Why I Still Get My News and Alerts From a 25 Year Old Tool

Catching up on the information means both dodging paywalls on conventional media websites, or wading by way of poisonous feedback on social media, proper? Flawed: there’s one other approach. RSS has been preserving us knowledgeable for over twenty years, and it’s as related at present as ever.

RSS (Actually Easy Syndication) is a expertise that lets websites publish a feed of their content material. As a reader, you may subscribe to an RSS feed and obtain notifications when new articles are printed, from information tales to social media updates.

Just like the outdated Betamax format for videotapes, RSS is an instance of a worse expertise profitable a format warfare, because the Atom various is, in some ways, superior. However most purchasers deal with RSS and Atom interchangeably, in order a person, you don’t want to pay attention to the distinction.

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I’ve been utilizing RSS for so long as I can bear in mind. Perhaps not fairly at launch—which was in 1999—however most likely not that lengthy after that, actually for the final twenty years. Listed below are the primary causes it stays my go-to for catching up on-line.

It’s Simple to Use

As a result of RSS is such a easy format, it’s very straightforward to make use of. Subscribing to a brand new feed is simple: copy the feed’s URL and paste it into your feed reader. When you’ve performed so, your reader will current the feed’s articles, notifying you when new content material is printed.

This straightforward course of means there’s little to go flawed. Once I discover a feed I need to subscribe to, I simply want a URL and an RSS shopper. Feeds can fluctuate drastically between publishers: some present full textual content, whereas others simply embody a abstract, for instance. However these variations are normally trivial and the expertise of studying in a single app quite than switching between many alternative websites is properly value it.

I actually began to understand the potential for RSS’s mass attraction after I labored for an education-related firm. Our RSS feeds had been extremely common, one thing which stunned me given the stereotypical aversion to expertise that academics are sometimes assumed to have. Nevertheless it turned out that faculties, with their fancy digital whiteboards and thirst for topical info, had been an ideal match for RSS.

The Easy Open Format

At its core, the RSS format is easy and accessible. Constructed on prime of XML—a markup language comparable, and kind of associated, to HTML—RSS is an open format that anybody can work with. Similar to HTML, you may view the textual content supply of an RSS feed to debug it or be taught from it. This additionally implies that, if you happen to’re so inclined, you may even writer your personal RSS feed by hand.

An RSS feed features a listing of things, every of which represents a narrative/article. Normally (though it’s not required), every merchandise has a title, a hyperlink, an outline, and a pubDate. So a pattern merchandise from the BBC’s RSS feed seems to be like this:

        merchandise>
    title>
        Girl Gaga and Pulp rumored for shock Glastonbury units as full
        line-up revealed
    title>
    hyperlink>
        https://www.bbc.com/information/articles/cx2jd8e6918o
    hyperlink>
    description>
        With three weeks to go, the UK's greatest pageant unveils its full
        line-up, plus just a few thriller units.
    description>
    pubDate>
        Tue, 03 Jun 2025 09:00:15 GMT
    pubDate>
merchandise>

    

From a developer’s standpoint, this simplicity is a big bonus which, in flip, means web site house owners are more likely to offer a feed. CMS software program and internet frameworks nearly all the time embody help for RSS feeds since it’s so straightforward to offer.

I Can Learn the Information the Approach I Need

RSS encourages publishers to syndicate their content material in a standard format. Because of this, shoppers can combine and match their feeds precisely as desired, in many alternative methods.

For instance, most RSS purchasers will allow you to view both particular person feeds or all the things all collectively in a single single feed. It is a bit like how Google’s Gmail provides you entry to “all mail,” but in addition splits it up into Main, Promotions, and Social. The distinction is that RSS provides you the potential for way more flexibility.

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A typical RSS shopper will allow you to group feeds into folders. This is a wonderful alternative to prepare your studying. Perhaps you need to group by subject material, and separate your sports activities studying out of your present affairs. Alternatively, you may need to separate often up to date content material that you simply dip into rapidly from extra long-form articles that publish much less typically, however with better depth.

This may go a lot additional, with some purchasers providing bookmarking performance, AI feeds, and just lately learn or just lately printed groupings.

It’s Important for Podcasts

One of many main causes podcasts took off and have, nearly, endured is their use of RSS as a basis. As soon as extra, the easy open format is to thank. Though podcasts are a really totally different kind of medium, RSS can syndicate them, simply as it may well with conventional text-based articles.

Many RSS purchasers will cater particularly to podcasts. Even when they don’t, since a podcast is simply an RSS feed, you’ll nonetheless be capable to add them and comply with a hyperlink to hear in an exterior app.

I Can Handle It Higher Than Social Media

Most social media feeds are opinionated. On X, the “For You” feed decides which content material to serve you based mostly on a posh algorithm that tries to second-guess your pursuits. It might appear to be magic, however many people are involved about how such algorithms work behind the scenes and what impact they’re having, driving us to attention-grabbing content material we would in any other case keep away from.

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RSS feeds are normally totally different. A web site’s feed algorithm will typically be so simple as “embody an merchandise for each article, in chronological order.” Until a feed is particularly tailor-made to your person account, it is a one-feed-for-all strategy that avoids the usage of private knowledge.

Paradoxically, some social media apps present RSS feeds, regardless that they could be a little bit hidden. Bluesky publishes a feed alongside each person account. For instance, the official bsky.app account makes use of the URL https://bsky.app/profile/bsky.app. To subscribe to its RSS feed, merely add “/rss” to the URL, giving https://bsky.app/profile/bsky.app/rss.

It’s straightforward to begin utilizing RSS and there are many purchasers to select from.

Decide a Shopper

Feed readers have a tendency to return in certainly one of two varieties: an internet app or a local shopper. An RSS internet app is helpful as a result of you may entry it from totally different gadgets, however a local shopper can supply tighter integration together with your OS.

On Mac, I’ve used two purchasers: Reeder and NetNewsWire. Reeder is a pleasant, polished app that appears and feels very very similar to a local Mac app. It does all the things you want, nevertheless it requires a subscription ($10/12 months) to learn greater than ten feeds.

NetNewsWire is free and open supply. My solely grievance is that it doesn’t allow you to add a feed to multiple folder, however in any other case it’s good for my RSS wants.

On the internet, Feedly is the preferred possibility and helps loads of customization. Its free tier provides you 100 feeds and three folders. It additionally provides iOS and Android apps.

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Discover Feeds

Most RSS apps allow you to paste a web site’s URL and can mechanically discover an RSS feed if one exists. Many websites publicize their RSS feed with a direct hyperlink; look out for the phrases “feed” and “RSS”, and the frequent RSS icon which seems to be like waves emanating from a circle, normally orange and white.

Your browser also needs to have extensions that help RSS. Google’s personal RSS Subscription Extension is an efficient possibility for Chrome. It provides an icon to your toolbar that lights up when a feed is offered, though I’ve discovered it doesn’t work 100% of the time.

Failing these choices, you may need to resort to viewing the page source and manually trying to find the feed URL. You’ll must know precisely what you’re searching for, however you need to not often want to make use of this final resort if a web site does have a feed.