Does YouTube have an RSS feed? Yes, with an outage caveat in 2026

Does YouTube have an RSS feed? Yes, one for every channel and one for each playlist, and as of November 2026 YouTube's own channel pages still point to it. The catch is reliability: the feed has failed repeatedly since December 2025, and on November 4, 2026 it returned "not found" errors even for big channels. If what you really want is a heads-up when a channel posts, AyeWatch sends that alert from the channel link instead.

The feed addresses

There are two forms:

• Channel: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id= then the channel ID
• Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id= then the playlist ID

A channel ID starts with UC. A playlist ID is the part after list= in a playlist link. We found no button or menu in YouTube that shows either address, so you build it yourself.

How do I find a channel's feed?

Three quick routes:

1. On the channel, open the description, choose Share channel, then Copy channel ID, and add it to the end of the channel feed address above.
2. Open the channel page's source in your browser and search for rss. The full feed link sits in the page header. We confirmed this on the Google Developers channel on November 4, 2026.
3. If it is your own channel, YouTube's help page says the channel ID is listed under Advanced settings.

An @handle will not work in the feed address. It has to be the UC ID.

Is the YouTube RSS feed shut down?

No shutdown has been announced, and the address format is unchanged. What has changed is how often it breaks. FreeTube's maintainers described daily outages in December 2025. The ocaml.org team tracked platform-wide "not found" errors from February 2026 and closed their issue on September 30 once the feeds answered again. An Obsidian plugin user hit the same wall on October 27, 2026, and our own test on November 4 failed for Google Developers and Linus Tech Tips. YouTube has not explained any of it publicly.

So the honest answer is: the feed exists, but do not count on it every day.

What does the feed include?

New uploads from the channel, with Shorts and live streams mixed in among regular videos. There is no way to filter by topic or keyword, and no setting to leave Shorts out.

Can I follow all my subscriptions in a reader?

You can add channels one at a time with the address above, which works but takes a while for a long list. Some readers do the work for you: Inoreader's Pro plan connects to your YouTube account and keeps a folder of your subscriptions in sync. Either way, a reader that pulls YouTube's feed stops updating while the feed is down.

What if I wanted notifications, not a feed?

Then the feed is a detour. AyeWatch takes the channel link as you see it in your browser, with no ID hunting, and alerts you when there is a new video, Short, live stream or community post. An optional plain-English filter keeps alerts to the uploads you care about. Push alerts and the in-app feed come with every plan, and paid plans from $9 a month add email, Slack, Discord and webhooks. AyeWatch does not produce an RSS feed of its own.

Quick answer

YouTube does have an RSS feed, built from the channel or playlist ID. It is still listed on channel pages, it has had recurring outages, and a reader using it will go silent when it fails. If you only need to know when a channel posts, try AyeWatch and skip the feed.