I follow several YouTube channels, but I hate YouTube’s (poorly-executed) playlists, subscriptions, notifications, etc.
I have in the past used DownCast to monitor my favorite YouTubers and build playlists. But DownCast isn’t working well these days and might be heading to obsolescence.
SO… does anyone have a recommended macOS application for managing my YouTube channel subscriptions?
Thanks.
This seems like it would be a great feature for Downie if you could get the developer to add it.
(Aside: YouTube, Inc. seems like its own worst enemy. I don’t know why they make it so difficult for people to follow the channels that they’ve subscribed to, but I’ve basically given up and written some shell scripts that monitor RSS feeds {which are also nearly impossible to find} and just download new videos when they come out. But it’s far less than ideal.)
I bought and used to use Tube G Pro to access my playlists, make playlists, and watch videos in the app’s resizeable pop-out window, but it stopped properly working for me a couple of years ago and the dev was totally unresponsive.
I manually negotiate Youtube’s subscriptions, playlists, etc in Brave (with an extension that customizes the look and keeps out ads), and I often download videos from Youtube that I want to review/save (or which I believe will soon be pulled for copyright reasons). I have a couple of apps that do this, but my favorite is Softorino Youtube Converter, which among other things can also with a click pull the audio and put it into my iTunes song library (or download and/or convert videos and put them anywhere, including iTunes). It’s smart enough that as an app in the background it can recognize any Youtube/Vimeo/Instagram/Facebook URLs from the clipboard and put it in a queue in case I want to download.
Thanks for the info on Softorino, but as I read, it only downloads videos that you manually add. It doesn’t have any tools for channels, new episodes, etc. I will read more.
No, it doesn’t do that. It downloads, and it’s damn good at that. Works on lots of different sites too.
Tube G Pro did what you asked (and still claims to) but since it doesn’t work for me, as I noted I manually negotiate Youtube’s website.
A second thumbs-up for Softorino. One feature that I constantly use is to strip the audio from a youtube channel and create an mp3 that I add to my iPhone. This works great for lectures and presentations where the video isn’t that critical. It’s quite fast, as well.
For a several years before I got Softorino I used MediaHuman’s YouTube_To_MP3, which, like Softorino, also works on sites like SoundCloud (great for niche podcasts not available from Apple), Mixcloud and even Bandcamp. The one thing that stuck in my craw was that if you want top speed download/copnversion they wanted you to pay a $10/year ‘TurboBoost’ subscription to unlock faster speeds, which I found annoying (even though I paid once or twice).
MediaHuman also has its own Softorino competitor for $20 (which I got at a discount a while back) but Softorino’s app just looks better and works more seamlessly by adding any recognizable video URLs into its queue once it sees it in the clipboard. Softorino’s app is the nominally same price, but I got it through a BundleHunt deal for less than $5.
I didn’t realize Pocketcasts is a macOS app. I’ll investigate.
+1 on PodSync – I use it also, except I was using the links in Downcast, which isn’t working for me now.
Thanks
It isn’t. It has a web component for a one-time $9 charge, but @Woteva was just saying how to get the RSS feed of any Vimeo/YouTube video. There are manual ways to accomplish this, but PodSync is dead simple and free (though the dev has set up a Patreon account).
I should have mentioned that I use the Pocket Casts web interface on the Mac. I like the option to watch videos of podcasts (MacBreak Weekly, Vector etc) where possible so the combo of Pocket Casts and Podsync is ideal.
