Thursday, December 26, 2019 [Tweets] [Favorites]

OSXDaily:

Want to add an RSS feed of a site to News app? Can’t find a site you like in the Apple approved list on News app? No problem, here’s how you can add them yourself from Safari in iOS and subscribe directly[…]

David A. Desrosiers:

Apple News on iOS and macOS no longer supports adding RSS or ATOM feeds from anywhere. Full-stop, period. It will immediately fetch, then reject those feeds and fail to display them, silently without any message or error. I can see in my own server's log that they make the request using the correct app on iOS and macOS, but then ignore the feed completely; a validated, clean feed. They ONLY support their own, hand-picked, curated feeds now. You can visit a feed in Safari, and it will prompt you to open the feed in Apple News, then silently ignore that request, after fetching the full feed content from the remote site.

Previously:

I wish I could remember who it was, but there were some folks who thought I was crazy to use Apple News and an RSS reader since Apple News could aggregate my RSS feeds too. I didn’t use it at the time because I thought it was a bad RSS reader and didn’t do what I wanted. Now I’m happy that I didn’t put my eggs (of feeds) in one basket; a basket that doesn’t have an export option.

See also: Hacker News.

Dave Verwer:

I was all ready to celebrate this change until I realised that the News app still captures the click when you visit an RSS feed, but then just refuses to do anything with it. Apple News isn’t (what I consider) an RSS reader, yet insisted on capturing every RSS feed I clicked on. Now it’s even worse. Just let it open in Safari like it used to so I can get the RSS URL myself and add it to my actual feed reader. I really hope this gets fixed.

Simon Willison:

What bothers me is that in Mobile Safari the Apple News app still hijacks clicks on Atom/RSS feeds - so if you click a feed icon you’ll be bounced to the News app, which will then display an error message. I don’t think there’s a workaround for this. Atom links just look broken.

Stefan Arentz:

This is fine, there are plenty great RSS readers for iOS. What is not fine is that Apple News is still claiming the rss:// scheme. What Apple needs to do is implement a proper system wide setting that lets you pick the applications that you want for http, rss, mail, etc.

Previously:

Stefan Arentz:

On iOS 13.3, tapping on an RSS link in Safari ..

Is there no way, on iOS, to specify the default RSS reader — that is, specify the app that handles the feed and feeds URL schemes? It looks like Apple News always handles it, no matter what, and then doesn’t actually do anything with it. Which cuts out every RSS reader.

Doug DeJulio:

This is even true if you remove the News app. I did, and when I hit a “feed:” URL, it asks for permission to reinstall it.

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