YouTube Integration

Connect a YouTube channel to a mix and every new video arrives as a video card, ready to publish or already live.

The YouTube integration watches one YouTube channel and creates a card in one tchop mix for each new video it finds. Title, description, thumbnail and the playable video come across automatically. You decide where the cards land, how they look in the feed and whether they go live without a second pair of eyes.

Each integration is a pairing of one source and one mix. Connect the same channel to a second mix, or five channels to the same mix, whatever your feed needs.

What it does for you

• A video feed that fills itself. Your team publishes on YouTube anyway. The integration makes that work show up in the app without anyone copying links.

• Playable in the card. Users watch inside the app or web app. No jump to YouTube, no lost session.

• Editorial control stays with you. Auto-publish off means every video waits as a draft until an editor approves it.

• Multiple sources, one feed. Combine your own channel with partner or brand channels in a single "Video" mix.

Settings

You will find integrations in the dashboard under Integrations, per channel. Pick YouTube, then Add integration.

Mix. The mix that receives the cards. Chosen once at creation and fixed after that. To move a source to a different mix, delete the integration and create it again.

Name. An internal label, shown only in the integrations list. Use something you will recognise in six months: "Corporate channel", "CEO videos", "Partner: Bosch".

YouTube URL. The channel, not a single video and not a playlist. Two forms work:

• https://youtube.com/@yourhandle

• https://youtube.com/channel/UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Older /c/name and /user/name links are rejected. Open the channel page in a browser and copy what the address bar shows.

Fetch last cards. How many existing videos to import on the first run: 0, 2, 5, 10, 15, 20 or 50. Set once at creation and not editable afterwards.

• 0 for a clean start. Nothing historic, only videos published from now on.

• 2 or 5 when you want the feed to look alive on day one.

• 10 or 15 when you are building an archive mix and want the back catalogue in.

YouTube only serves the 15 most recent videos of a channel, so 15 is the real maximum. Choosing 20 or 50 imports 15 as well. For anything older, add the videos by hand.

Teaser style. How the card looks in the feed. Four options:

• Standard. Large image with the title underneath. The default and the safe choice.

• Small with text. Thumbnail next to the title, compact. Good for a list-style mix with many videos.

• Small without text. Thumbnail only.

• Large without text. Full-width image, no title. Strong visuals only, and only when the thumbnail carries its own text.

Mixing styles inside one mix makes a feed look untidy. Pick one per mix and stay with it.

Auto-publish. On means new cards go live in the mix as soon as they are created. Off means they arrive unpublished and an editor publishes them by hand.

• Own channel, trusted output: on.

• Third-party or partner channels: off. You want a look before it reaches your audience.

• Regulated or works-council-sensitive environments: off, and note the review step in your editorial guidelines.

Everyday operations

How fast a new video shows up. Sources are checked roughly every 30 minutes. A video published on YouTube appears in your mix within half an hour, not within seconds. Plan around that for anything time-critical, and post the card by hand when a video needs to be live the moment it drops.

Pause instead of delete. Every integration has a pause control. A paused integration keeps its configuration and stops creating cards. Use it during a campaign freeze, a holiday period or while you sort out a source problem. Deleting is for sources you are done with.

Deleting keeps your content. Removing an integration stops the sync. The cards it already created stay in the mix and behave like normal cards. Nothing disappears from the feed.

Read the status. The list shows Active, Paused or Error per integration, plus the source URL, the target mix and who created it. Filter by status to see the ones that need attention.

One source per mix. Adding the same channel to the same mix twice is rejected. That is deliberate, it prevents double cards.

Editing. Name, URL, teaser style and auto-publish stay editable after creation. Mix and backfill do not.

Limitations and things that can go wrong

The source is not yours to control. Every automated source belongs to someone else. Channels get renamed, made private, or deleted. When that happens, the integration switches to Error and records the reason. Check your integrations list after any rebrand on the source side.

Errors are silent by default. Nothing pings you when an integration fails. Someone has to open the integrations page and look, so put it on a weekly routine. For sources you genuinely depend on, we can set up an email alert on request. Keep that for the few that matter, otherwise the alerts become noise nobody reads.

Handle changes break the URL. A YouTube channel handle can change. The /channel/UC... form is the stable one, so prefer it for anything you plan to keep running for years.

Metadata comes as it is. Title, description and thumbnail are taken from YouTube. A weak YouTube title becomes a weak card title. You can edit the card after it is created, but the fix is per card, not per integration.

Backfill is a one-time event. Fetch last cards runs at creation. Setting it too low and noticing later means creating the cards by hand or rebuilding the integration.

Deleted videos. A video removed on YouTube leaves a card in tchop pointing at nothing. Worth a spot check now and then, especially on partner channels.

Auto-publish is a decision, not a default to ignore. Left on for a channel you do not control, it publishes whatever that channel publishes, straight to your audience.

Shorts arrive as article cards. A Short does not come in as a playable video card. It lands as an article card with a link out to YouTube, so users leave the app to watch it. If Shorts are a large part of your output, decide whether you want that channel connected at all, or route it to a separate mix.

No live streams. Live streams cannot be brought in through this integration. For a live moment, create the card by hand and link out, or plan the coverage as a normal post.

Good to know

• Integrations are configured per channel. A source connected in Channel A does not appear in Channel B unless you add it there too, or sync the mix. See Syncing mixes.

• Cards created by an integration behave like any other card: pin them, tag them, push them, sync them.

• Anything the standard integrations do not cover can be built through the tchop API or a workflow tool such as n8n. See MCP Server and the Developer Portal.

Summary

The YouTube integration turns one channel into one self-filling mix. Choose the target mix, paste the channel URL, decide on backfill, teaser style and whether videos publish themselves. New videos arrive within about half an hour. Then check the status list every week or so, because the source belongs to someone else and nothing tells you when it breaks.