Whatever the linguistic details, one of the main roles of RSS is to supply directly to you a steady stream of updates from a website. Every new article published on that site is served up in a list that can be interpreted by an RSS reader.
Unfortunately, RSS is no longer how most of us consume “content.” (Google famously killed its beloved Google Reader more than a decade ago.) It’s now the norm to check social media or the front pages of many different sites to see what’s new. But I think RSS still has a place in your life: Especially for those who don’t want to miss anything or have algorithms choosing what they read, it remains one of the best ways to navigate the internet. Here’s a primer on what RSS can (still!) do for you, and how to get started with it, even in this late era of online existence.
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I use an RSS reader but I’m just using it as a clunky reddit client for my city’s subreddit 😅
I might try that, city subreddit is a huge resource
Does the RSS feed from Reddit actually work? I tried it on my RSS reader and got error messages after a day.
I’ve had issues occasionally but if you use old reddit it seems to always work. Like old.reddit.com/r/example.rss
Ah perfect, I’ll try the old style link then. Thank you!
edit: So far it works!! We’ll see if it’ll update itself, but really thank you so much for the tip! Now I can look at my local subs without having to go to Reddit directly
Glad it’s working for you! :)
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Yes, I use RSS feeds for all my news/blogs, but before the Reddit migration when I tried to incorporate my subreddits into my RSS feed many of them would stop updating after a day or just return errors.
Another commenter said to try old.reddit instead, so hopefully that works!
I loved RSS feeds. But I’ve given up on them. And it would seem so have many of the sites I used to frequent. I read RSS offline, so right there I have a problem as the vast majority of RSS apps expect an internet connection. Sites used to write content in such a manner that it was easily readable in RSS, now they don’t. The decline in popularity of RSS has meant that after I get comfortable with an app it stops being updated and no longer works as the developer decides it’s not worth keeping up. Sites make RSS feeds harder to find, if they even have one.
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Assuming you read RSS offline on mobile, Feeder has an option to fetch full articles and stores them for offline reading. It’s FOSS and actively-maintained, having received an update just last week.
I’ve never encountered a site I wanted to follow that didn’t have RSS, but I wholly agree it’s often needlessly complicated to find the feed links.
Thanks for the rec, but unfortunately I’m on iOS.
Ah, my bad! I should have guessed by your username, which I assume is in reference to the now-defunct reddit app.
I can’t personally vouch for it, but NetNewsWire might be a good option for iOS if you haven’t tried it. It’s also FOSS, updated as recently as June 2023, can read RSS feeds locally and has a reader view to fetch full articles. You’d have to test if it caches fetched articles though, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t.
I will vouch for it. I use it on my iPad constantly and have few complaints. I don’t think it syncs well between iPad and Mac or Phone when using iCloud sync, but I think they have other methods and I don’t really need sync since I do my media consumption on the iPad.
Thanks, I’ll give it a shot.
(Yep, it’s the former Reddit app)
Edit: it is offline, but it only pulls in the first paragraph or whatever. You can read a snippet, but it’s not really an offline reader that pulls in the full article to be read.
Thank you! Awesome app
This is my experience too. The sites hosting the articles that I want to read only provide the first parapraph and then a link back to the webpage. News is just headlines. I love that RSS doesn’t allow much formating so you end up with an experience focused on the content itself (and no ads). It feels like a long time ago since I really enjoyed my RSS feeds.
I started using RSS during the summer. It filled a hole after I quit reddit, since I used to get a lot of my news from the subreddits for my city and my province. There’s also the on-going bickering between Meta and Canadian lawmakers/news media groups which means I see way less articles on social media than I used to. Honestly, after adding a couple local news outlets to my RSS apps, I feel better informed than ever before, and I spend a lot less time arguing with people on reddit. Win-win if you ask me.
Anyone looking for good RSS readers, I use Feeder on my phone (Android-only), Fluent Reader on desktop (cross-platform), and I also use the RSS widget of the Renewed Tab addon for Firefox. Both apps I use work locally, and have the ability to fetch full articles in-app (the addon just opens the articles in Firefox).
Something also worth mentioning: you can often find RSS feeds by checking the page’s source (on Firefox: right-click and “View Page Source”) and using Ctrl+F to search, there’s usually a URL somewhere. Keywords to search for: “feed”, “RSS”, “xml”, “atom”. For example, if I go to this community’s page on lemmy.world, I can Ctrl+F “feed” on the page source to find
https://lemmy.world/feeds/c/technology.xmlFeeder on my phone (Android-only)
If you host an RSS aggregator yourself such as FreshRSS, I’d recommend using ReadYou or FeedMe (not Open Source) instead so that you can sync. I use FeedMe on Android and Fluent Reader on Linux. It’s nice to have everything synced.
I also recommend rss-bridge if you’re self hosting. Helps gets you more RSS feeds from websites that don’t have them.
It seems like a new project/rabbit hole for me.
With FreshRSS would I be able to sync Feeder and Feedly?
I don’t self-host (…yet. I do have a couple of things I’d like to play around with eventually) but honestly, for my use case I don’t feel any need to sync RSS. I mostly read articles on my phone, and if I’m on my PC I just remember which articles I’ve read. I can see how fetching RSS locally on each device might fall apart if one follows a large number of feeds, though.
I use Feeder on Android, it’s open source.
people don’t do RSS anymore because websites don’t do posts. everything is on some shitty proprietary social media shithole
I have a really intense desire to nibble an attractive mans toes.
Even stranger I have a need to tell someone about it.
Congratulations to you, I guess?
I’m confused if you’re mocking op or this is actually some challenge you’re doing
I live a life of whimsical nonsense and was probably horny for a moment so just blurted out what was on my mind. I find it amusing the number of downvotes I got.
I’m guessing most people thought you were mocking OP. Especially that last sentence would be sarcastic-mean, if it made any sense
I don’t know why you’re being downloaded I think this is an important post
Thank you! At least someone understands.
Hope you find something to fulfill your wish!
Anyone got a favourite open source rss reader? So far I am mostly finding stuff with subscriptions. Even though many have a free plan i’d like to try to find an open one first
Check out FreshRSS. You can self host, so if you have a home server, this will do the trick. Use your favorite reader app that can connect to it.
I get the subscription fatigue. I’m currently paying for Inoreader because I haven’t fully cut over to FreshRSS. It has good tools that are worth it for many, but all those subscriptions add up fast.
FreshRSS is awesome, I use it with Read You on Android and I love it
I’ve recommended these a couple of times in this thread, but I use Fluent Reader on desktop (cross-platform) and Feeder on Android. Both are FOSS and load articles locally, so no account/subscription required.
I cannot tell you how much better it feels to click a link to an android app and it opens github and not the play store.
FYI, Fluent Reader appears to have an Android .apk now: https://github.com/yang991178/fluent-reader-lite/releases/tag/v1.0.4%2B11
When Google Reader shut down, Feedly had an “import from Google” feature on their sign up page. Been using it for free ever since.
Thunderbird will do RSS.
NetNewsWire for Apple devices.
Never realized that it’s open source. That’s great.
Feedly
I’ve never left RSS. Went to Feedly like a lot of people. These days I’m using a self-hosted instance of miniflux because I got sick of Feedly making “enhanced” feeds and then not letting me get to the real RSS feed anymore.
I went with a self-hosted FreshRSS instance, it has its issues but it works well with the client apps I use.
I need this miniflux in my life. I’ve been just putting up with Feedly. I understand they have to make money, but I don’t want to pay for RSS. Especially if I can DIY.
What is this enhanced feed feature of Feedly that I have never heard of? Is it a premium feature of something?
I ran into a couple of them but the most notable was reddit (before the APIpocolypse). If you try to subscribe to the RSS feed of a sub it will ignore your request and ask you to sign in to Reddit instead. It then uses the API instead of the RSS feed and reports your reading habits back to Reddit.
Oh lol. I wonder how that’s going - especially when they had to drop their enhanced feeds for Twitter.
Reddit and Twitter were my RSS reader replacement. But then they shot themselves in the foot. Mastodon is not there yet. Lemmy is almost there, but still missing the non techy communities.
Yes RSS came back strong in my life after Reddit and Twitter shit the bed.
Friendica has the RSS feature and it is compatible with most Activity Pub services.
Lemmy is almost there, but still missing the non techy communities
Thank god, have you seen how the world is out there? Crazy shit /s
I’m reading some /r/hfy stories. Since I no longer get notifications for reddit pm, I have replaced it with the RSS Feed for “posts by user xxx”. RSS also works like a subscription on royal roads, the alternative that a lot of writers switched to.
Works perfectly well, I’m very happy with it.
Because if you don’t save shit in your RSS feed, you might never ever again find it using google or other search engines.
What, search? Listen, you don’t actually want that, you want recommendations from our amazing algorithm and AI based on overall connections between topics and trends and other very complex things. You don’t even know what it is you’re looking for, but we do, so here are some results that generate revenue for us. //Google
What if I told you that I have never used Google to view RSS news feeds? It seems to me that these stereotypes about people’s attachment to Google services only take place somewhere in the USA and Europe.
I love TinyTinyRSS (self hosted) and lire for iOS which syncs with it. Very powerful setup. I have issues with overusing social media sites so I have sites like Lemmy do the “Top Week” and so on for areas I’m interested in.
Cool setup, mine is pretty similar, but I use self-hosted FreshRSS instead.
I’ve tried so many times. I went ahead and checked out feedly right now just to have them change my mind, and they failed miserably. You run into paywall issues right away, they don’t list pretty major newspapers I would assume to have rss, and adding something like business insider or the independent gives you so much dung mixed with the things you are actually interested in.
Let’s say I’m into business, but don’t want car related news? What if I’m into investing yet don’t want to hear about Trump?
If there was something like “more like this”/“less like this” function, then maybe, but just at a glance, one of many, I don’t see how it could present me with the info I want in the structure I want.
Global events and news
Economical trends on both macro and micro level for specific domains
Exclude entertainment, sports, fashion, drama
Update every hour
Total headlines max 30 per day
Max visible 7 at a time.I’ve tried, and it’s not worth the hassle even trying to set that up. For me, at least.
Adding any RSS feed is like getting an information enema with raisins sprinkled in.
What shit app were you trying to use, get feeder and add the proper topic specific rss if you want to categorize like “business”. I never even get the time to read through all the news because there are literally hundreds of articles being added to the feed daily.
And AntennaPod for your podcast needs.
Read You is another great RSS client for Android
I suggest you give it another try, it can actually do what you’re asking it to do. Sounds like you just added the global feed of crap.
For better results, you typically have to search “<newspaper website> rss” and hope they have decent support. It’s really hit or miss.
For example, the independent that you were asking for, actually has a huge amount of fine tuning you can do. Go ahead and check their link and add the categories you’d like to read about instead catching all that junk you don’t care about:
I want to get into RSS but all the apps I’ve tried have been lacking. I want to subscribe to the Factorio blog and be able to see their GIFs/videos directly but so far no app has been able to do that. Either they don’t load any images (wtf?) or they just load a static preview that I then have to click to actually play. Does anyone know of an RSS app that can load GIFs/videos automatically?
I find RSS is always either too little or too much. It is almost impossible to get it “just right”, at least for me, especially taken into account the time and labor it would need to set up “just right”.
Have you tried imagus, hoverzoom or thumbnail zoom? It has changed the way I internet. Hover your mouse over almost any image, video, or gif and it automatically opens and shows the full size. I have been using imagus on firefox for ages and quite like it. It doesn’t work with some websites or apps, and probably wouldn’t work with an installed app, but should work for one of the rss web apps?
Please disregard if this is a silly suggestion, I have always been curious about rss feeds, but have never actually used one.
I still use it every day to access new content from my YouTube channels that I watch since I don’t have a Google account and for tech news.
How do I set this up?
Say I want to get an RSS feed for when Practical Engineering uploads a new video?
I find they just get buried in YouTube and I’d love to set this up for the channels I am really interested so they don’t get lost in the noise.
If you’re down to use Piped as a YT front-end, there’s an RSS icon on every channel page in the top right corner.
If you want to use YouTube directly, use the following link and append the channel ID of whatever channel you want to follow:
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=Another alternative would be using something like FreeTube, which can use RSS to fetch subscriptions (but doesn’t by default unless you’re subbed to a high number of channels).
I’ve heard of piped a lot so I’ll have a look at it. Thanks for pointing it out.
Newpipe has a feed button on the channel page and thats how i got mine. There is probably a simpler way, but I just don’t know it.
Ok thanks. I’ll have a look.
I mean, I’m all for it, but I thought the problem was that so many sites stopped offering RSS output options.
Or if they do, it’s not the full article. Which I get, them being in the business of selling ads and all.
This is why I stopped using rss. I fucking hate seeing an headline I’m interested in, clicking to expand and then having to click through to the site to read the article, dismiss the goddam email list overlay, fight with the stupid paywall, and then close the tab out of frustration.
I miss the days of actually reading articles in my rss feed reader.
Perhaps I’m just an old 40 year old fart, but the Internet was better before. I miss the 00s and the 10s. Now it’s just paywalls, LLM generated bullshit, and search results from SEO orgies
I’m still finding rather many RSS feeds, though there’s few buttons these days. Ideally, you want something that auto-discovers feeds on a webpage.
