Have you ever had such an experience?
I follow several YouTube channels that I love, especially playlists like “weekly tutorials” or “industry news compilations”. I always want to see new content as soon as it’s available, but I’m often too busy to check. By the time I remember, I’ve missed several episodes. Or, when I finally do find a new video, I have to manually copy the link, open my bookmarking tool (like Raindrop), paste the link, write a title…
Wouldn’t it be convenient if there was a way to automate the entire process of “monitoring YouTube playlists → discovering new videos → automatically saving them to your favorites”?
Today, I’d like to share a practical workflow built with n8n: automatically monitor a specified YouTube playlist, and as soon as a new video is updated, it will be immediately saved as a bookmark to Raindrop. There’s no need for manual operation throughout the process, and new videos will automatically “fly” into your favorites. You’ll never have to worry about missing an update again~
What problems can this workflow help you solve?
Simply put, it has only one core function: to “watch” your YouTube playlists and automatically save new videos to Raindrop.
In a specific scenario, you can use it like this:
- Study essentials : Follow learning playlists like “Python Tutorial Collection” and “PS Skills Weekly Update”? Automatically save new videos to the “Learning Materials” collection in Raindrop after they’re published. Watch them all at once and take notes easily
- Content creator inspiration library : Do you often watch the “case breakdown” and “topic sharing” playlists of your peers? New videos are automatically archived. When you need inspiration, you can directly turn to Raindrop instead of searching for historical records on YouTube.
- Efficiently follow up on information : Have you subscribed to playlists with high timeliness such as “Weekly Technology News” and “Industry Report Interpretation”? New videos will be saved to your favorites immediately, so you’ll never have to worry about “wanting to save when you see it but not being able to find it when you want to save it”.
Build an automation process in 30 minutes without writing code!
You may think that “automation” and “workflow” sound complicated, but the advantage of n8n is that it is low-code – you don’t have to write complicated programs yourself, just put together a few “functional modules” like building blocks and it will work.
Let me show you the “building logic” of this workflow, which is actually very simple:
Step 1: Set a “trigger time” – when to check for new videos?
Just as you check your phone at a fixed time every day, a workflow also needs a “start signal”. There are two ways to do this:
- Manual trigger : Click “Execute” when needed to check the playlist immediately.
- Timed trigger : Set to automatically check every 30 minutes / 1 hour.
Step 2: Connect to YouTube – “grab” the playlist content
Next, the workflow will “fetch” data from YouTube: specify the playlist you want to monitor (such as “My Learning List”), call YouTube’s official API, and retrieve information (title, video ID, publishing time, etc.) of all videos in the playlist.
Here you need to prepare two things in advance:
- Playlist ID: On the YouTube playlist page URL, find “list=XXXX”. The “XXXX” is the ID (e.g.,
PLXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX). - YouTube Authorization: Connect your Google account with n8n and give it permission to “view playlists” (it’s safe and only accesses the playlists you specify).
Step 3: Filter – Keep only new videos that have not been saved
After getting all the videos in the playlist, we have to tell the workflow: “Which ones have been stored? Which ones are new?”
n8n has a “tool” (called “Static Data Store”) that remembers the video IDs you’ve stored before. Each time it checks, it compares the “current video list” with the “history in the tool” and only keeps the new videos it hasn’t seen before—so you don’t store the same video twice.
Step 4: Connect Raindrop – “Save” the new video to your favorites
The last step is to automatically save the selected new videos to Raindrop.
Here are some key information to be configured:
- Video link: Automatically generate a YouTube playback link using the video ID (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video ID).
- Collection ID : Specify which collection in Raindrop to save to (open the collection in the Raindrop web version, and the “XXXX” in “/collection/XXXX” in the URL is the ID).
- Title and label : The bookmark title will be automatically spelled as “channel name | video title” (such as “technology aesthetics | 2024 new mobile phone evaluation”), and the “youtube” label will be added to facilitate subsequent classification and search.
Of course, you also need to connect your Raindrop account with n8n in advance and give it the permission to “create bookmarks” (also safe, only operating on the collection you specify).
What’s the effect of running? Let me show you a real scene
Suppose I follow the playlist “AI Tools Tutorial” and set it to check automatically every 30 minutes.
- 12:00 noon: A new video “5 Tips for Batch Processing Tables with ChatGPT” has been updated in the playlist.
- 12:30: The workflow starts automatically, checks this new video and finds no record.
- 12:30:10: In Raindrop’s “AI Learning” collection, a new bookmark has been automatically added: the title is “AI Institute | 5 Tips for Batch Processing Tables with ChatGPT”, the label is “youtube”, and the link points directly to the video – I didn’t do anything, and the new video is already “lying” in the collection waiting for me to watch.
