I recently posted about switching to using RSS feeds even more than I had been, and it was suggested to post it here as you can use RSS feeds to download a variety of things. For instance, if you want to download podcasts (perhaps using gPodder) you basically NEED RSS feed so you can automatically grab episodes instead of trying to rip them one by one.

Here is my original post. A slightly shortened version follows:

If you've never used RSS before, here's a good intro guide from Melonland.

Feed readers

I use Feedbro (review here) which is a browser-based extension that works in Firefox (and Firefox forks), Chrome and Edge. I don't need to read my feeds on my phone, so having it on the desktop only is fine for me.

Other options are: NetNewsWire (iOS), Dreamwidth's feed thing

How to find RSS feeds

All blogs/websites have an RSS feed somewhere, even if it's not visible-- try adding /rss or /feed to the end of the blog URL to find it. But there's actually a surprising amount of other things you can get an RSS feed for!

Here's what I've transferred to my feedreader:

1. Tumblr
Absolutely fantastic because the endless scroll is gone, there's no ads, and I see EVERY UPDATE chronologically. Feeds can be found by adding /rss to the end of the URL: [user].tumblr.com/rss

2. Reddit
Another banger because I can see EVERY new post now; and I don't even have to join a subreddit to see them which is great. Add /.rss to the end of the URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/[subreddit]/.rss

3. Youtube channels
Yet another great idea because I see every new video from every channel now, instead of YT pushing up only 3 or 4 of them on my homescreen. I cheated and used Feedbro to automatically find the RSS feed but it looks something like this: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=[ID]

4. Podcasts
I actually use Overcast to subscribe to podcasts BUT you can definitely do it in a feedreader. Most podcast websites have an RSS feed somewhere; even Spotify podcasts have them, because they've enabled an RSS feed so, like, Apple Podcasts can scrape it or whatever. Paste the Spotify URL into GetRSSFeed.com to find it.

5. Substack
I hate Substack but they've been pushing for more people to make newsletters over there lately, so a lot of people have opened new accounts. Ugh. But still, there's some good writers over there, and I want to read their stuff. Add /feed at the end of the URL: https://[user].substack.com/feed

6. Newsletters
I get overwhelmed if there's too many emails in my inbox (especially from strangers selling me stuff), so I'm converting whatever I can to an RSS feed using Kill the Newsletter, which basically gives you an email to use to sign up to newsletters and then it converts it to a feed for you! It's open source, so you can host it yourself if you'd like.

Caveat: I haven't tried to subscribe to a private feed, but most feedreaders have an option to add in a username/password to access those. However, I don't know how it'd work for sites that are more like memberships, like Youtube's community thing.

Not possible to RSS because the company that made them sucks: Facebook, Instagram, Threads (so any Meta app), TikTok

Possible to RSS but I haven't done it: Bluesky, Flickr, Mastodon, Medium, AO3, Dreamwidth