- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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 seem to remember RSS’s main issue being not really being able to tell “recent” from “popular”.
Showed a whole lot of nothing much, and not very much of the stuff you wanted to see.
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.
What did you try to mean by, whatever the linguistic details. What are you talking about when you say linguistic details?
Read the whole article, it is weirdly quoted here.
The number of sites that still supports RSS is impressive when you think about how niche it is right now. I was surprised when I saw some big comics sites had it.
Is it because of Wordpress?
I doubt webtoon is built on wordpress :D
I was thinking all those websites which persistently ask you to join their newsletter, but still have RSS available too.
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.
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.
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 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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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.
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.
Thank you! Awesome app
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.
RSS is great. Podcasts and webcomics are easier to follow with RSS.
How do you set it up for podcasts ? Say The Darknet Diaries for instance.
The easiest way is to use RSS for podcasts is to use a dedicated app. AntennaPod is what I use (Android) and I can’t recommend it enough, it has a search feature to find the RSS feeds for whatever podcast you like and add them to your subscriptions.
Podcasts are actually typically primarily served by RSS, whatever podcast app you are using just indexes them and manages downloads. So typically you can go to the website of the podcast, e.g https://darknetdiaries.com/subscribe/ and if you scroll down on the subscribe page you’ll see a link to their rss feed. Just copy the link from the feed into whatever reader you use and you’ll be updated in your reader app when new episodes are released.
I use AntennaPod as my client, but you can use anything.
One can do an Internet search for the podcast name and rss to find the RSS feed.
A podcast client already uses RSS under the hood to get updates for your podcast subscription. I recommend AntennaPod if you use Android. Love Darknet Diaries btw!
I’m using Feeder app and it’s the best. Others are resource heavy and light apps won’t load the whole story instead redirects. Which is a problem. Feeder on the other hand, free open source privacy respecting light app which shows the whole story in the app itself. Very very useful and not a disturbing one.
Google Reader shutdown has completely changed the way I was ingesting information. It was so convenient, I always had 2-3 days worth of articles, web comics and news for reading.
Another problem was that many sites shifted to providing only parts of articles instead of full versions, and it was still the time when I wasn’t always online to finish reading.Another problem was that many sites shifted to providing only parts of articles instead of full versions
That annoys me so much, that is the number one reason why I use Feeder more than Feedly nowadays (I manually keep them synced, Feedly is multiplatform and Feeder sadly isn’t) as it has a feature to download the page and use their native app view, so much better than going to the site (even with Ublock I’d rather not go unless I want to comment or see comments, which sadly isn’t a thing for most of the sites nowadays).
Is that the OSS F_Droid feeder or the other one?
Oh, cool, thank you, I’ll check Feeder out. I want my stuff to be on my phone. I’m going to the airport right now, and spending 8,5 hours without internet. It’s funny that I wouldn’t have a problem with that in 2008, but I have now :)
Sigh, that was my wake up call to not rely on google products.
The Google Reader shutdown hit me hard also. They offered all of the features in a really great app and many of the competitors shut down in their wake, so when they exited the scene, it left a huge hole.
I jumped to Feedly and have been using that ever since. After they killed reader, I’ve been very hesitant of using any new Google product, expecting and seeing them all inevitably die.
Seconded. Back when Feedly had a “pay one price” special for Google reader refugees.
I stopped following sites with dubious commercial tactics like the one you mention. After all, information is not so rare these days.
Used Google Reader and now use Feedly. I go ahead and pay for Feedly since I like it enough to do so.
I can’t imagine not using RSS to consume stuff. It just makes things so much easier.
That seems like a lot of work. It would be easier for me to write a bot that will post every article from my favorite sites to [email protected]. Then I could have another bot summarize it in the body.
Oh, wait…several people already have. :-/
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.
On IOS try feeeed
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/feeeed-rss-reader-and-more/id1600187490
Got Feeder to try RSS on my PC based on this post, added a bunch of cool sites, was enjoying it, and then quickly got smacked in the face with “upgrade to view more posts”.
Anyone recommend an RSS reader that doesn’t have stupid “fuck you, pay me” limitations?
What’s the cost?
I downloaded Feedly and they want 8 bucks a month, which seems high considering they don’t actually create the content. I’m all for paying developers but that’s more than I pay fo other actual new sources
It’s for the service. It’s not a local rss reader, it works like email. Local/offline ones are usually cheap/free
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https://www.inoreader.com/ used it for years it’s great!
I use Thunderbird for RSS…however I should also admit I only have two things - xkcd and another comic that hasn’t been posted in so long I think it might be dead.
Oof. The real Feeder is a FOSS Android app, get it on F-Droid.
On PC,
there are twoFirefox plugins, one to bring back “live bookmarks” (RSS feeds), and one to bring back the radio-waves-like icon in the address bar of sites with RSS feeds available. Let me check…Edit: It’s just one plugin, Livemarks. If you put the bookmark it creates into the bookmarks toolbar, then it becomes a drop-down menu of the headlines/RSS items. 👍
Thanks, I’m trying that
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.
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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:
