▲ ▼ Share YouTube subscribed channel list
Recently I got bored of the content from my subscribed channels on the YouTube and I asked my friends to share their subscription list only to find out that there's no such option to share YouTube subscription list.
It seems earlier there used to be an export option and third party service which allowed importing subscription list into another Google account, but not anymore.
There are others asking for the same in the YouTube community forum without any solutions. I think a tool which allows easy sharing and exporting of YouTube subscription list could be appreciated by these people and me!
I just made this project which does just that; you get a list of your subscribed channel names and channel URLs for your YouTube subscriptions: https://github.com/alexyorke/youtube-subscriptions-exporter . It produces a spreadsheet-like file when run.
You have to paste the code into the Developer Tools console which isn't super user friendly. I'm open to making it into a browser extension, however.
Hey Alex, thanks for your effort.
In Safari, I get the error - TypeError: undefined is not an object (near '...null).click();...')
In Chrome, It just keeps printing - youtube_player_api_elements NodeList []
I tried it in youtube.com as suggested, shouldn't it be done in https://www.youtube.com/feed/channels ? I had to close the browser each time to quit this, I understand that this is a test but a more intuitive browser extension based solution would be much appreciated.
Thanks for testing it out! I don't have a machine to test it on Safari but I know that it works on Firefox. I also found out that your browser window has to be large enough to show the "Subscriptions" sidebar automatically. I'll continue working on it to make it more user-friendly.
That would be great, I will check it out when available.
It's now a Chrome extension; I submitted it to the Chrome Webstore (which will take several weeks to be approved) but in the meantime you can download it here: https://github.com/alexyorke/youtube-subscriptions-exporter/releases/tag/v1 . You'd have to unzip it and load it unpacked from the repo as I can't digitally sign it.
I did a lot more testing and it "just works" in Chrome without having to resize your browser window or clicking on anything first. It also "just works" in Firefox (but still needs to be made into an extension) but I haven't tested it in Safari yet.
Edit: the next steps after this (which I have not started yet) is to make a social-network out of it is to monitor the HTTP request that corresponds to YouTube downloading the list of subscriptions and extract and parse the contents. This is possible to do (I found it manually using the network inspector) but is more involved. This would mean that anytime you visit youtube.com it could automatically check your subscriptions, optionally upload them to a server to compare with your friends.
Works great! It's cool that it can work directly on the homepage without having to go to the subscriptions management page.
Can you make it single click, instead of having to click again for copying? Also I feel import & auto subscribe function should be on the roadmap.
Can't wait to see it on Chrome Webstore.
It's now published to the Chrome Webstore: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-subscriptions-exp/dhpojdmnffaocepmljcdcongdmkjblan
There is another update to the extension in the pipeline (pending review) which removes the disabling-uBlock-Origin message. I also added your feature request to the GitHub issue tracker.
Excellent, It is working as advertised! Hopefully others will find it useful too and maybe it will grow on to benefit you as well Alex. Thanks again.
I share usually a single channel directly when asked for a recommendation, but the ability to share multiple channels at once or for backup purposes does make sense.
I feel if a solution for this could potentially be a YouTube social network if it implements networking features such as 'Your friend John subscribed to this channel, Jane recommends this channel to you, Sync your YouTube subscription with Devin' and marketing using YouTubers i.e. I feel YouTubers would be willing share their channel recommendations using this network as current 'Featured Channels' section seems to be limited.
Hey Abishek, so some features would be:
adding friends
recommending to friends
notifications of friends activity, recent channel subscriptions
sync or share subscription with friends or others
Is there more? Should I correct anything?
Thanks
I think that covers the overview of what I think a YouTube subscription based social network would look like, check out if YouTube API allows fetching the requisite details using Google Account.
What do you imagine the home page(hub) would display? Overall activity from the users of the site or featured channels based on data of the site?
I think the primary functionality which solves this problem should be on the existing subscription management screen - https://www.youtube.com/feed/channels and perhaps near the subscription button.
I started working on it already. Rather than do an extension, I went for a website tool. This just focuses on the main feature as of now. If it's useful I would expand on the other social networking aspects. What do you think? https://imgur.com/a/5iamYKH
Wow so fast! I like how this is going. I also agree that there should be a button in the YouTube itself.
I commend the prompt build, although a separate website might be needed for the networking features, an extension which puts a button on YouTube should be entry point or else people will just forget the existence of this service after trying it out once.
I agree with you on the extension, as there are other YouTube browser extensions which seamlessly add their function to the existing YouTube website
Not very sure about the networking features though, I wonder whether YouTube subscribed channel list sharing itself could be a social network.
Here you can see the app functionality in action. I have the front end developed already but I just need to tie in the api endpoints. https://yttool.herokuapp.com/ Once this is done I could then add the feature for sharing to existing social networks as well.
You mean what I see now - which is just 'Login with Google' is not the actual front page right? Because it needs to say what this tool does and just asking for sign-in wouldn't cut it.
Anyways, since the app is not been verified by Google yet it throws security warnings, has to click 'Advanced' so inform that to those you share the URL with. Even if proceeded from there, it asks for 'edit, delete' permissions which are unlikely to be given by the users of this tool; Can't this be done without non-destructive permissions? Then it crashes with HttpError 403.
Yea, the actual front page looks like the image in the Imgur link above. I have only shared this link with those in this thread but will look into using a less sensitive scope to accomplish the task. That will also get rid of the need for me to go through extra verification steps. Which will provide a Verified screen instead of an unverified screen. I'm not sure why it crashed with an error. I've run it 3 or 4 times with no issues so far.
Perhaps it was because I denied the delete/edit permission request.
Good Point. @KeMonte could test the network viability without creating an actual social network by just creating a public SubShare page for its users and allowing them to share it to existing social networks. But entry point should still be actual YouTube.
This comment was a duplicate and has been deleted.
I might be interested in taking this on if there's an audience
How do you all imagine the tool flowing, ideally?
Usually when my friends ask for channel recommendations I just share a particular channel directly, never thought about sharing the entire subscription list but now that I think about it, it does make sense and it seems weird that YouTube has no such option. It's particularly useful when changing the Google Account and if we want to take backup of subscribed list.
Judging from the number of upvotes on the YouTube community forum, it does seem like many have already searched for a solution and hopefully someone soon would build a tool for solving this problem.