RSS feeds for Reddit, GitHub, YouTube, etc.

RSS feeds for various places, e.g., Reddit, GitHub, YouTube, Discourse, WordPress, etc. do exist, but they are hard to discover. There usually isn’t an explicit feed link.

One way to use them is in Thunderbird‘s RSS reader. Though it is very unintuitive to use.

Reddit

The RSS feed URL for a subreddit can be constructed by adding “.rss” at the end of the subreddit URL.

Example: For the Keychron subreddit, r/Keychron, it is:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Keychron/.rss

Yes, there is a slash before “.rss”. I don’t know if the slash could be left out, but it positively works with it included.

GitHub

Commits in a particular Git branch

The RSS feed URL for the branch can be constructed by adding “.atom” at the end of the commits page’s URL.

For example, for the commits in Git branch “wireless_playground“ in Keychron’s fork of QMK:

https://github.com/Keychron/qmk_firmware/commits/wireless_playground.atom

Git branches in a particular Git repository

For example, the Git branches in Keychron’s fork of QMK: That appears not to be possible for discovering new Git branches that are added. It requires checking this page for changes. Or something more elaborate, e.g., using Git from the command line in an automated fashion to produce a (public) RSS feed. For simple web hosting, the necessary information could be pushed to it by using SSH-based file transfer.

For existing Git branches, the RSS feeds for them can be consolidated into a single place, by using a single “inbox” in Thunderbird.

YouTube

The channel ID needs to somehow be fished out of the HTML content for one of a channel’s pages (I haven’t found a way to do it using the normal user interface). For example, view source and search for “channel_id=”.

For example, the channel ID for Thomas’ mechanical keyboards channel is UCD0y51PJfvkZNe3y3FR5riw and the RSS feed is constructed as:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCD0y51PJfvkZNe3y3FR5riw

Discourse

Discourse sites also have RSS feeds. From a WikiMedia page with subsection RSS feeds:

“Discourse has RSS feeds all over. If you find a page that looks interesting to track, just add .rss to the URL and chances are that a feed will be available.”

Example: For the mechanical keyboards Discourse site, KeebTalk, a global RSS feed is:

https://www.keebtalk.com/latest.rss

And for subtopic learning-and-discussion/firmware-programming-and-hardware-compatability [sic]:

https://www.keebtalk.com/c/learning-and-discussion/firmware-programming-and-hardware-compatability/.rss

And for the individual thread “VIAL Configuration Software“:

https://www.keebtalk.com/t/vial-configuration-software/15170.rss

Note: In this case, the RSS URL is without “/” (forward slash) before “.rss”

WordPress

This is covered in another blog post, but add “feed” to the end of the base URL to get the RSS feed URL.

Example: For the Linux Mint blog, for example, to get notified when a new is released, incl. of LMDE.

https://blog.linuxmint.com/feed

That is how it is supposed to work, but it doesn’t actually work in that particular example (also reported here): “The Feed [sic] URL could not be found”

But this feed URL positively works:

https://stackoverflow.blog/feed

This is supposed to work instead:

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?feed=rss2

But it gives the same result. The same for “https://blog.linuxmint.com/?feed=atom“.

Thunderbird RSS reader tips

As Thunderbird’s RSS reader is very unintuitive to use, here are some instructions (Reddit subreddit “olkb” (mechanical keyboards. “olkb” is completely unnecessary obfuscation of “ortholinear mechanical keyboard“—they could have named it r/OrtholinearMechanicalKeyboards, similar to the keyboard porn-infested r/MechanicalKeyboards) is used as an example):

1. Example RSS feed: https://www.reddit.com/r/olkb/.rss
2. In the left panel, click on “Podcasts, blogs, and news feeds”
3. In the right pane, click on “Manage feed subscriptions” (second item)
4. Paste the feed URL into the “Feed URL” field
5. Press the “Add” button. Note: Pressing Enter will not work; it closes the window… In this example, it creates the entry “rolkb”, with the sub item “r/olkb” (note: They are not the exact same. The sub item, not the main item, contains the feed URL, should it be necessary to retrieve later).
6. Press button “Close” (lower right). (Enter will also work.)
7. Rename the new item (“rolkb”). It was added to the left panel (inside/under “Podcasts, blogs, and news feeds”. “Podcasts, blogs, and news feeds” may have to be expanded to see “rolkb”). The renaming is to set the order to some desired order (otherwise, the RSS feed items will appear in an essentially arbitrary order, depending on the content of the RSS feeds). For example, use prefixes: Click on “rolkb”, right-click (the menu key will also work, so it isn’t necessary to use the mouse (but the left panel must have focus)), and select “Rename” (or keypress “R”. But unintuitively, Enter does not work; it seems to activate something completely unrelated (a bug in Thunderbird?). Or easier, F2 without the right-click). Change the name from “rolkb” to “x6 Mechanical keyboards (subreddit ‘olkb’)” and press “Rename” (or “R”). The “x6” will make appear near the end of the list of RSS feeds.
8. Optional: Organise RSS feed entries into sub folders/sub items. This will effectively create separate “inboxes” for different sets of RSS feeds (helping organise them). This is important as the number of active RSS feeds grows. For example, it is possible to create a folder named “Blogs” and put RSS feeds for blogs into it. Another example is putting YouTube channel RSS feeds into a folder named “zSingle inbox for YouTube channel feeds” (the “z” is for the ordering, placing it near the end), so they don’t clutter up the other RSS feeds. How-to: Select “Podcasts, blogs, and news feeds” in the left panel, right-click (the menu key will also work (see above)), and select “New Folder…”. Type in the name of the folder, e.g., “zSingle inbox for YouTube channel feeds”, in field “Name”. Click on “Create Folder” (“R” or Enter). Existing items can then, for example, be dragged into the new folder.

Note: The renaming, etc. will not work from the “Manage feed subscriptions” view, which is part of what makes it unintuitive: You can have to go to an entirely different view, rather than the view where it would be reasonably expected to be possible.

Note: Definitely a bug in Thunderbird: Rename does not work if the new name only differs by case… The workaround is to first do an intermediate rename, for example, adding a (trailing) space (and deleting it again in the second rename).