Build a Reading Feed You Control

Your phone knows what keeps you scrolling. It has studied how long you pause on each post, what makes you tap, what makes you stop. Every refresh reshuffles the deck to give you just enough that is interesting to keep going.

RSS does none of that. It gives you a list, in the order it was published, from sources you chose. No ranking, no reshuffling, no guess about what will keep you there.

This post shows how to install an RSS reader and add this website as an example. The same steps work for many blogs, news sites, and project websites.

Why I Wanted This

Before I switched to a de-Googled phone, I did read the Google News feed. It had learned that I liked science stories, and it often showed me articles from Neuroscience News. That was genuinely useful.

The problem was the shape of the experience. Each scroll or refresh might show something worth reading. Often it did not. Researchers writing about problematic smartphone use describe this as intermittent variable rewards: notifications, messages, likes, matches, and other app rewards arrive unpredictably. That can make checking harder to stop. I found myself opening the feed on the toilet, not because I wanted to read, but because my hand already knew the motion. It was no longer a reading list I chose to open. It was a habit my body ran on its own.

RSS removes the core problem. There is no algorithm trying to keep me coming back, no system optimizing for my attention so it can show me more ads. The feed just shows what is new, in order, and then stops.

I set my reader to refresh once a day, and I do not have notifications on at all. You can set the refresh rate yourself — on startup, or at intervals in the background — and the point is that you decide. You learn what works for you and configure it that way.

RSS was never designed to be addictive. I choose the sources, the list has an end, and there is no ranking system reshuffling the mix to keep me there.

That lets me keep the useful part. My reader now includes Ars Technica, Neuroscience News, and a personal website I want to follow.

But how does it actually work? It is simpler than it sounds.

How It Works

Websites that support RSS publish a feed — a page in a special format that reader apps can read, but that is not meant for reading in a browser. The feed link usually ends in .xml. This website’s feed is at blog.tjdigital.co/index.xml.

When you add that link to a reader app, the app checks the feed for new posts. When a new post is published, it appears in your reader. You do not need an account on this website, you do not need to share an email address, and you do not need a social media app to decide whether the post should reach you.

Choose a Reader

You need an RSS reader — the app that keeps your subscriptions and shows new posts. For this guide, we are starting with open-source readers.

On Android, Feeder is a good simple choice. It is also available through Google Play, and you can save articles so useful pieces are easy to find again later.

On iPhone, iPad, or Mac, NetNewsWire is a good simple choice.

You can also use another reader. The important part is not the exact app, but that it can subscribe to RSS feeds.

Add Your First Feed

Now that you have a reader installed, let us add a feed. Open your reader and look for an option to add a feed or subscribe to a website — it might be a button, a menu item, or a search bar. Paste the feed link from above (blog.tjdigital.co/index.xml). The reader should find the site name and let you save it. After that, new posts from this website will appear in your reader when the app refreshes.

Building Your Feed

Once you have one feed working, you can add more. You can often paste the normal website address into your reader first, and many readers will try to find the RSS feed for you. If that does not work, look for links called RSS, Feed, Atom, or Subscribe. Sometimes the feed is in the website footer. If a feed link opens a page of XML in your browser, copy that page address and paste it into your RSS reader.

You do not need to add everything at once. Start with a few sites you actually want to read, add more as you find them, and remove anything that does not stay useful.

This is where the real difference shows. An algorithmic feed is handed to you, finished, optimized for someone else’s goals. Your RSS feed is something you build. It grows as you discover new sources, shrinks when you stop caring about old ones, and it is yours.

That is the point. Not the technology, not the format — the fact that you get to decide what fills your screen.