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Documentation

Learn how to use every RSS Wrangler feature.

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Getting Started

RSS Wrangler is a free Chrome extension that lets you subscribe to, manage and read your favourite RSS and Atom feeds directly in the browser. Everything runs locally: your feeds, cached articles and settings stay on your device.

  1. Install RSS Wrangler from the Chrome Web Store.
  2. Click the RSS Wrangler icon in your toolbar to open the popup.
  3. Type a feed address or website URL into the search box and press Enter.
  4. Your feeds appear in the Home view. Click a feed name to see its latest articles.

The toolbar badge shows your total number of unread articles (capped at 999+).

Adding Feeds

You can add a feed two ways:

  • Paste a feed URL directly: any RSS or Atom feed address, such as one ending in .xml, .rss or .atom.
  • Paste a website address: RSS Wrangler attempts to auto-discover the site’s feed by looking for feed link tags in the page HTML. If a feed is found, you will see “Feed link discovered!” and it is added for you.

If a feed cannot be loaded you will see a clear error, such as “Could not find a feed at that URL” or “The feed format is invalid”. Feeds are de-duplicated by URL, so adding the same feed twice is ignored.

Tip: many sites that do not advertise a feed still publish one. See our guide to finding an RSS feed for any website.

Reading Articles

Click a feed name in the Home view to open its article list. The list is rendered from the cached feed, so it opens instantly.

  • Click an article to open it in a new browser tab. It is automatically marked as read.
  • Read articles are shown dimmed.
  • Use the star icon to save an article to Favourites.
  • Use the share icon to share an article or copy its details to the clipboard.
  • Category tags on each article filter the list when clicked.

Managing Feeds

Each feed in the Home view has a set of controls:

  • Refresh: fetch the latest articles from the feed now.
  • Edit title: rename a feed so it is easier to recognise.
  • Background Refresh toggle: mark a feed to be skipped by background refresh.
  • Delete: removes the feed. You have five seconds to undo before it is permanently removed.

Sorting. The sort button in the top menu bar cycles through three modes:

Mode Behaviour
Manual Drag and drop feeds to reorder them
Alphabetical Sorts by feed name
Popularity Sorts by the number of cached articles, highest first

The search box also filters the visible feed list by name as you type.

Favourites

Star an article to save it to the Favourites view (open the top menu and choose Favourites). Favourites keep their title, link and source feed and include their own keyword search box. Deleting a favourite also gives you a five-second undo window. Use Clear My Favourites in the Danger Zone to remove them all.

Offline Reading

Every feed’s parsed articles are cached locally the moment it is added or refreshed. The article list and favourites render from this cache, so you can browse your subscriptions even without an internet connection.

Settings

Open Settings from the top menu bar. The sections cover:

  • Data Management: export and import your feed list.
  • Background Features: toggle the unread-count badge, enable background refresh and set the refresh interval (15, 30, 60 or 240 minutes; default 30).
  • Network Proxy: when a feed cannot be fetched directly, RSS Wrangler can retry through a proxy. Tick Disable CORS Proxy to disable this or enter your own proxy URL.
  • Keyword Alerts: enable native browser notifications whenever a new article matches one of your keywords (matched against the article title or description).
  • Danger Zone: clear all favourites or clear all feeds and their cached articles.

Background refresh also runs on browser startup and after installation, so your feeds stay reasonably current.

Data Management

Export Feeds downloads a JSON backup of your subscriptions. Import Feeds loads a JSON backup and adds any feeds that are not already in your list (duplicates are skipped). Import is JSON-only; OPML files are not supported.

Privacy

RSS Wrangler is private by design. Feed URLs, cached articles and settings are stored locally in your browser and are never sent anywhere. The extension collects no personal information and does not track your browsing history. See the Privacy Policy for details.

Support

For help, read the RSS Wrangler blog, visit Get Help and Support or reach out on X at @andrewapell. If you find RSS Wrangler useful, you can support development.