Overflowing inboxes is a hot topic among my clients and I regularly help folks form a habit of unsubscribing from email newsletters they aren’t reading. But what about the content you do want to read sometimes and just don’t want competing for your attention?

To remove subscription stimulation, there’s Really Simple Syndication (RSS). RSS is a way that websites can feed you with headlines and body text that’s easy to read—and ad-free.

Subscription Manager

Generally the place to start is with a feeds service where you manage all the content creators to whose feeds you subscribe. There are quite a number of services. I currently use Feedly.

Most of these services make it easy to search for the website or domain whose content you want to read. Alternatively, some websites publicize their RSS feed and you can copy the URL directly into your feed service.

Choose a Reader

Feed services can also serve as a reader, but you might just as well appreciate a different user experience. There are dozens of RSS apps to choose from.

Before RSS was widespread, I used MacReporter, a Dock-based app that showed Mac news headlines and linked to articles. Then I discovered RSS and for several years I used NetNewsWire. For the last decade or so, Reeder has been my choice RSS app on iPad, iPhone, and Mac.

Reeder previously required a third-party feed service, which is why I’ve been using Feedly, but it now provides its own feed syncing capability with support from iCloud.

I love Reeder’s elegant interface, ability to show full article text in the app, in-app browser for seeing the original content, and range of shortcuts, gestures, and actions for viewing and sharing content elsewhere. The developer is also responsive to feedback and fixing bugs.

Strengthen Your News

You can also organize your feeds in folders and structure your reading based on the categories you specify. Based on my core interests, some of my categories include Bicycling, Design, Eco, Food, and Mac.

I segment some of these further. Then, Reeder enables me to click on a folder and choose to see entries grouped by date or by feed.

Reeder also supports Bionic Reading, a German creation that seeks to offer a “higher dimension of reading.” And did I mention RSS reading is free of advertisements?

So, don’t bother making a list of websites and reminding yourself to periodically look at them to see what’s new. Instead, you can use RSS to automatically provide an up-to-date but not overwhelming list of headlines from your favorite publications that might attract your eye.

Need help getting situated with RSS? Hit me up for more insight.