How to subscribe to newsletters and RSS feeds

Using Omnivore web to subscribe to newsletters and RSS feeds

We each have newsletters we enjoy reading, yet at times, they become lost in the flurry of emails in our inbox. Omnivore ensures you will not miss any edition by offering newsletter subscription features.

An RSS feed is the simplest way to get updates from a news site, blog, or topic. It’s easy to follow, it’s widely adopted and updates are happening in near real-time.

Let’s discover Omnivore's web capabilities for managing your subscriptions.

Create your custom email

To subscribe to a newsletter, you will require a unique email address provided by Omnivore. This email can be utilized for any subscription form you choose.

Login to the Omnivore website with your credentials. Click on your profile picture, located in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Navigate to the Emails section and click on it.

A new screen will appear, where you should look for the "Create a new email address" button. Click on this button, and a new email address will be generated for you.

It's worth mentioning that you can create a maximum of 20 email addresses, which can be quite handy if you want to segment your subscriptions and manage them efficiently.

Subscribe to a newsletter

To subscribe to a newsletter, you will need to copy and paste the email that was generated by Omnivore.

All future newsletters will be delivered to your library.

If Omnivore receives a confirmation email, it will be sent to the email associated with your Omnivore account.

We do not have a hard limit on how many newsletters you can subscribe to. Check with the team, via Discord, for more details.

Subscribe to an RSS feed in Omnivore

With Omnivore, you can subscribe to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom feeds. The feature is in beta, and you can join our Discord if you have questions or feedback.

To add a feed, click on your profile image, in the top right corner, next click on Feeds, and use the Add Feed button to save the feed. The total number of feeds you can subscribe to is 150 feeds with the current free plan.

When a feed is added for the first time, Omnivore will fetch the last 24 hours‘ worth of items or at least one item if there are no items posted in the last 24 hours.

How to find an RSS feed from a website or blog?

There are a few options for finding an RSS feed and saving it into Omnivore.

Option 1: The website has set an RSS feed icon

The easiest way is to find the RSS symbol on the selected website, click on it, and then save the URL.

In most cases, the URL will be composed of: https://example-site/feed.rss or https://example-site/index.xml.

The default place of the RSS symbol is on the website header or footer, close to the other social channel icons.

Option 2: The website hasn’t set an RSS feed icon

There are a few methods to find an RSS feed on websites that don’t have a visible icon.

• If a site is hosted on WordPress, simply add feed to the end of the URL; for example, https://example-site.com/feed.

• If a site is hosted on Tumblr, add /rss to the end of the URL. Like this:  htpps://example.tumblr.com/rss

• If a site is hosted on Blogger, add feeds/posts/default to the end of the URL. Like this:  https://example.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

• If a publication is hosted on Medium, add /feed/ before the publication's name. So  medium.com/example-site becomes medium.com/feed/example-site

• If a publication is hosted on SubStack, add /feed to the end of the URL. Like this: https://example-site.substack.com/feed

• To find the RSS feed of a YouTube channel, first, you need to go to that channel's home page. Once you're there, you need to right-click and View Page source (or just use CMD+U / CTRL+U). Use CMD+F / CTRL+F to look for RSS in the page source. It should look like https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC890

• Via the View Page source. Right-click on the page, choose Page Source, use CMD+F / CTRL+F, then search for RSS or Atom.

Option 3: Use a RSS feed discovery tool

Another option is to use a feed discovery tool. They can auto-detect the feeds of the page you are reading, and allow you to preview, and subscribe.

For Firefox users the RSS Preview add-on is the easiest solution. On Chrome, the RSS Finder add-on will show the RSS feed if the page you are on has one.

If you don’t want to install an add-on this simple tool will help you. Thirdplace Discovery lets you add a URL and they will provide you with the RSS feed for it.

Extras

• On Mastodon, you can follow hashtags through RSS. First, you need to search for a hashtag on a Mastodon server's website, and then add the .rss at the end of the URL. Then copy and paste it into Omnivore.

• The Bluestream tool will generate an RSS feed for Bluesky posts.

• Check this article by Joan Westenberg about the benefits of RSS feeds.

• If you want to self-host your RSS aggregator, FreshRSS offers a sharing option directly to Omnivore. Mark Pitblado, our community member, wrote a guide on how to self-host FreshRSS.

Find your subscriptions in Omnivore

All newsletters can be found in the left menu under the Subscription section. You can use the Newsletters page to view only newsletters.

In the same menu, the feeds will be under the Feeds page. The All page will show all subscriptions.

Newsletters are tagged with the newsletter tag and all feeds are tagged with the RSS tag.

You can also search them, via the Search option, by adding the label:RSS or the label:newsletter.

The October 2023 update brings label flair– the newsletter and RSS labels are replaced by icons. The changes are available on the web, iOS and Android. The search filters remain the same.

View your subscriptions

The web app has two options to view your content: the List view and the Gallery view. Use which one you are more comfortable with.

Edit your subscriptions

There are two places where edits are possible for the newsletter and RSS subscriptions. The first one is under the Edit Subscriptions button, where you will find the RSS and newsletter in their dedicated feeds. You can only unsubscribe to a newsletter, but you can edit the name of an RSS feed and unsubscribe.

The second place where you can edit is via the More Actions menu, which will appear on hover in your library. You can edit the metadata, mark it as read, or unsubscribe. Remember that the changes made here are not global – they apply only to the selected item.

Wrapping up

No matter if you prefer newsletter or RSS feeds, the Omnivore's focus is to offer you a distraction-free reading experience.

The newsletter subscription feature will help you declutter your inbox, and with the RSS feed, you can follow your favorite blogs or the latest news, without the need to browse different websites.