youtube-subscriptions

terminal UI for viewing youtube and/or peertube subscriptions. Especially well suited for Raspberry Pi.

requirements

mpv to stream videos (if mpv_mode is enabled (default))
youtube-dl to download youtube videos (if mpv_mode is disabled)
omxplayer or vlc or mplayer or mpv to play videos

installing

You can download a self-contained binary from releases page

setup (youtube)

Create an subscription_manager file:

echo '<opml></opml>' > ~/.config/youtube-subscriptions/subscription_manager

Go to your channel page: https://www.youtube.com/feed/channels Scroll to the bottom of the page til all your channels are loaded. Save the source of the page in channels.html.

Then recover your channels list by running the following command (can take a long time if you have a lot of channels)

./extract-channel-ids.sh channels.html | tee channel_ids

copy all those id in channel_ids list (see configuration section)

setup (peertube)

Create a configuration file (see configuration section) and add the channel urls you want to register to channel_urls list.

backround mode

Sometimes reloading the video list can take a long time.

To avoid blocking the main app, you can run the video reload in a separate process.

Just run with --background flag (you can have it in a cron), and you can reload the main UI with r.

usage

press h for help.

configuration

You can optionnaly add a user configuration at

$HOME/.config/youtube-subscriptions/config.json

example:

{
  "video_path": "__HOME/.cache/yts/videos",
  "cache_path": "__HOME/.cache/yts/yts.json",
  "youtubedl_format": "[height <=? 360][ext = mp4]",
  "youtube_instance": "https://invidious.privacydev.net/",
  "video_extension": "mp4",
  "kind_symbols": {
    "Audio": "ﱘ",
    "Video": "",
    "Other": ""
  },
  "players": [
    ["/usr/bin/mplayer", "-fs"]
  ],
  "channel_ids": [],
  "channel_urls": [],
  "mpv_mode": true,
  "mpv_path": "/usr/local/bin/mpv"
}

field	description	default value
video_path	directory where videos will be stored	`/tmp`
cache_path	file path where video list will be stored	`/tmp/yts.json`
blockish_player	blockish player to use (supersedes players)	None
players	list of players command for videos in order of priority
youtubedl_format	see youtube-dl doc	`[height <=? 360][ext = mp4]`
youtube_instance	invidious / youtube instance to use to open videos	https://www.youtube.com/
video_extension	youtube-dl video extension as per format	`mp4`
kind_symbols	hash of characters to describe the media	`{ "Audio": "a", "Video": "v", "Magnet": "m", "Other": "o" }`
channel_ids	list of additional channel ids which will be also fetched	`[]`
channel_urls	list of additional channel urls which will be also fetched (can be used for peertube)	`[]`
mpv_mode	try and start mpv to play the youtubee video first	`true`
mpv_path	path to mpv binary (will be use if mpv_mode is true)	`/usr/bin/mpv`
open_magnet	tool to use to open magnet links (e.g. transmission-remote-cli	None
auto_thumbnail_path	file path to write thumbnails to when cursor is moved	None

__HOME will be substituted with the home path.

cross compiling for raspberry pi

simply run:

./cross-build-raspberry.sh

binary will be in target/arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf/release/youtube-subscriptions

yazgoo/youtube-subscriptions