How to Follow a YouTube Channel with RSS

Quick Answer

Short answer: To follow a YouTube channel with RSS, use its feed URL https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNEL_ID with the channel ID, find the ID in page source for @handle URLs, or paste the channel address into RSS Wrangler for automatic discovery and chronological private viewing.

YouTube does not advertise it, but every channel publishes an RSS feed of its uploads. You can subscribe to that feed in any RSS reader and see new videos in chronological order, without logging in and without the algorithm deciding what you see. It is the cleanest way to keep up with a channel you actually follow.

This guide covers the feed URL format, how to get a channel’s ID, how to let your reader find the feed automatically and what to do on the rare occasions when YouTube’s feeds are temporarily unavailable.

Method 1: Add the channel feed URL directly

Every channel has a feed at this address:

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

Replace CHANNEL_ID with the channel’s ID, which is the part of the address that starts with UC. If the channel address looks like youtube.com/channel/UCXxYyZz…, then UCXxYyZz… is the ID. Copy the full feed URL into your reader and the channel is subscribed.

If the channel uses a custom address such as youtube.com/@handle, you need to find its ID first. Open the channel page, view the page source (Ctrl + U in Chrome) and search for channelId. The value that appears, for example "channelId":"UC4R8DWoMoI7CAwX8_LjQHig", is what you put in the feed URL.

Method 2: Let your reader auto-discover it

You do not have to build the URL by hand. Readers with feed auto-discovery look for the feed link that YouTube puts in the channel page itself. With RSS Wrangler, paste the channel address (including an @handle address) into the search box. RSS Wrangler finds the feed, adds it and you are done.

The fastest way to follow a channel is to paste its address and let the reader find the feed.

What the feed gives you

Each entry in a channel feed is a video: its title, the upload date, a link back to YouTube and a description. That means your reader gives you a tidy chronological list of a channel’s uploads, alongside every other feed you follow. You can search it, star the videos you want to watch later and keep an archive that stays on your device.

You do not need a Google account, you are not subscribed to the channel in the YouTube sense and the feed contains no recommendations. You see exactly the channels you chose.

Troubleshooting: the feeds occasionally disappear

YouTube’s channel feeds are an unofficial but long-standing feature and they have intermittently returned errors in the past, most notably in 2024 and again in 2026. When that happens, the feed address returns a 404 or your reader reports that the feed could not be fetched. In each case the feeds came back after a short period.

If you get an error, wait a few hours and refresh the feed. Do not delete the subscription, because a temporary outage is not the same as a cancelled feed. If you are using RSS Wrangler and a fetch fails, the subscription stays in your list so the feed can be retried later.

FAQ

Is this an official YouTube feature? The feed endpoint has been provided by Google for many years, although it is not documented as a headline product. It works today and has for over a decade.

Can I follow playlists too? The channel feed covers a channel’s uploads. Playlist feeds exist separately and are outside the scope of this guide.

Does it work in my reader? Any reader that handles standard Atom feeds, which is nearly all of them, can follow a YouTube channel. RSS Wrangler is one such reader and adds the channel in a single paste.

Why would I use this instead of subscribing on YouTube? Because the feed is chronological, private and algorithm-free and because it lives in the same reader as your news sites, blogs and podcasts.

Summary

Every YouTube channel has an RSS feed. Add it directly with the channel ID or let your reader auto-discover it from the channel address. You get every upload in order, with no account and no algorithm and if YouTube’s feed is ever briefly unavailable, the fix is simply to wait and refresh.

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