How to get an RSS feed for a YouTube channel

Last updated: August 2026

Every public YouTube channel publishes an RSS feed. YouTube does not link to it anywhere, and nothing in the interface hints that it exists, but the address is predictable once you have one piece of information.

The address every channel already has

Take the channel's ID, the string beginning UC, and put it here:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC…

Paste that into any reader. There is nothing to switch on, the channel owner is not involved, and no account is needed at either end. Playlists work the same way with ?playlist_id= instead.

Finding the channel ID, which is the only awkward part

If the address in your browser reads youtube.com/channel/UC…, that string after /channel/ is the ID and you are done. Most channels no longer show that form. What you usually get is a handle, youtube.com/@somebody, and the handle is not the ID. Putting it into the feed address gives you nothing.

  1. Open the channel page on a computer.
  2. Look at the page source for the canonical link.

    The page carries a <link rel="canonical"> pointing at the /channel/UC… form even when the address bar shows the handle. That is the ID.

  3. Build the feed address and subscribe.

    Paste the whole thing into your reader.

Check it before trusting it. Open the feed address in a browser first. A correct one gives you a page of XML with the recent uploads in it. A wrong ID gives an error rather than an empty feed, so the two are easy to tell apart.

What the feed does and does not give you

It carries roughly the fifteen most recent uploads, with titles, links, publication dates and thumbnails. It is not a full archive and there is no way to page back through it, so it tells you what is new rather than what exists.

Shorts generally arrive mixed in with ordinary uploads, and the feed offers no field that reliably separates them, so a reader cannot filter them out for you. Live streams and premieres can also show up at times that do not match when they actually air.

Why bother

A feed is a plain list in the order things were published. Nothing is recommended, nothing is promoted, and nothing is withheld because you have not watched enough lately. You also do not need to be signed in, which means following a channel does not become part of a profile.

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