Guide · September 1, 2026 · 3 min read
New videos announced on their own
Many bots ask for a YouTube API key, with the daily quota that comes with it — and the alerts that stop halfway through the month. It is not necessary: every channel publishes a feed you only have to read.
Contents
The feed rather than the API
Every YouTube channel publishes a feed listing its latest posts. That feed is public, free, and imposes no quota. It contains the essentials: the title, the link, the date, and the channel name.
The official API brings more — duration, view count, full description — at the price of a key to obtain and a daily quota. To announce a video in a Discord channel, that extra is of no use: the title and the link are enough, and Discord generates the preview itself.
Practical consequence: configuration comes down to naming the channel. No developer console, no key to renew, no alert that stops because a quota was exceeded.
The delay, and why it exists
A feed is polled periodically: the bot checks every few minutes whether it contains anything new. The announcement therefore arrives with a slight lag, unlike a Twitch go-live which is notified immediately.
That lag does not matter for a video — it stays available. It would matter for a live stream: if the channel mainly does live, a Twitch alert remains better suited in principle.
What has to be sorted
- Shorts — they appear in the feed like any other video. A channel posting five a day floods the channel.
- Stream replays — published automatically at the end of a live, often already announced elsewhere.
- Premieres — announced when scheduled, then when they air: two entries for one video.
Avoiding the first-day wave
A classic trap: on activation, the feed contains the most recent videos. Without a precaution, the bot announces them all at once, and the channel gets fifteen notifications for videos six months old.
The expected behaviour: record the feed's state on activation, and only announce what appears afterwards. If you see that wave, it is a sign the initial marking was not done — and it is better to fix that than to delete the messages one by one.
The mention, same rule as elsewhere
A new video is not an emergency. An @everyone mention is even less justified here than for a live stream: the video will still be there tomorrow.
A dedicated role, taken voluntarily, gives a genuinely interested audience. And on a channel posting several times a week you can even do without a mention: those who follow the channel will see the message, which is quite enough.
Combining with the rest
If the server follows a YouTube channel, a Twitch stream and a website all at once, a single “posts” channel gives a readable timeline of everything the creator produces. Three separate channels fragment the information and leave two of them nearly empty.
The sorting is then done by the role mentioned, not by the channel: everyone picks what they want to be told about, and anybody can browse the lot.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find a channel's identifier?
The channel's address is enough in most cases: the custom name is resolved to the real identifier at configuration time.
Are private or unlisted videos announced?
No: they do not appear in the public feed. That is a direct consequence of the method, and it is the desirable behaviour.
What happens if a video is deleted?
The Discord message stays, with a dead link. Nothing removes it automatically — it is the only manual upkeep this feature asks for.
Can several channels be followed?
Yes, each with its own channel and role if needed. The cost is nil: there is no quota to share between them.
Read next : Twitch alerts, RSS feeds, Scheduled messages.