Why Everyone Should Still Use an RSS Reader in 2024
Why Everyone Should Still Use an RSS Reader in 2024
RSS is still the best way to track the news on the web, and these RSS readers can keep you right up to date.
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.
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.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.xmlThe problem with most rss readers IMHO is that they lack a decent filter function. ttrss had great filters, but I stopped using it when they switched their dev process (I think to docker at the time, which I couldn't use with my hoster). Now using rss guard, not too happy but surviving.
RSS is great, but often contains a lot of noise. If you can filter only what you care about, great. Otherwise it's just information overload.
RSS was great. I've still got a deep grudge over the removal of Live Bookmarks from Firefox. That was how I kept up with the various webcomics I was reading at the time. All I had to do was just check on all my little orange drop-down menus to see if any new posts were up, and I was golden. Now I have to keep extra tabs open and try not to bury them under all the other tabs I open up and forget about. >_<
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 technology@lemmy.world. Then I could have another bot summarize it in the body.
Oh, wait…several people already have. :-/
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.
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 use Feeder on Android, it's open source.
Google Reader died more than a decade ago? oh my jeebus, I feel ooooooooollllld
I never had a good way to ingest info, but i setup a self-hosted FreshRSS instance a few months ago and it’s completely changed how i consume information for the better. I spend a lot less time scrolling through shit that never interested me much in the first place
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.
I
I'm gonna shill for FreshRSS and Feed Me. Been a fantastic combination so far.
Self hosting FreshRSS allows me to curate shit I care about. Even better, it's private aggregation. Sometimes though, I miss the conversation around these topics. For that, Lemmy exists.
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'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.
Another Feedly user, here. Definitely the way to go after the death of Google Reader.
My only concern with it is that I'd prefer any advertisement revenue to go to the original website with the content I want. Fortunately, if the website's ads aren't intrusive, I just disable ad block on that site and click through to it, giving them the views they need to keep going.
i remember in high school (2010s) i tried using RSS but increasingly the feed wouldn't even have the article, just the title and the link so you'd have to visit their website. especially obnoxious because my obnoxious school district filtered approx 90% of the internet (for shocking reasons like 'forums' or 'TV/entertainment' or 'sports' or 'media')
Downloaded Feeder. It seems like a really good way to read the articles, but I also like looking at the comments, as they often mimic the threads here on Lemmy, and can add information missing in the articles, auxillary information, and cool anecdotes. I'll see if this becomes the way I look at the articles.
When I switched from Reddit to Lemmy, I started using Feeder for news to fill that gap. I think my podcast app on Linux also uses RSS.
I also used Feeder with Nitter for a while to keep up with friends posting on Twitter (I never really got into Twitter myself). Though that stopped working at some point.
So yeah, RSS definitely still has uses today.
I highly recommend NewsBlur if you don’t want to host your own.
RSS is my everyday goto, I'm using QuiteRSS with filters for specific words, really neat one.
Inoreader ftw!
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.
Does anybody have any recommendations for FOSS RSS readers with actual content surfacing features? So many RSS feeds are full of junk (this is particularly a problem with feeds with wildly disparate posting frequencies) and I've always felt they'd be a lot more useful if people were putting more effort into a modern way to sort through extremely dense feeds.
When Google’s shut down I switched to Feedly. They even imported my Google settings so there was no downtime. I’ve been paying for their Pro version ever since. It’s a really good app!
newsboat is also quite stable as a RSS reader. if you like command line
The example feed in that article is so boring that it makes me want to kill myself.
If anyone is using an apple device, NetNewsWire is open source and is dead simple. No extra features, no premium tier, can sync with iCloud or self hosted servers, and the reader mode can be applied source-wide.
On IOS try feeeed
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/feeeed-rss-reader-and-more/id1600187490
i find it frustrating if i can't immediately tell the poster of a site their content is wrong or sucks or is generally bad. therefore social media is my only option, because the world must know my valuable contributions.....🤌🤌
RSS has always been great! Thankfully I never relied on Google Reader and have been using Newsify for 5+ years. Great app with a great newspaper view as well as an identical web version. Keept me off of Google and don't have to rely on Feedly either.
Newsify also supports Feedly accounts though I've never needed to consider migrating. I think I've had a couple full text issues with certain items but it's been amazing great and I've really enjoyed their product and price point for subscription ($50CAD/yr, I believe)
RSS is nice. Can anyone share which feeds they use?
I miss Press from TwentyFive Squares. The theme was very e-ink-ish, worked great, felt nice, didn't have any of the annoying garbage that's since become pretty norm for readers.
Still works on older Android OSes, I think. But since Press hasn't updated since 2014, it doesn't have security for new Android, I think.
Wonder if it would work on Graphene or something?
I always wonder if the sites I'm interested in are using rss, that's why I never really tried it.
Anyone else use NewsBlur Apps or WebApp. They have a free and paid, which works well enough to aggregate the sites I need to get a diverse news collection in an RSS like format.
I still miss google reader and past times, but gotta adapt.
I kinda just like going to the site. It doesn't have to be rss or social media.
I tried to use RSS a decade ago and it was too confusing to set up. I gave up pretty quickly.
Why should I expose myself to be force-fed social media stuff?