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Grayjay Desktop App

(grayjay.app)
544 points pierrelf | 7 comments | 20 Dec 24 17:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.841s | source | bottom
1. Arnavion ◴[20 Dec 24 22:26 UTC] No.42475715[source]▶
For anyone who wants a lo-fi solution to subscribing to a youtube channel without having to deal with the youtube.com website, every channel has a built-in Atom feed that contains an entry for each video. My pipeline for watching subscribed channels is to just run a feed reader in one terminal (newsboat) and then copy-paste new videos from that into an adjacent terminal running a loop that runs `yt-dlp` on each pasted line.

You can find the feed URL by inspecting the HTML of the youtube.com/channel/.../videos page and searching for "rssUrl"; it'll look like `www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC...`

Downside: this feed will contain premieres, shorts and livestreams in addition to videos and AFAIK there's no way to filter those out. Depending on the channel, the title might make it obvious whether it's one of those.

replies(2): >>42478343 #>>42484695 #
2. harryvederci ◴[21 Dec 24 08:54 UTC] No.42478343[source]▶
You can use yt-dlp to get:

- the channel id by youtube channel url

- the duration + aspect ratio (<= 3 min + vertical = short)

- whether or not it's a live / future video

replies(1): >>42478382 #
3. Arnavion ◴[21 Dec 24 09:01 UTC] No.42478382[source]▶
Yes, I do do that. I meant that there's no way to filter them out of the feed directly, eg via some URL query parameters.
replies(1): >>42510924 #
4. DavideNL ◴[22 Dec 24 06:14 UTC] No.42484695[source]▶
Fyi, an automated alternative: https://github.com/jmbannon/ytdl-sub
replies(1): >>42507910 #
5. ElCapitanMarkla ◴[25 Dec 24 09:41 UTC] No.42507910[source]▶
This looks like a great way to allow the kids to watch a “locked down” Version of YouTube. I want a way to limit what my kids watch on there by locking them down to certain channels.
replies(1): >>42507951 #
6. DavideNL ◴[25 Dec 24 09:53 UTC] No.42507951{3}[source]▶
Yea, it's been working great for me. And you can even use SponsorBlock...

Setup was quite a bit of work though, so you need _some_ technical knowledge.

7. voitsykh ◴[25 Dec 24 20:20 UTC] No.42510924{3}[source]▶
https://youtube.com/@handle/videos

Handle is usually channel name without spaces, and is displayed under it on the website. So for Louis Rossmann that would be: https://youtube.com/@rossmanngroup/videos