How to Find an RSS Feed on a Website

Stay updated on the latest content

Most RSS readers recommend RSS feeds or let you search for them. But, sometimes you need to manually find one if the site you want to subscribe to doesn't show up as a choice in your favorite RSS reader app.

Here are several ways to help you find a website's RSS feed so that you can stay updated on all the newest content.

Look for the RSS Icon

The easiest way to find an RSS feed is to look for the RSS icon somewhere on the website. If a site has one, they won't be shy in showing it because they want you to subscribe.

You can usually find the RSS feed icon at the top or bottom of the site. It's often near a search bar, email newsletter signup form, or social media icons.

As you can see in the above screenshot, not all RSS links are orange like the standard RSS icon. They also don't necessarily need to contain this symbol. You might find the RSS feed from a link that reads, "Subscribe for updates," or a totally different symbol or message.

Depending on the website, there might be several different RSS feeds you can subscribe to. To find those links, you might need to do a search or locate the specific area of the site you want to be updated on. If there's an RSS feed for that particular type of content, the icon will appear along with the results.

Edit the URL

Lots of websites provide their RSS feed on a page called feed or rss. To try this, go to the website's home page (erase everything but the domain name) and type /feed or /rss.

Here's an example:

https://www.lifehack.org/feed
RSS feed URL in Internet Explorer

Depending on the website you're on and the browser you're using, what you see next might be a normal-looking web page with a Subscribe button or an XML-formatted page with a bunch of text and symbols.

View the Page Source

Another way you might find the RSS feed is to look "behind" the page. You can do this by viewing its source, which is the raw data your web browser translates into a viewable page.

Most web browsers let you quickly open the page source with the Ctrl+U or Command+U keyboard shortcut. Once you see the source code, search through it (with Ctrl+F or Command+F) for RSS. You can often find the direct link to the feed somewhere around that line.

RSS feed link from page source in Firefox

Use an RSS Feed Finder

There are special tools you can install in your web browser to locate a site's RSS feed(s). These add-ons are super easy to install and usually work really well.

If you use Chrome, you might try Get RSS Feed URL or RSS Subscription Extension (by Google). Firefox users have similar options, such as Awesome RSS and Feedbro.

Get RSS Feed URL extension for Chrome

Still Can't Find the Site's RSS Feed?

Some websites simply don't use RSS feeds. But, that doesn't mean you're out of luck. There are tools you can use to generate RSS feeds from websites that don't use them, but they don't always work very well.

Some examples of RSS generators that let you make a feed from nearly any website include FetchRSS, Feed Creator, PolitePol, Feed43, and Feedity.

What to Do After Finding the RSS Feed

After you find the RSS feed you want to subscribe to, you have to use a specific program that can read the data from the feed and update you when the feed changes.

First, copy the RSS feed URL by right-clicking it and choosing the copy option. With the address copied, you can paste it into whatever tool you want to use to deliver the news to you. There are online RSS readers, feed readers for Windows, and Mac-supported RSS readers available, plus RSS aggregator tools to join multiple feeds together.

Learn how to open an OPML file if the RSS feed you found is in that format.

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