← Table of Contents

How to add a feed to NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire collects items for you from feeds published on web sites. To do this, NetNewsWire needs to know the address for the feed. For example: https://jvns.ca/atom.xml or https://cate.blog/feed/

It’s okay if you don’t know that.

NetNewsWire will look at any web page and try to find the feed’s address for you. All you need to give is the site’s URL, like jvns.ca or cate.blog. You don’t even need to enter http:// or https:// there.

To get started, click the New Feed button on the toolbar, or choose File → New Feed (⌘N) from the menu bar.

If you’ve got the address already – great! If NetNewsWire sees something like a URL on the Clipboard, it’ll enter it for you. Otherwise, just type the website’s address into the box.

Before you finish, you can choose an alternative name for the feed and where it will be stored (see below).

Click Add and NetNewsWire will fetch the URL you entered. If you entered an address that’s not a feed, NetNewsWire will search the page and add the feed it finds.

Choosing an alternative name for a feed

Feeds specify their own name, but you may want to change it to something shorter or easier to remember. “Cate” rather than “Accidentally in Code”, for example. You can rename it anytime later, too.

Choosing a feed’s folder

Before you add a feed, you can choose the account and folder where it will be saved.

This option is especially important if you’re using multiple accounts. You can choose whether to save the subscription to your On My Mac account or Feedbin account.

In either case, if you use folders, you can also choose which one keep the feed in.

What to do when NetNewsWire can’t find a feed

Sometimes NetNewsWire won’t be able to find a feed for a site. Either the site doesn’t offer a feed, or the feed isn’t advertised in a way that NetNewsWire can understand.

You may be able to find a feed manually by visiting the site. There, look for a link to an RSS, Atom or JSON feed. If one exists, you can add this direct URL to NetNewsWire using the process above. Control-click on the link and copy the URL to paste into NetNewsWire.

Other ways to add feeds

Adding feeds in the NetNewsWire app isn’t the only way. You can also add feeds from Safari using the NetNewsWire Safari Extension.

If you have an existing OPML subscription list from another app or service, you can import those feeds into NetNewsWire, too.