Feedly RSS Reader Tips and Tricks
Our favorite RSS aggregator tool Google Reader is long dead. Its demise gave moment of glory to other readers like Feedly which is most popular amongst alternatives. We thought that most of the users are new to Feedly and thus we are writing this Feedly tips and tricks article to make most out of it.
Feedly is extremely easy to use, just like Google Reader nonetheless it offers more advanced and customization features. If you were already Google Reader guru, then it would not be hard to master Feedly. This productivity hack article will teach you to use Feedly according to your needs.
Feedly Tips and Tricks:
#1 Have different views on different feeds
Not every website is same and hence not their feeds. Feedly allows you to apply different view settings to categories or individual feeds.
Now you can have Cards style for design sites, Titles for news and research sites and Magazine style for tech sites.
#2 Use Feedly with IFTTT to export to Google Drive, Evernote, Pocket etc
Feedly can do amazing things when integrated to web services like Pocket. This is possible with IFTTT recipes where you can control the actions from one web service to another.
For example – Saving articles in Feedly automatically saves them in Pocket too.
See all the Feedly recipes here.
#3 Use hidden Keyboard shortcuts
Hitting ? key on the keyboard will show you current set of shortcuts. Interestingly they are not the complete set and as some are hidden from the older versions like g + [1-9] will take you to that numbered category feeds.
Above is the list of all the keyboard shortcuts (including hidden).
#4 Re-order categories to change feeds view in Today’s section
You can organize your categories by simple drag-and-drop in browser window. The ordering will change the way feeds are displayed in Digest or Today’s view with first category shown first and so on. Also, this ordering will impact the display in mobile navigation bar.
#5 Subscribe to anything that updates
Not only you can subscribe to websites but also to topics of your choice. Enter your preferred topic in +Add Content box and Feedly will tell you the top sites or related feeds in that area.
#6 Use Feedly on mobile and pads with synced content
Feedly is available for iOS, Android and Kindle. Activities that you perform on these devices like reading or saving articles will remain in sync to other devices in real time. We may soon have Windows mobile version.
#7 Promote your favorite feeds to Must Read section
You definitely do not want to miss any updates of your beloved sites. Feedly allows you to add few websites to Must Read section. To add a feed in Must Read section, go to Organize and click on feeds edit button. Now your favorite sites will feature in right sidebar in desktop app or separate Must Read tab in mobile.
#8 Save articles just like Staring it in Google Reader
Did you love staring and saving articles feature in Google Reader? Same feature is available in Feedly but called as Save for later. Now you can have your own personal bookmark list of favorite articles.
#9 Quickly mark all unread feeds as read
You can easily and quickly mark all as read a website feed or all folder feeds by clicking on unread count number next to title.
You can also use keyboard shortcut Shift + M for same effect.
#10. Use Feedly Mini toolbar for quick common actions
After enabling it from the preferences, you can quickly add websites RSS or perform social sharing actions with this toolbar. If you are an ardent Feedly user, then mini toolbar will offer great comfort.
Pro Usage Tips
#1 If you are subscribed to lot of feeds, then Titles view will work best for you. With this view setting, you can scan to hundreds of articles in no time.
#2 Use white theme for that reminiscential Google Reader feeling.
#3 You can drag and drop individual feeds into different categories from Organize section. You can also arrange categories order from here. But a quick way is directly from main page sidebar.
#4 A super quick style to both scan and empty your feed list is Auto-mark as read on scroll . Activate it from Preferences.
#5 Double clicking or selecting text will bring Feedly’s context menu to tweet, search or to translate.
Feedly is one polished replacement of Google Reader. However it still suffers from some annoyances like –
#. There is no way to delete tags.
#. Search is disabled. This was one of the best features of Google Reader where you can search inside all feeds.
#. Today section does not have any format or view setting.
#. It does not offer notifications.
It is always hard to find worthy replacements. Google Reader refugees do not have much mature options to choose. Feedly, on the other hand is a focused app with knack for better RSS experience. You are going to like it.
