There’s a wealth of great audiovisual content on YouTube. If you’ve ever listened to YouTube talk shows, you’ve had the same problem I have: I wish I could listen to them on my favorite podcast app! It’s true that podcast software is uniquely suited to delivering content — automatic downloading of new episodes, history saving, multi-device syncing, and offline listening are far superior to having Youtube on and staring at the screen all the time (not that members can’t play in the background).

Podsync, the open source freeware we’re introducing today, solves exactly these needs. It turns Youtube channels into RSS feeds that podcasters can subscribe to, making Youtube content more podcastable.

History of Podsync

Podsync was formerly a (now defunct) website where users would get an RSS link when they pasted a link to a target channel into the website, but due to the cost and copyright risk of building their own server, the server was blacklisted by Youtube for a long time. The author decided to shut down the service, open-source the tool and publish it on Github.

Podsync formerly known as the website of the same name

There is also ListenBox, a similar service with free and paid features, which I haven’t used.

How I use Podsync daily

I’ve been home for a long time with a piece of raspberry pie, running Podsync, and not long after the release of a new movie on my subscribed YouTube channel, I get a notification that the podcast software has automatically downloaded and finished, all at once.

Most of the shows that you choose to listen to as a podcast are current events commentary and clean talk shows that start at 15 minutes. Most of these shows feature the host talking to the camera, with few charts and data on the screen, making them ideal for listening to during your commute. There is little loss of information in the show when converting from video to audio.

In addition, I have set the refresh frequency for different programs. For current affairs movies, I set the refresh rate to once an hour, while for technology news, it’s once every half day.

Podsync covers all three major desktop systems and Docker. I recommend installing the software on a headless machine that’s always on to ensure you get the latest feeds 24/7, and Raspberry Pie and NAS are good carriers.

Talk, music, technology news

Podsync turns video into a podcast, the difference between a real podcast and a video podcast is the listening experience, there is no music between segments, the quality of speech is relatively low, and Podsync is a great transition tool until podcasts reach national popularity. Unbox Therapy’s Lew Later is a trend that we can’t help but look forward to, as the production quality is high.

Features

Podsync is incredibly powerful, with dual platform support for both YouTube and Vimeo, as well as complete customization options, including.

• Works with YouTube and Vimeo.
• Supports feeds configuration: video/audio, high/low quality, max video height, etc.
• Update scheduler supports cron expressions
• Episodes filtering (match by title).
• Feeds customizations (custom artwork, category, language, etc).
• OPML export.
• Supports old episodes cleanup (only keep that latest certain amount of episodes).
• One-click deployment for AWS.
• Runs on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and Docker.
• Supports ARM.
• Automatic youtube-dl self update.
• Supports API keys rotation.

There are further configuration options, details of which can be found in the official documentation (including the QNAP tutorial).

Here’s a snippet of the config file:

url = "{FEED_URL}"
page_size = 50
update_period = "12h"
quality = "high" # or "low"
format = "video" # or "audio"
opml = true|false
clean = { keep_last = 10 } # Keep last 10 episodes

Generate Feed

After setting up the above configuration, you can run the software to subscribe to programs via feed links, and each program has its own link in the form of “https://example.com/podcast_name.xml”. If you set up OPML, you can subscribe to multiple programs with one click.

Setting up Podsync is not difficult, and it only took me half an hour to do it the first time. If you have any problems, feel free to ask in the comments.

Success!

As for how to subscribe to the link, it differs between podcast client. Google “RSS + the name of your podcast app”.

Podcasting has freed up my hands and eyes to continuously absorb information and broaden my horizons on my commute, and Podsync has made more content available in podcast form with the inclusion of YouTube, the world’s largest streaming platform, as a podcast app.

Podsync is currently available on GitHub and is open source and free.