This is for the geeks out there (among whom I count myself).
I subscribe to some YouTube channels. There’s lots of good stuff. I watch a local political show, a frequent flyer points show, some travel shows, and more. There’s more educational and entertainment video on YouTube than you could ever even think about watching. Some of it is crap. Some of it is extremely interesting.
I find it challenging to remember to go back to YouTube all the time to stay on top of my subscriptions. The same is true of all the blogs and other publications I follow. I need the material to come to me because I just don’t have the energy to visit each site.
That’s why I use Feedly to go out and gather my material and collect it in one place. It works well for me, and I have a Feedly client on my laptop and on my phone. I read new material all day long between meetings and calls and while I’m getting from one place to another.
I’ve been frustrated by having to visit Feedly as well as YouTube and wanted to figure out how to bring the YouTube videos into Feedly to eliminate the need to visit YouTube. I did some Googling and testing and I’ve got it working.
3 Steps to Integrating Videos With Your Reader
Here’s how you can bring your YouTube subscription feed into Feedly (or any other RSS reader you choose):
- First, make sure your YouTube feed is publicly available. Go to [http://www.youtube.com/account_privacy and uncheck](http://www.youtube.com/account_privacy and uncheck)“Keep all my subscriptions private.”
- Next, get your YouTube username. This may not be evident now that YouTube prefers that people use their real names, but you can still track it down. To find your username, click the little arrow icon in the upper-right corner and go to My Channel. Your username will be in the URL, which is something like http://www.youtube.com/user/USERNAME?feature=something.
- Finally, insert your username into the following address and you’ll have an RSS feed for new videos from your subscription list: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/USERNAME/newsubscriptionvideos. Take that URL with your username included and add the feed to Feedly. In Feedly, that involves clicking on the “+Add Content” button in the upper left-hand corner of the browser screen.
That’s it. Now you’ll get your YouTube subscriptions in Feedly, and you’ll have one less site to visit.
