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Firefox RSS Reader: Get News Headlines on Your New Tab Without a Subscription

#firefox #productivity #javascript #webextensions

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has been around since 1999. Most major websites still publish RSS feeds. And yet, most people have abandoned RSS readers for social media feeds and news apps.

Here is why RSS is worth coming back to, and how to use it in Firefox.

The problem with social media for news

Social feeds are designed to maximize engagement:

  • Algorithmic ranking prioritizes outrage, novelty, and content that drives reactions
  • Ads are mixed into the feed
  • Reading behavior is tracked to refine the algorithm
  • The goal is time-on-platform, not information quality

RSS does none of this. An RSS feed is a plain list of headlines from a source you chose. No algorithm, no ads, no tracking.

What RSS does

When a news site, blog, or podcast publishes something new, their RSS feed file updates. An RSS reader subscribes to this file and shows new content when it appears.

You choose which sources to follow. You see everything they publish, in chronological order.

News Widget Dashboard for Firefox

News Widget Dashboard puts an RSS reader on the Firefox new tab.

How to start:

  1. Install the extension
  2. Open a new tab
  3. Add an RSS feed URL

Headlines from your chosen sources appear immediately.

Finding RSS feeds

Most news sites have RSS feeds, though they are often hidden:

  • Try [site.com]/feed or [site.com]/rss
  • Right-click → View Page Source → search for "rss" or "atom"
  • Google: [site name] rss feed

Specific useful feeds:

  • BBC: http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml
  • Reuters: https://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/topNews
  • Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
  • arXiv (ML): http://export.arxiv.org/rss/cs.LG

Why browser-native RSS

Using an RSS reader in the browser removes an app from your workflow. Headlines are on the new tab — you see them every time you open Firefox, without opening a separate app.

For anyone who already has Firefox open most of the day, the new tab RSS reader is the lowest-friction way to stay current.

Install News Widget Dashboard for Firefox

News Widget Dashboard is one of 11 Firefox extensions I built — see the full series.

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