Recently, I’ve gotten interested into RSS and the concept of having a central way of viewing content, instead of having a dozen different websites and apps. I’ll talk about how I use RSS! <–!more–»

After looking at a few of Brodie Robertson’s videos on RSS, I decided to get into it, because I really wanted a way to access content from all these different sites in one universal interface. Now, I’m not that old at all, so I wasn’t around for the time when RSS was the hot new tech that everyone used. All I knew about RSS prior to switching to Linux was that it was the wifi-lookin thing that opened up a weird file in my browser.

Why I use RSS

As I said earlier, one of the reasons why I wanted to use RSS is that I wanted one place to access content from. I was slightly sick of having to go to multiple websites (or apps if I’m on my phone) and navigate through the completely different interfaces. With RSS, I can just go to my reader and click on a folder/the whole feed and see a compilation of all the content from all the websites I want to visit. This is especially useful when looking through websites with the same topic, as you get to see roughly the same content. (For example Ars Technica and Phoronix for tech news)

Another reason why is that I can access information without getting bombarded with ads. The modern internet being a terrible place is a commonly known fact, and almost every site has some sort of advertising in it. RSS can reduce this to a certain extent. For example, while using RSS to get your favourite Youtuber’s newest uploads, you can skip the algorithm while going to the Youtube front page, which could distract some. Using RSS lets you go directly to the content without most distractions. Combined with qutebrowser’s built-in adblocking, I don’t get any ads anywhere on the internet except for Youtube. To circumvent this, you could use Invidious, a Youtube frontend, which does have RSS feeds. However, Youtube is currently blocking every single Invidious instance, so I just pipe Youtube links into mpv to watch videos without ads.

Lastly, it’s just cool, alright? I like how it’s basically this unknown thing only cool Linux haxxors use, and I feel cool using it!!! :3

What RSS Reader do I use?

I had a few requirements when choosing a RSS reader, ranked in order of importance:

1. Multi-device synchronisation. I CANNOT go without syncing feeds between my phone and laptop. This is a must-have for me.
2. Android app for the reader. If you have Multi-device synchronisation, I’m not going to use a website on mobile. Just no.
3. Allow a free user to create at least 10 folders. I love being organised (at least in online)
4. Allow a free user to add at least 50 feeds. I don’t spam feeds so I don’t need a high limit.
5. Allow me to sync the feeds whenever I want.
6. Doesn’t look like it’s stuck in 2013. I like the Windows 10-11 kind of design most applications have nowadays.

In the end, I had two potential candidates, feedly and inoreader. However, feedly only allows free users to make a maximum of 3 folders, which I can’t get behind. I need more folders!! Thankfully, inoreader doesn’t have a folder cap and even allows free users to add 150 feeds! Inoreader doesn’t have any real downsides for me. The free plan does say that there’s ads, but so far I don’t see any at all… Filters and rules are locked behind a paywall, but since I don’t use does I don’t really care. My only annoyance is that on the android app, when clicking on the link to open the full post/site, it doesn’t open up in one of my apps. For example, when clicking on a Reddit post, Inoreader doesn’t open the post in Stealth, my Reddit client.

How I use RSS

I organise my feeds into 5 folders, namely Music, Blogs, Videos, Tech News and Social Media. As you can see, everything is organised nicely! Whenever I’m feeling bored, I’ll just open up the tech news folder and start reading a few articles from Phoronix. I’m planning on adding a releases folder so I can keep track of project releases on Github, so that I can update the programs I compile myself.

This makes me more productive, as I can just go to Inoreader to look at everything I ever wanted to look at, instead of going to multiple websites to keep track of social media posts from people I follow.

There are a lot of websites that offer RSS feeds but are hidden from users. You can find out how to get those RSS feeds from this video!

Conclusion

RSS is a really useful piece of technology that I advice everyone to use! You don’t even need an account to access posts on social media with RSS, and you can easily keep track of multiple things at the same time, especially if they’re all about the same topic. You can even subscribe to this blog via RSS, just click on the subscribe link at the top bar!