playlist2podcast 2026.5.17

Creates podcast feed from playlist URL

Playlist2Podcast

Playlist2Podcast is a command line tool that takes a Youtube playlist, downloads the audio portion of the videos on that list, and creates a podcast feed from this.

Playlist2Podcast:

1. downloads and converts the videos in one or more playlists to opus audio only files,
2. downloads thumbnails and converts them to JPEG format, and
3. creates a podcast feed with the downloaded videos and thumbnails.

Install and run natively

Easiest way to use Playlist2Podcast is to use pipx to install it from PyPi. Then you can simply use playlist2podcast on the command line run it. To configure playlist2podacast you can rename the [config.toml.example][1] file to config.toml and adjust values as needed.

Below is an annotated version of the config.toml file explaining the various settings:

   # version of playlist2podcasts this configuration file is built for.
   version = "2.0.0"
   # URL where the feed.rss file will be published. This value is used for references within the generated `feed.rss`
   # file. This value needs to be provided.
   podcast_host = "http://<...>"
   # directory on local file system to place all files for podcast in
   publish_dir = "publish"
   # directory on local file system where all media files are saved to, this is a sub directory inside the publish_dir
   media_dir = "media"
   # how many of the most recent episodes to download and save for each playlist
   number_of_episodes = 5
   # optional, file (with path if needed) on local filesystem where youtube cookie is stored for yt-dlp to use
   youtube_cookie_file = "youtube-dl-cookies.txt"

   # Each youtube playlist to be processed into your podcast is contained under a `[[play_lists]]` header. You can have
   # multiple `[[play_lists]]` sections

   [[play_lists]]
   # URL to list of media to look at and download audio files from to build your personalised podcast
   url = "https://www.youtube.com/@PythonBytes/streams"
   # Include filters allowing to only process some videos. Will allow all if empty.
   include = []
   # Exclude filters for videos NOT to download. If some video has been selected with an include filer but is also selected
   # with an exclude filter, that video will be excluded. In other words, exclude filters trump include filters.
   exclude = []

   [[play_lists]]
   # Second playlist to show an example of include and exclude filters. In this example, we exclude all videos that
   # contain "shorts" anywhere in the title or url. Additionally we only include videos where the title starts with
   # "The Level1 Show"
   url = "https://www.youtube.com/c/Level1Techs/videos"
   include = [
       "^The Level1 Show.*",
   ]
   exclude = [
       "shorts",
   ]

Docker

There is a container image published for playlist2podcast that can be used with docker of Podman.

Following is an example run command using podman (replace podman with docker to run with docker):

   podman run \
      --rm \
      --replace \
      --detach \
      --env TZ=UTC \
      --env UPDATE_INTERVAL=4h \
      --env LOGGING_CONFIG=/config/logging-config.toml \
      --name playlist2podcasts \
      --volume ./playlist2podcasts/config:/config \
      --volume ./playlist2podcasts/publish:/publish \
      --volume ./playlist2podcasts/logging:/logging \
      codeberg.org/pyyttools/playlist2podcasts:latest

Changelog

See the [Changelog][2] for any changes introduced with each version.

License

Playlist2Podcast is licences under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0