Youtube to RSS

A hosted tool that converts YouTube URLs into podcast URLs. This means I can watch my favourite YouTubers on a plane or in a crowded underground train.

Quick

Copy/paste Youtube URL on https://nas.local:2777/, then add the converted URL into your podcast player.

Enjoy!

Howto

Copy/paste Youtube URL like https://youtube.com/... to https://nas.local:2777/...

Some Podcast player can dislike @, so use https://nas.local:2777/_user/... instead of https://nas.local:2777/@....

Otherwise read the API on https://nas.local:2777/docs

Install

The simplest way is Docker Compose (spins up the app plus a memcached cache):

docker compose up -d --build

The feed data is persisted in ./_DATA.

Manual run

docker build -t yt2rss:latest .

docker network create my_vnet
docker run --name memlocal --network my_vnet \
  --memory=64M \
  --detach \
  memcached:1-alpine
docker run --name yt2rss --network my_vnet --publish 2777:8000 \
  --volume ./_DATA:/data \
  --env YT2RSS_CACHE_MODE="memcache" \
  --env YT2RSS_MEMCACHE_HOST="memlocal" \
  --env YT2RSS_CHANNEL_TTL="3666" \
  --detach \
  yt2rss:latest

Configuration

All settings are optional environment variables.

Variable	Default	Description
YT2RSS_CACHE_MODE	disk	Cache backend: disk, memcache or none.
YT2RSS_MEMCACHE_HOST	memcached	Memcache host (when CACHE_MODE=memcache).
YT2RSS_MEMCACHE_PORT	11211	Memcache port.
YT2RSS_CHANNEL_TTL	600	Channel/playlist listing cache TTL (seconds).
YT2RSS_VIDEO_TTL	3600	Per-video metadata cache TTL (signed URLs expire).
YT2RSS_MAX_ITEMS	10	Number of items per feed.
YT2RSS_MAX_HEIGHT	720	Preferred video height.
YT2RSS_MAX_VIDEO_BYTES	0	Max bytes the /video proxy streams/stores per request (0 = unlimited).
YT2RSS_CORS_ORIGINS	*	Comma-separated allowed origins.
YT2RSS_LOG_LEVEL	ERROR	Log verbosity.
YT2RSS_MDNS_ENABLED	false	Advertise the instance on the LAN over mDNS.
YT2RSS_MDNS_NAME	yt2rss	mDNS service instance name.
YT2RSS_MDNS_TYPE	_http._tcp.local.	mDNS service type.
YT2RSS_MDNS_PORT	8000	Port advertised in the mDNS record.

LAN discovery (mDNS / DNS-SD)

Set YT2RSS_MDNS_ENABLED=true and yt2rss will announce itself on the local network as an _http._tcp service, so other machines and services can find it without knowing its IP. Discover it from any LAN host:

# Linux (avahi)
avahi-browse -rt _http._tcp
# macOS
dns-sd -B _http._tcp

The service advertises the port from YT2RSS_MDNS_PORT and a path=/ property.

In Docker, mDNS multicast does not cross the default bridge network. To announce on the physical LAN, run the container with host networking, e.g. docker run --network host -e YT2RSS_MDNS_ENABLED=true ... yt2rss:latest. If the feature cannot start (no multicast), yt2rss logs a warning and keeps serving normally.

Tests

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
pytest

The suite stubs out yt-dlp, so it runs fully offline.

Linting and formatting use ruff:

ruff check .
ruff format --check .

Browser extension

A companion extension (subcRiSS) generates the feed URL from any YouTube page in one click. See subcRiSS/readme.md.

Download (Firefox, Chrome, Edge):

• from the GitHub Releases page, or
• straight from your running server — the homepage footer links to /extra/extensions/subcRiSS/{firefox,chrome,edge}.zip.