yt2rss

README

YT2RSS

YT2RSS (Youtube 2 RSS) bridges youtube channels to RSS.

When to use

• You want to seamlessly subscribe to youtube channels from your favourite podcast player
• You also want to download and stream the videos using the integrated player of your podcatcher

When not to use

Do not use if:

• You can live with the limitations of the standard rss feed youtube offers (limited to 15 videos, no download link, no profile picture)
• You don't want to obtain a youtube api key

Caveats

• Do not expose this service publicly.
• Subscribing to channels with many videos is naturally slow. It is therefore recommended to limit the number of items using the -l flag or the limit query parameter after updating once without limit.
• Extracting a downloadable url for a youtube video relies on yt-dlp. This can be slow and fragile at times.
• Downloading videos with separate audio and video streams is not supported. Therefore for many videos the maximum resolution is very limited.

Installation

Download the binary from the release page or install with

go install github.com/Fabian-G/yt2rss@latest

You will also need to install yt-dlp.

Setup

1. Obtain a Youtube API Key from here (I highly recommend to use a throwaway google account for this).
2. Start yt2rss: yt2rss -m serve -b 'http://<your-domain-here>:9494' -k "<your-api-key-here>"
3. Subscribe to any youtube channel using the @handle or channel id (e.g. http://<your-domain-here>:9494/@ThePrimeTimeagen)
4. Download or stream videos like you would with any podcast

Query Params

When subscribing to a channel the following query parameters are supported:

• limit=n: Limits the number of items in the rss feed to n
• format=f: The format to use. This is directly passed to yt-dlp. Formats where the audio and video channel are separate streams are not supported. You can use this to get an audio only version, though (e.g. "bestaudio[ext=mp4]")
• mimeType: The mime type used in the enclosure tag. Set this to match your format.

Environment Variables

All command line flags can be set through environment variables as well:

• YT2RSS_LIMIT
• YT2RSS_MODE
• YT2RSS_YTDL_COMMAND
• YT2RSS_FORMAT
• YT2RSS_MIME_TYPE
• YT2RSS_API_KEY
• YT2RSS_BASE_URL
• YT2RSS_ADDR

Single mode

With single mode you can use yt2rss for example in newsboat exec directives:

# .config/newsboat/urls
"exec:yt2rss -m single yt2rss -k "<your-api-key>" @ThePrimeTimeagen"