I watch YouTube on a near-daily basis and if there's one thing that absolutely annoys me, it's how terrible the subscription system is. I would certainly use it if it was anything close to useful. But it isn't. So I don't.

In fact, I'd prefer it if every YouTube channel had its own RSS feed that I could subcribe to so that I could instantly know about any new interesting videos just by checking my RSS reader.

But here's the good news: even though YouTube itself doesn't publish any RSS feeds, you can cobble some together for each channel you want to follow.

To illustrate, I'll show you how to create an RSS feed for our very own YouTube channel:

  • Visit the channel's main page.
  • Right-click anywhere and select View page source.
  • Search for
            data-channel-external-id
        
    and look for the value that immediately comes next. In my case, it's UCfXdejDvNviqilmJ9DvGuow (don't include the quotes).
  • Tack that value onto the end of this URL www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=
  • Submit the new URL to your RSS reader.

That's it. You now have an RSS feed for that particular YouTube channel. It's a bit of work if you have dozens or hundreds of channels that you want to subscribe to, but it's a nice workaround nonetheless. At least it's possible.

Which YouTube channels do you want RSS feeds for? Share them with us so we can discover some new and interesting channels we've never seen before!