Follow YouTube Channels and Podcast Feeds Into One Searchable Library

Saving things by hand works for about a week. Then a creator you follow posts three videos in a row, your favourite podcast drops two episodes while you're travelling, and the pile you meant to save turns into the pile you meant to save later. Following fixes the boring half of that. You pick the source once, and new items show up without you.

I build BrainTube, so read this as labelled. Here is exactly what following does in BrainTube, what it doesn't, and how it fits next to the other ways in.

What following does

Follow YouTube channels and RSS, Atom or podcast feeds, and new uploads and posts are added to your library automatically. You add a channel or a feed URL, and from then on BrainTube checks it for new entries about twice an hour.

Each new entry becomes an ordinary item in your library. It sits next to the videos, articles and PDFs you saved yourself, so a search covers the lot, and your AI sees it the same way it sees anything else you kept.

Following looks forward. It picks up what a source publishes after you follow it. For a creator's back catalogue, use a bulk import instead, covered below.

Why this is the thing people ask for

If you look at Recall's public feature board, the most-voted request is to subscribe to channels, RSS feeds and podcasts and have new content added on its own. Recall's changelog lists RSS and subscriptions as coming next, so expect more tools to offer this soon. That is good for everyone who learns from video and audio. The difference worth comparing is what happens to the items after they arrive.

Three ways in, and when to use each

There are three ways to get a creator's work into BrainTube, and they do different jobs.

Following a channel or a feed is for what comes next. It is the low-effort option once you know whose work you want to keep.

Connect your YouTube account to import and keep syncing your playlists and Liked videos. Use it for the videos you have already picked by hand, especially a playlist you keep adding to.

A bulk import is for the back catalogue. Bulk YouTube import is capped per import, not by library size: 10 videos at a time on Free, 50 on Starter, 150 on Pro, and at most 3 bulk imports an hour.

None of these reads your watch history or your Watch Later list. YouTube's read permission doesn't expose either one, so if your learning list lives in Watch Later, move it into a playlist and sync that.

What it costs

Saving, transcripts and automatic summaries are free and unlimited on every plan, including saves made by an AI over MCP. Chat with your library is free up to a daily allowance (50 chats a day on Free) and MCP searches up to a monthly one (1,000 a month on Free); past those, and for AI actions such as quizzes and deep research, you spend credits. A followed source that publishes daily doesn't drain anything by arriving. The cost shows up when you ask questions of it.

There is a cap on how many sources you can follow, and it depends on your plan. The numbers are still being tuned, so check Settings in the app for the current figure rather than a number from a blog post.

Asking questions of what arrived

A library that fills itself is worth little unless you can get answers out of it. You can search in the app, or connect BrainTube to Claude: BrainTube runs a remote MCP server at https://mcp.brain-tube.com/mcp; in Claude.ai you add it as a custom connector and sign in with OAuth, with no API key to paste.

Questions that suit followed sources tend to be about change over time, because the library now holds a dated record of what each source said and when it said it:

• "What did the channels I follow say about this topic this month?"
• "Which podcast episodes this week mentioned the paper I saved?"
• "Has this creator changed their advice since the spring?"

For the date-bound ones, Claude can narrow a search to a date range. In BrainTube's own chat, answers cite your saved sources, and a video citation shows the timestamp of the moment it came from, which is handy when you want to check the exact line.

Setting it up

1. Open Settings in the app and find Following.
2. Paste a YouTube channel URL, or the URL of an RSS, Atom or podcast feed.
3. Leave it. New uploads and posts will start arriving as they are published.

You can pause a source or remove it from the same place. A paused source still counts towards your cap, so remove the ones you have stopped caring about.

Choosing what to follow

Follow fewer sources than you think. A feed that publishes five times a day will bury the two creators whose videos you actually want in full, and a search that returns twenty near-identical news clips is worse than one that returns the three talks you trusted. A good test is whether you would have saved most of a source's last ten uploads by hand. If yes, follow it. If you would have saved one or two, save those and skip the feed.

Podcasts are the easiest win. Long episodes are exactly the content you can't skim later, and a transcript you can search is far more useful than a memory of roughly which episode it was.

What it doesn't do

Following doesn't backfill a channel's history; use a bulk import for that. It doesn't import your YouTube subscriptions list in one go; you add each channel you care about. And it adds items to your library rather than sending you an alert, so the habit to build is asking your library a question once a week, not watching a feed.

FAQ

Can BrainTube follow a YouTube channel?

Yes. Follow YouTube channels and RSS, Atom or podcast feeds, and new uploads and posts are added to your library automatically.

Does following a channel import its old videos?

No. Following picks up what a channel publishes after you follow it. Use a bulk import for older videos.

Does it cost credits when new episodes arrive?

No. Saving and transcripts are free on every plan. Credits are spent on AI actions such as quizzes and deep research, and on chat or MCP searches once you pass your free daily or monthly allowance.

Can I follow a podcast?

Yes. Paste the podcast's RSS feed URL and new episodes are added to your library as they are published.