"what if the internet came to me"
Hi YouTube Privacy Union!
This is my official post on how I use RSS for Invidious.
"What if the internet came to me" was the thought that lead me to Really Simple Syndication.
What is Really Simple Syndication?
Have you ever seen this logo at the top or bottom of a site along with links to other social media? That's the RSS icon!
RSS or Atom feeds gather media from one site and channel it somewhere else. In this case, "somewhere else" would be an email client (software that lets you manage all your emails in one place) or RSS reader. The feeds usually refresh every 30 minutes to an hour, giving you updates when new media from the source site is posted.
With an RSS feed, you can get those updates without ever having to open the app.
RSS is built into Invidious, but it can be a bit tricky to find the right link to get the feed.
Let's walk through two methods: getting the feed link from the .xml file and getting it from the website's source code.
From the File
First, click the RSS logo on the channel's page. This will download a .xml file with a nonsense-looking name (it's actually the channel ID).
I recommend changing the channel ID title to the actual channel name, especially if you're downloading many channel feeds at once.
Open the file (if you're on Windows, open it using Notepad. If you're on Mac, it will open in TextEdit). Look for this line of code near the top:
rel="self" href="https://inv.nadeko.net/feed/channel/UCSrZ3UV4jOidv8ppoVuvW9Q"
Copy and paste the link between the quotation marks into your RSS reader.
From the Source Code
If you can't bother saving and naming the files, you can also find the feed by left-clicking on the channel page, selecting 'view page source'. Then, press 'ctrl+f' or 'cmd+f and search for 'RSS'.
title="RSS" href="/feed/channel/UCSrZ3UV4jOidv8ppoVuvW9Q"
Click the link after 'href='; It will lead you to the code that you would have gotten in the downloaded file. The feed link will be embedded near the top:
As you import each feed, save them in a secure doc - you may switch your RSS reader or delete the feed by accident.
What is an RSS Reader?
I've mentioned this term throughout this blog post already, and some of you may have figured it out, but an RSS reader collects information (brought by the feed) on any new media released on a site and delivering it straight to you.
Here's an example of Thunderbird's RSS reader in action. It prioritizes the text because RSS was originally meant for text-based content (click to enlarge, I can't get better resolution).
RSS Reader Recommendations
Here is a table with some options for free and mostly open source RSS readers.
Notes:
Do not expect the video to show up as an embed in your RSS reader. Unfortunately, many Invidious instances do not allow this. In this case, the RSS feed is sending notifications to you that new videos have been released from (x) channel, with the Invidious link embedded in the message.
Clicking on a YouTube embed counts as a view on a site, and it likely counts if you're watching from an RSS Reader as the embed is retrieving the video from YouTube.
Getting and using RSS is easier done than said.
I found that one big reason out of many my for dependency on YouTube came from a fear of missing out. Switching to Invidious helped with my boycott efforts, but not knowing when new videos came out stoked that feeling.
RSS was a great solution for me. I hope it proves useful for you too.