I wrote a bit about feeds already, namingly why feeds are The Best™, how to make a self hosted feed from scratch, and why I think creators can benefit from feeds. That said, this is all about how to get an RSS feed for various services. Some natively support it and some we have to jump through some hoops, but by the end hopefully you should know how to subscribe to most platforms you might want to follow. As a rule, I’d like to avoid listing out any method that requires you register on a third party site in order to get/generate an RSS feed. Anyway, lets get started.
How to get a YouTube channel RSS feed:
The simplest way to subscribe to YouTube with RSS is to go to the YouTube channel’s home page, view the page source (generally by right clicking and choosing “view source”), and search “xml”. The last time it appears on the site (generally the fourth time) is a link, which can be copied and added to a feed reader. Additionally, apps like NewPipe or browser extensions can get the feed link as well.
A feed can also be gotten from an Invidious instance (a YouTube front end that blocks ads and increases privacy), and from OpenRSS.org.
How to get an Odysee, a PeerTube, or 3Speak.tv Channel RSS Feed:
On Odysee, PeerTube, and 3Speak there is a subscribe via RSS option on each channel page – no extra effort required.
How to get a Bitchute RSS feed:
Bitchute has a tutorial in their FAQ, but it all boils down to going https://www.bitchute.com/feeds/rss/channel/[channel], replacing [channel] with whatever comes after /channel when opening the channel’s home page.
How to get a Rumble RSS feed:
The platform Rumble will give you an RSS feed link themselves if you pay for a premium account. However, an RSS feed can also be generated with OpenRSS.org for free without any registration.
How to get a Patreon RSS feed:
Surprisingly, it is possible to get a feed for Patreon content, but it’s pretty limited. You first need to subscribe to the content with a Patreon account, then the creator must have enabled the RSS feature to create an individualized RSS feed for each subscriber.
I had no luck being able to generate a feed for D.Tube, Daily Motion, and Utreon unfortunately.
Beyond video platforms, however, are blogs, news sites, and other text based content. There’s a lot of platforms so I figured I would list off as many as I can, though luckily for a lot of them there’s not a lot of complications to getting an RSS feed.
How to get a WordPress RSS feed:
Most WordPress blogs will have a feed listed on their home page, but if they don’t go to the main site and then type /rss (e.g. example.com/rss). You can also do this for various tags by going to the tag’s page and adding /rss to the end of the URL.
How to get a Blogspot / Blogger RSS Feed:
While there’s the option to create a feed button on a Blogspot site, all of them will have RSS enabled. Simple go to the main page and then paste /feeds/posts/default?alt=rss after the URL (e.g. example.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss).
How to get a Medium RSS Feed:
A Medium feed for an author can be gotten by going to the author’s page and adding /feed to the URL.
How to get a Hive.Blog RSS Feed:
While Hive doesn’t support RSS natively, using HiveRSS.com you can create a feed for a user, topic, and a whole bunch more. An RSS feed for a username can be created by going to hiverss.com/@USERNAME/feed, but the HiveRSS.com website has a lot more in depth info for a bunch of different customization you can set up.
How to get a Tumblr RSS Feed:
In order to get an RSS Feed from a Tumblr blog just navigate to the blog’s main page and add /rss to the end of the URL.
How to get an RSS feed for most news sites:
Most news sites have RSS support, though it varies from site to site. Here’s my recommendation though: first, scroll to the bottom of the site and look for the RSS icon or a link referring to RSS. If that fails, look for a sitemap and read through it for any RSS links. If you still cannot find an RSS link search “site:[news-site-url] RSS” in your favorite search engine. If you get no results, try searching just the name of the news site plus “RSS”. If you still can’t find anything then you might be out of luck.
How to get a Ground News RSS Feed:
Using OpenRSS.org you can create a Ground News RSS feed instead of relying on their app or website.
How to get a Substacks RSS Feed:
Like with a lot of text based content listed here, an RSS Feed is there but hidden. Go to the author’s page and add /feed the URL (e.g. https://[author].substack.com/feed).
Last, in regards to written content, Steemit used to have steemrss.com like Hive, however, that website is no longer maintained as of writing this (and somebody else might have bought the domain). Unfortunately, I can’t find anything else that would allow a subscription to someone on Steemit via RSS.
Next in line is audio, which is going to be a much shorter section than that on written content. This is going to mostly just be podcasts, with one minor exception being Soundcloud. Soundcloud allows the creator to create an RSS feed for listeners to subscribe to, so while it is an option not all creators will have one. This appears to apply to both podcasts and music. Similarly, it is possible to get an RSS feed from Itunes (podcasts only though). However, you can only get the RSS feed while signed into the desktop app for podcasts you have already subscribed to in Itunes. Spotify has no RSS compatibility whatsoever.
Beyond the aforementioned platforms, however, most self published podcasts will have some form of RSS Feed to integrate into podcast apps and platforms. You can usually find a feed advertised on the website and/or socials of a podcast, but it obviously varies from creator to creator.
Finally, I figured I would touch on social media. It’s a bit shorter since a good portion of social media (SnapChat, Facebook, etc) aren’t the kind of thing you’d create a feed for. The only social media where that’d be the case is stuff that is 100% public, like Twitter or Reddit.
How to get a Twitter RSS Feed:
OpenRSS.org will create an RSS feed for a Twitter account that you can add to a feed reader. Additionally, Nitter instances (a privacy/ad free twitter front end) will allow you to subscribe to tweets put out by any user, but you will not be able to sign into twitter to respond/react through the front end.
How to get a Reddit RSS Feed:
You can add /.xml to nearly any Reddit URL to get a feed. This works for subreddits (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/thehatedone/hot/.xml) which can be sorted by trending/hot/new, user profiles, and comments on specific posts. In each of those scenarios go to the page with the content you wish to subscribe to, then add /.xml to the end of the URL.
How to get a Mastodon RSS Feed:
Similar to reddit, navigate to the username of the profile you want a feed for and then add .xml to the end of the feed (e.g. https://mastodon.social/@Tutanota.rss). Unlike all the other additions to URLs, there is no “/” added to a Mastodon feed. Unfortunately, not all Activity Pub based social media (e.g. Plemora) support this.
How to get an Instagram RSS Feed:
The only way to get a feed I was able to find is to use RSS-Bridge. http://rss.trom.tf is currently hosting a copy of RSS-Bridge, though you can also self host or locate another group hosting RSS-Bridge. RSS-Bridge can create an Instagram account RSS feed as well as feeds for many other services.
If you’ve gone through my list here, searched elsewhere, and still cannot get a feed for a particular site/service you have additional options. First, there are Freemium/Paid RSS Feed creator sites like https://feed43.com/, https://rss.app, https://zapier.com, and https://fetchrss.com/. All of these services require an account, and usually require payment for some or all features and/or limit the amount of feeds you can create for free. While they are bad for privacy (as compared to other options), a bit of a hassle, and possibly a drain on your wallet, if you’re desperate you can always give them a try.
Additionally, services like Feedly might allow you to subscribe to things that you would otherwise be unable to create a feed for, though you’d be trading off your privacy for easy subscriptions and cross device sync. Similarly, some self hosted options like RSS box can generate feeds while allowing you to control your own data, but of course require a home server or VPS subscription.
Well, that’s everything. If you have any better ways of getting feeds, if this guide is out of date/not working, or you need any help feel free to contact me on
Mastodon @natebowie@mastodon.social (preferred)
Twitter @NathanBowie6
Additionally, since I cannot keep updating this here on Hive, if you’re reading this long after it was posted I’ll also have a copy on my website that might be updated if things are broken.
