Managing YouTube Subscriptions

Questions & Suggestions
1

How do you manage your YouTube subscriptions?

Unless I’m missing something, it seems there is no good way to natively manage them. For example, subscriptions cannot be placed in folders, tagged, or even sorted.

To partially mitigate these shortcomings, under my YouTube account, I’ve created several channels, one for each of my major topics of interest (i.e., Tech, News, etc.).

Although it simple to switch channels on the YouTube mobile app, it's tedious to switch channels using a computer browser with the method designed by Google. Alternatively, I've found a way to switch channels quickly using a properly constructed URL. Although it takes a few minutes to create each URL, it’s well-worth the effort. Here are the steps.

Each YouTube channel has a pageid. This 21-digit integer can be found as follows:

  1. Using Safari navigate to your main YouTube page.
  2. Click account icon in the upper-right, select Switch Account, the select the desired account channel.
  3. The home page for the channel will be displayed. After it fully renders, select Develop > Show Page Source.
  4. In the page source search for the following text: "DELEGATED_SESSION_ID":
  5. A 21-digit integer will follow the found string. In the URL below, replace XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX with the 21-digit integer.
https://www.youtube.com/signin?action_handle_signin=true&authuser=0&feature=channel_switcher&next=%2F&skip_identity_prompt=False&pageid=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

You can repeat this process for each YouTube channel and save these URL’s to a bookmark folder.

In Keyboard Maestro I’ve created a macro for each channel. Each macro is triggered using Shft+Cntrl+Opt+Cmd+Y (otherwise known as Hyper+Y) so that a Keyboard Maestro Conflict Palette is rendered when pressing Hyper+Y.

DOWNLOAD Macro File:
YouTube Channel XYZ.kmmacros (6.2 KB)
Note: This macro was uploaded in a DISABLED state. It must be ENABLED before it can be run. If it does not trigger, the macro group might also need to be ENABLED.

Image • YouTube Channel XYZ

Keyboard Maestro Export
Keyboard Maestro Export944×2016 216 KB

Related Note: The YouTube Channel Switcher can be displayed with this URL:
https://www.youtube.com/channel_switcher

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2

@_jims Thanks for for sharing. I trigger your macro with a few MIDI cc macros and then in metagrid pro, I assign the macros to several buttons that triggered by kkeyboard maestro actions. I simply press and it switches

To others trying this, in a case where you would like to switch back to your default channel remove the part &pageid=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX for example

https://www.youtube.com/signin?action_handle_signin=true&authuser=0&feature=channel_switcher&next=%2F&skip_identity_prompt=False

1 Like