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.

  • nutsack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    9 months ago

    people don’t do RSS anymore because websites don’t do posts. everything is on some shitty proprietary social media shithole

  • RememberTheApollo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    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

    • Evkob@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      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.

        • Evkob@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          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.

  • bushparty@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    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)

  • Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    I mean, I’m all for it, but I thought the problem was that so many sites stopped offering RSS output options.

    • nadir@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      Or if they do, it’s not the full article. Which I get, them being in the business of selling ads and all.

      • harsh3466@lemmy.worldEnglish
        01·
        10 months ago

        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.

  • NotSteve_@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    I use an RSS reader but I’m just using it as a clunky reddit client for my city’s subreddit 😅