yrs

YouTube RSS Subscriber

YouTube RSS Subscriber (yrs) allows you to subscribe to YouTube channels without the need of a YouTube account.

yrs uses a local database (sqlite by default) to keep track of the subscribed channels, which are updated making use of the RSS feed that YouTube publishes. This update needs to happen via yrs update, running it either manually or via cron.

Installation

go install --tags fts5 github.com/miquelruiz/yrs/cmd/yrs@latest

Basic usage

First you'll need to subscribe to some channels. Lets subsribe to "This Old Tony" as an example:

$ yrs subscribe-yt https://www.youtube.com/user/featony
Config file created in /home/mruiz/.yrs/config.yml
Subscribed to "This Old Tony"

If this is the first you run yrs, it'll create a config file under your home directory. By default it also creates an empty sqlite database that will be used to keep track of subscribed channels and old/new videos. The subscribe command checks the RSS feed for the channel, and records all the video entries currently published.

After subscribing, the channels and the videos can be listed:

$ yrs list-channels
ID                        Name           URL                                     Autodownload
------------------------  -------------  ------------------------------------  --------------
UC5NO8MgTQKHAWXp6z8Xl7yQ  This Old Tony  https://www.youtube.com/user/featony               0

$ yrs list-videos "This Old Tony"
ID           Title                           URL                                          Published
-----------  ------------------------------  -------------------------------------------  -------------------
JN-Pkbeu52E  Consoling a Milling Machine     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN-Pkbeu52E  2020-10-31 20:47:14
...

The ID of the videos can be used to download them:

$ yrs download JN-Pkbeu52E
[youtube] JN-Pkbeu52E: Downloading webpage
[download] Destination: Consoling a Milling Machine-JN-Pkbeu52E.mp4
[download] 100% of 76.29MiB in 00:09

After some time, you will probably want to check if there's anything new on your subscribed channels:

$ yrs update
Channel:  This Old Tony
Title:  NOW We're Cook'n with Argon!!
URL:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_Fo7mfZg7k

Channel:  This Old Tony
Title:  VCARVE Branding / Logo Irons - SECRET SANTA 2020!
URL:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9qN9LIChh4

Channel:  This Old Tony
Title:  Getting a Handle on Ron Covell
URL:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zb92v5Vz40

To unsubscribe from a channel:

$ yrs unsubscribe "This Old Tony"