YouTube’s RSS feeds for channels are silently broken, omitting videos and mixing in Shorts without clear filtering options.
Key Takeaways
YouTube provides no visible feed discovery UI on channel pages; the <link> element only appears after a hard browser refresh, bypassing the SPA.
Channel RSS feeds intermix Shorts with regular videos, breaking feed readers that expect only long-form content.
Feed URLs use the channel_id=UC... pattern; this is the entry point for the known workaround.
No official YouTube mechanism exists to filter Shorts from RSS output.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters widely share the UULF playlist prefix swap as the cleanest fix: replace channel_id=UC with playlist_id=UULF to get a long-form-only feed, though some Shorts still slip through.
A recurring undercurrent: commenters are deliberately avoiding publicizing the RSS feed feature, fearing Google will deprecate it if attention is drawn.
NewPipe users report silently losing channel subscriptions because broken feeds made channels appear deleted, causing permanent unsubscription prompts.
Notable Comments
@dawidpotocki: Replace channel_id=UC with playlist_id=UULF in the feed URL to filter out Shorts at the source.
@bronlund: Detects Shorts by probing youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID for a 200 response – crude but functional fallback.
