YouTube channel, new uploads will appear in the YouTube subscriptions feed. Unsubscribing from the channel preserves existing entries from that channel, but subsequent uploads from that channel won't be added.
Footnotes
- I found out about this via danielmiessler.com/blog/rss-feed-youtube-channel. ↩︎
-
This is called "dynamic OPML", which seems like a very reasonable yet underdiscussed idea. ↩︎
See also:
- scripting.com/2004/01/08.html (2004)
- forum.newsblur.com/t/subscribe-to-opml/109 (2011)
- scripting.com/2013/08/15/feedReaderDevs (2013)
- web.archive.org/web/20140614183016/https://cleverclogs.org/2014/05/rss-reader-inoreader-to-support-dynamic-opml-subscriptions.html (2014)
- github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS/issues/4191 (2022)
- github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/issues/1836 (2024)
- forum.antennapod.org/t/subscribe-to-opml-url-rather-than-only-being-able-to-import-static-opml-file/5733 (2024)