Make a feed, choose its channels, and catch up in one place.

Create your first feed

  1. Pin Retube in Chrome’s extensions menu and click its icon.
  2. Choose Create your first feed, enter a name, and pick a color.
  3. In Manage channels, paste a YouTube @handle, channel URL, or channel ID and add it.
  4. Add more channels or make another feed. A channel can belong to several feeds.

Organize your channels

Manage channels opens a full page within Retube. From the sidebar, it shows channels across All feeds. Each channel lists its feed assignments; choose Edit feeds to change them. When adding a channel here, choose its destination with Add to feed.

Use the feed selector in the page heading to choose a particular feed or All feeds. The feed’s All channels button opens this view directly. Adding or removing channels affects the named feed. When you open management from a feed, the back arrow returns to that feed and its scroll position, even if you change the management filter. Removing a channel’s last assignment also removes it from your local library.

Choose where to watch

The popup normally opens feeds inside YouTube. Refresh any YouTube tab that was already open when Retube was installed. The Retube shortcut appears in YouTube’s sidebar.

For the independent view, choose Open dedicated page in the popup, or right-click Retube’s icon and choose Options. Both views share your feeds and settings. The dedicated page remains available if a YouTube layout change disrupts the embed.

Filters and older videos

Open the three-dot Feed options menu for feed selection, management, filters, and refresh. Search is available in the embedded view. The All channels button opens channel management.

Older uploads normally load as you scroll. With search or a channel filter active, use Load more videos. In the embedded view, search covers videos already loaded, not every upload in a channel’s history. Retry after a temporary network error.

Opening videos

Videos open on YouTube, where you can use YouTube’s own playback and playlist controls. Retube does not record opened or watched videos.

Help without leaving your feed

On the dedicated page, About Retube, Help & support, and Privacy open in the content area. Your sidebar and theme stay in place. Choose All videos or one of your feeds in the sidebar to return. Browser Back and Forward also work between these pages.

Backup, restore, and delete

Open Help & support → Backup & local data. Export before reinstalling or moving to another Chrome profile. Import accepts Retube JSON backups up to 5 MB, shows a preview, and asks before replacing your data. Clear local data asks before deleting your settings and cached uploads. Uninstalling removes extension-local data; exported files must be deleted separately.

Troubleshooting

  • Library won’t open: if the extension does not respond, Retube shows a Retry button after ten seconds. Try again, or reload the YouTube tab after an extension update.
  • No sidebar shortcut: refresh YouTube, confirm Retube is enabled, and allow its access to www.youtube.com in Chrome’s extension settings.
  • Channel cannot be found: copy the channel’s @handle or channel-page URL, rather than a video link.
  • Feed is empty: check assigned channels and clear search and channel filters.
  • Older uploads stop: use Load more or Retry. Refresh the feed and try again after a short wait if YouTube is rate limiting requests.
  • YouTube’s layout changed: use the dedicated page while the integration is updated. A change to YouTube’s data format can affect both views.
  • Missing uploads: only publicly accessible uploads are supported. Private, member-only, age-restricted, and other sign-in-only content may be unavailable. Shorts with no date appear after dated videos; older relative timestamps are approximate.

Contact the developer

Use the developer contact or Support section on the Chrome Web Store listing titled Retube - Custom YouTube Feeds. Include the Retube version, Chrome version, a public channel URL, which view you used, and steps to reproduce the problem. A screenshot can help; remove personal information first. Never send passwords or account tokens.

Retube is independently developed and is not affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube or Google.