RSS feeds, feed readers, etc.

[tozka]

I recently posted about switching to using RSS feeds even more than I had been, and I thought it might be a good idea to crosspost it here as using RSS feeds is a very small webby thing-- you're literally taking back control of what you see online, and where, and you're not being tracked by anybody while doing it.

Here is my original post. A slightly shortened/adapted version follows:

If you've never used RSS before, here's a good intro guide from Melonland. And if you have a personal site and want to set up an RSS feed, here's another guide! If you have a Dreamwidth journal, you automatically have an RSS feed. ;)

Feed readers

I use Feedbro (review here) which is a browser-based extension that works in Firefox (and Firefox forks), Chrome and Edge. I don't need to read my feeds on my phone, so having it on the desktop only is fine for me.

Other options are: NetNewsWire (iOS), Dreamwidth's feed thing

How to find RSS feeds

All blogs/websites have an RSS feed somewhere, even if it's not visible-- try adding /rss or /feed to the end of the blog URL to find it. But there's actually a surprising amount of other things you can get an RSS feed for!

Here's what I've transferred to my feedreader:

1. Tumblr
Absolutely fantastic because the endless scroll is gone, there's no ads, and I see EVERY UPDATE chronologically. Feeds can be found by adding /rss to the end of the URL: [user].tumblr.com/rss

2. Reddit
Another banger because I can see EVERY new post now; and I don't even have to join a subreddit to see them which is great. Add /.rss to the end of the URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/[subreddit]/.rss

3. Youtube channels
Yet another great idea because I see every new video from every channel now, instead of YT pushing up only 3 or 4 of them on my homescreen. I cheated and used Feedbro to automatically find the RSS feed but it looks something like this: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=[ID]

4. Podcasts
I actually use Overcast to subscribe to podcasts BUT you can definitely do it in a feedreader. Most podcast websites have an RSS feed somewhere; even Spotify podcasts have them, because they've enabled an RSS feed so, like, Apple Podcasts can scrape it or whatever. Paste the Spotify URL into GetRSSFeed.com to find it.

5. Substack
I hate Substack but they've been pushing for more people to make newsletters over there lately, so a lot of people have opened new accounts. Ugh. But still, there's some good writers over there, and I want to read their stuff. Add /feed at the end of the URL: https://[user].substack.com/feed

6. Newsletters
I get overwhelmed if there's too many emails in my inbox (especially from strangers selling me stuff), so I'm converting whatever I can to an RSS feed using Kill the Newsletter, which basically gives you an email to use to sign up to newsletters and then it converts it to a feed for you! It's open source, so you can host it yourself if you'd like.

Caveat: I haven't tried to subscribe to a private feed, but most feedreaders have an option to add in a username/password to access those. However, I don't know how it'd work for sites that are more like memberships, like Youtube's community thing.

Not possible to RSS because the company that made them sucks: Facebook, Instagram, Threads (so any Meta app), TikTok

Possible to RSS but I haven't done it: Bluesky, Flickr, Mastodon, Medium, AO3, Dreamwidth

Comments

[aquietjune]

This is interesting. Periodically I try to get back into the RSS reader mindset—I have a bazqux paid account that works exactly like google reader and can also be used on the phone through other apps (I use Reeder on iOS)—yet I fail every time. I suspect it’s because I keep on adding rss feeds that I no longer care about (I used to read them before I lost the habit), as well as not having integrated stuff I read on social media. I should try that as well as being more selective in what I add. Still, I welcome advice! Thanks for the post.

[tozka]

Oh definitely, I have to remember to prune my feeds every so often or else I just keep mass-marking everything as read without actually reading it. I've added several websites that seemed like a good idea and then they post, like 20 times a day and I can't handle it. I think some readers can do filters, which would help if you're only interested in a specific topic or two.

[vriddy]

Oh this is really helpful and thorough, thank you for sharing! Especially the tip on what RSS Reader to use, having a browser extension is neat. I mostly use Dreamwidth to track feeds but for more IRL stuff, this will come in handy!

In case someone finds that helpful, I wrote a guide on how to find the RSS feed for any AO3 tags and add them to Dreamwidth a while back.

[tozka]

You're welcome! And thank you for sharing your own guide, too, that's super helpful!

[pauraque]

I've used DW to track feeds on some sites for a long time, but I didn't know it could be used for Reddit and Youtube. Thanks for the information!

[tozka]

You're very welcome! I was also excited to find out that Reddit and Youtube have RSS feeds. ;D

[axolotls]

Cool thing about tumblr, each /tagged/ page on a blog has its own rss feed, too! Perfect for following artists that talk a lot but have an art tag (been doing it for years, myself).

I would also highly recommended RSSOwlnix as a more oldschool, email-inbox-style desktop RSS feed reader with a lot of functionality. The only caveat is that it's not being actively developed so the integrated browser breaks on some pages, but there's a button to open news in one's default browser (aside from the content being extracted already, so this is just to see the whole page), and it can be set as default behaviour for certain actions.

[kradeelav]

i didn't even know that about tagged pages being rss-able! i love following art specifically so this will be useful - thank you for mentioning this. :>

[axolotls]

No problem! It's a lifesaver, I really wish more sites would implement it (currently crossing my fingers for Pillowfort to do so).

[tozka]

Great tip about the tagged pages, thank you!

[axolotls]

No problem! I'm surprised more people don't know about it (a tragedy!), I've been relying on it for years (helped me quit logging into tumblr without losing track of cool artists hah).

[falkner]

Adding a suggestion for a feed reader: Thunderbird! It can do both your e-mails and RSS feeds!

ETA: and if you have a bit of technological knowledge, RSSHub can create feeds for websites that don't have them.

[tozka]

Oooo, thanks for the link to RSSHUb, I'll be sure to check it out!

[kradeelav]

love all of these mentions and grateful for you spreading the word! have confirmed all works, especially the list that you mentioned you haven't done yet. adding a few other platforms:

* pixiv: no, used to be RSS-able until a year or so ago.
* twitter: unstable. used to be RSS-able until three-four years ago. technically currently possible through nitter instances (like https://xcancel.com/ which works as of writing) but potentially unreliable.)
* Ao3: entirely RSS-able; you can do it with a specific ship or character tag.
* mastodon: yes, but images might not always load.
* cara.app: no
* artstation: yes
* weibo: no

[tozka]

Thanks for the additional info!! So annoying that these sites removed their RSS feeds, though.

[kradeelav]

happy to help - and totally get it ~

[sleepyquail]

Seconding this recommendation for ao3 RSS feeds! I have one set up for all of my favourite rarepair tags and there's nothing quite like that delight when my feedly notifier firefox extension has a lil [1] on it!! (Although sometimes this is my own fic and it gets me every time lol)

[falkner]

AO3's own RSS only includes new works (updates don't show up on the feeds) and also no explicit or archive-locked ones. They don't have a public API, but there's a couple efforts of getting around it, I personally use this Python one and can confirm it currently works.

[stepnix]

Itch.io also has secret RSS functioning!

https://itch.io/games/newest/by-stepnix.xml

this example gets you new games from me

[tozka]

Oooo, very good info! Thank you!

[craftyhobbit]

Thanks for posting this. I use Tumblr and Youtube alot and I'm tired of random/repeating stuff showing up on my homepage as I miss things. Can you use it for Facebook, too?

[tozka]

Unfortunately not, Meta has removed all access to any RSS thing from all their sites, AND they've rate-limited API requests so even the workaround tools stopped working.

[bluedreaming]

This was a great read!

I switched over to rss for a lot of things a while ago but I do it a little awkwardly by sending everything to my email, for which I use ifttt. On the flipside, this does mean that I can get Twitter updates also emailed to me (though I guess technically that’s not rss). I also definitely use my email tools to auto label and sort emails like this, especially if I feel like I’m getting overwhelmed. (With a full on rss reader, I started to feel like it was a whole other email inbox I had to check, which didn’t really work for me.)

I use Dreamwidth’s track function though, instead of rss, because otherwise I won’t get notified about non-public posts (I think some people have mentioned that some feed readers allow login but it’s not all for sure).

For YouTube I actually use the “notify” levels of subscriptions - if you set the channels you care about to notify for all, you can access YouTube entirely via your notifications page which shows up in chronological order (only the notify for all channels) and doesn’t auto play, which is really nice (also works on the app). I also have an integration where all videos I “like” on YouTube get bookmarked on raindrop, so I do keep some record of them.

Rss really is such a powerful and useful access method/function/tool(whatever!

[grayestofghosts]

Silly question maybe, but how are you using IFTTT? I've been trying to get RSS feeds sent to pocket but because the free version only allows 2 functions and it seems to be only one feed per function, this doesn't really work for me.

[tozka]

I like that idea about auto bookmarking liked videos! I do have my liked videos playlist, but it'd be good to have it somewhere else I can access, too...

[grayestofghosts]

I've started using Feeeed, a free iOS RSS app that's very useable for being free. The problem I had with NetNewsWire was that it wasn't including BlueSky images, though it may work better for other platforms.

[tozka]

Good to know, thank you! I've noticed that some feed readers have problems rendering images properly; wonder why that is...

[grayestofghosts]

I'm guessing it has to do with how they process frames or whatever. Since RSS was invented, web pages have become more complex and the reader has to parse what data is important and what's not, and it's not consistent across different sites.

Also just by the name something called "NetNewsWire" doesn't sound like something that would prioritize images, especially from microblogging sites.

[selenicseas]

This is super useful! I've been using an RSS feed reader for a while, but I had no idea I could use it for things like Reddit and Youtube.

[tozka]

Me either until just recently, which is why I had to share. :D

[peasina]

This is amazingly helpful, thank you!

[tozka]

You're very welcome!

[kalloway]

Thank you! This is wonderful. I had no idea about being able to RSS subreddits and I don't know if this new knowledge is good or bad. ^^;; (That's what filters are for, I suppose.)

[tozka]

You're welcome! Yeah the Reddit thing is hit or miss for me; I put a few subreddits into my reader and turns out that they're way busier than I expected AND most of the posts were really low-quality, so I'm guessing that means the homepage algorithm was filtering out the shitty ones and pushing up the ones with more comments/upvotes/etc.

[kalloway]

Yeah, one of the subs I check daily would probably be too much on a feed just because I know the mods do a lot of cleanup. (Mostly five people posting the same news at once kind of stuff.) Still, I might try it out just to see how it works or come up with another that fits better in not-too-lively-but-also-not-dead.

[linky]

This is a wonderful read!

[tozka]

Thanks so much for reading! :D

[muttthecowcat]

I just read this on feedbro lol I made rss feeds for all my websites last year. I really love having an rss because it's exactly what I want to see and nothing that I don't. Thanks for all the tips to get them on other websites. I knew about tumblr and dreamwidth but none of the others!

[ello]

This sounds useful!