Laneya

Self-hosted YouTube subscription follower and notification system

Name definition

lanéya - Quenya adverb. recently, not long ago

Element	Gloss
la-	"not, in-, un-; [ᴹQ.] none, not any"
néya	"once, at one time"

Source

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Features

• Tracks YouTube channels via their public RSS feeds - no API key required
• Real-time new-video notifications via WebSocket
• Bulk import channels from a Google Takeout CSV export
• Single-container Docker deployment with a persistent SQLite database
• Built with Rust (Axum), HTMX and Tailwind CSS v4

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Deploying with Docker

services:
  laneya:
    image: ghcr.io/akasiek/laneya:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - laneya_data:/data

    # If mounting data volume as a path on the host, ensure it has appropriate permissions for the container user.
    user: "${UID:-1000}:${GID:-1000}"

    environment:
      # Timezone for videos timestamps
      TZ: "UTC"
      # Set to true to skip YouTube Shorts
      FILTER_OUT_SHORTS: "true"
      # Number of videos to show per page
      VIDEOS_PER_PAGE: "24"
      # How often to fetch new videos from YouTube
      FEED_REFRESH_INTERVAL_MINS: "5"

    read_only: true
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true
    cap_drop:
      - ALL # Drop all Linux capabilities. The application doesn't need any special permissions.

volumes:
  laneya_data:

Save the above as compose.yaml, then run:

docker compose up -d

The app will be available at http://localhost:8080.

Data is stored in the laneya_data Docker volume which can be changed if needed.

Environment variables

Variable	Default	Description
HOST	0.0.0.0:8080	Address and port the server listens on
TZ	UTC	Timezone used for video timestamps
FILTER_OUT_SHORTS	false	Set to true to hide YouTube Shorts
VIDEOS_PER_PAGE	24	Number of videos displayed per page
FEED_REFRESH_INTERVAL_MINS	5	How often (in minutes) feeds are refreshed

Container security

• The container runs as a non-root system user with no home directory and no login shell
• The container filesystem is read-only - only the /data volume can be written to
• All Linux capabilities are dropped
• no-new-privileges is enforced - the process cannot gain elevated privileges via setuid/setgid binaries
• Multi-stage Docker build - the runtime image contains only the compiled binary and static assets; no compiler, build tools, or source code

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Adding channels

Single channel

You need the channel ID - a string starting with UC (e.g. UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw).

Way to find it:

1. On the channel page click ...more
   
2. Scroll to the very bottom of the modal and click Share channel
   
3. Click Copy channel ID
   
4. Paste the ID into the form on the Channels page and submit

Bulk import via Google Takeout

1. Go to Google Takeout
2. Deselect all products, then scroll down and select only YouTube and YouTube Music
   
3. Click All Youtube data included and make sure only subscriptions is selected
   
4. Click Next step, then choose your delivery method and export frequency, and click Create export. Export should take about a minute.
5. Inside the downloaded archive find YouTube and YouTube Music/subscriptions/subscriptions.csv. This should be the only file in that archive.
6. Upload that file using the Bulk Import form on the Channels page

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Development

Prerequisites

• Rust (stable)
• systemfd (if you want to use the hot-reload server)
• pnpm
• diesel_cli

Setup

.env file

Create a .env file in the project root with the following content:

DATABASE_URL=./database.db

Install dependencies and apply database migrations

# Install JS dependencies
cd templates && pnpm install && cd ..

# Apply database migrations
diesel migration run

Running the server

With hot-reload (restarts server on code changes):

systemfd --no-pid -s http::8080 -- cargo watch -x run

or without hot-reload:

cargo run

Tailwind CSS watch

In a separate terminal from the templates/ directory:

cd templates && pnpm run watch:css

Watches styles/styles.css and rebuilds styles/tailwind.css on every change.

Database migrations

# Apply pending migrations
diesel migration run

# Revert the last migration
diesel migration revert