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Hourly

Get an email when channels you follow post

New videos from your subscriptions arrive in one email with titles and links.

Runs
Hourly
Apps
YouTube
AI
Not needed
Access
OAuth youtube.readonly for subscriptions; API key for a public playlist

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every hour, check the channels I'm subscribed to and email me any new videos with the title, channel and link.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

The YouTube homepage is built to keep you watching, not to show you what you subscribed to. A channel you care about uploads a long interview, the algorithm shows you something else, and you find out two weeks later from a friend. Many people have given up on the subscriptions tab because it is cluttered with Shorts and clips.

Every hour, your subscriptions, or a specific playlist you give it, are read. The uploads playlist of each channel is checked, and video IDs not seen before are remembered so they appear only once. A single email then lists the new videos with titles and links.

It suits people who follow a handful of creators closely, researchers tracking channels and anyone who wants a quiet alternative to the feed. Your inbox becomes a quiet, ordered feed of exactly the channels you picked.

What you get out of it

  • You see uploads from channels you chose

    The email contains videos from your subscriptions, not recommendations, so you decide what to watch instead of letting the algorithm pick. Choosing for yourself is a relief when the algorithm keeps pushing something else.

  • No more checking the app

    You stop opening YouTube just in case, which removes a habit that often turns into an hour of unplanned scrolling. That small change returns time that used to disappear into the homepage.

  • Time-sensitive videos reach you early

    Product reviews, news reactions and live-event recaps are valuable soon after release, and an hourly check puts them in front of you the same day. Prompt notice matters for videos that lose interest after a day or two.

  • Quiet channels are not forgotten

    A channel that posts once a month is easy to lose track of, but any upload from it will appear in your email when it happens. That is useful for occasional but valuable creators you would otherwise forget.

  • It works for shared playlists too

    Giving it a team's playlist means everyone can follow new additions by email, even if some people do not use YouTube regularly. A team can share the same email, so nobody has to reshare links in chat.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every hour, ClickRuntime checks the latest uploads from the YouTube channels you subscribe to.

  2. It skips any video it has already told you about.

  3. If there are new videos, you get one email listing each with its channel, title and link.

Before it runs live

  • Connect YouTube

What you get

RunsHourly
Get an email when channels you follow posttoday, 9:00Succeeded
Email · 3 new videosNorthwind Dev: Building a queue in Postgres https://youtu.be/a1b2c3d4e5f

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

  • Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
  • Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
  • Combine it with other YouTube steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
email_me_new_videos_from_my_subscriptions_or_a_playlist.pyexample
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify, report_fetched

YT = "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    h = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.connection('google', 'work')}"}
    subs = http.get(f"{YT}/subscriptions", headers=h, params={"part": "snippet", "mine": "true", "maxResults": 50}).json()["items"]
    ids = ",".join(s["snippet"]["resourceId"]["channelId"] for s in subs)
    channels = http.get(f"{YT}/channels", headers=h, params={"part": "contentDetails", "id": ids, "maxResults": 50}).json()["items"]
    seen = set(state.get("seen") or [])
    new = []
    for ch in channels:
        pl = ch["contentDetails"]["relatedPlaylists"]["uploads"]
        for it in http.get(f"{YT}/playlistItems", headers=h, params={"part": "snippet", "playlistId": pl, "maxResults": 5}).json().get("items", []):
            vid = it["snippet"]["resourceId"]["videoId"]
            if vid not in seen:
                new.append(f"{it['snippet']['channelTitle']}: {it['snippet']['title']}\nhttps://youtu.be/{vid}")
                seen.add(vid)
    report_fetched(len(new))
    if not new:
        return {"summary": "Nothing new"}
    state.set("seen", list(seen)[-2000:])
    notify.email_me(f"{len(new)} new videos", "\n\n".join(new))
    return {"new": len(new)}

FAQ

Common questions

Will I get an email every hour?
No. An email is sent only when the hourly check finds new videos. If nothing new was uploaded, nothing is sent, so on a quiet day your inbox stays empty. Active subscriptions will produce a few emails a day at most.
Does it include Shorts and live streams?
Anything in a channel's uploads playlist can appear, which includes Shorts. If you want to leave Shorts out, tell your AI assistant to filter by duration, and live streams that become uploads will appear once they are published.
How many subscriptions can it handle?
Reading each channel's uploads uses YouTube API quota, so a very large subscription list can reach the daily limit. For a few dozen channels it works comfortably, and you can narrow the list to the ones you care about.
What permissions does it need?
OAuth youtube.readonly for subscriptions; API key for a public playlist. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up “Get an email when channels you follow post” from your assistant

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