The FeedBro Chrome extension is the browser companion to FeedBro, an RSS and Atom feed reader. If you follow more than a handful of websites, you have probably ended up checking each one by hand, or relying on a noisy social feed to show you what's new. The extension lets you follow sites, catch new articles and save pages for later without leaving the tab you're in.
What is the FeedBro Chrome extension?
FeedBro is an RSS reader. Websites publish feeds (the same RSS or Atom feeds that have carried blog subscriptions, news updates and podcasts for years), and FeedBro lets you subscribe to them and read new posts from all of them in one place instead of visiting each site.
The Chrome extension connects to the same account you use on the FeedBro website. It adds the things that only make sense inside the browser: noticing when the page you're on publishes a feed, saving the article you're reading, and a popup for catching up on unread items without opening a new tab.
It suits people who already read a rotation of blogs, news sites or documentation pages and would rather have new posts come to them than remember to go and check.
How FeedBro works
- Find a feed. Most blogs and news sites publish an RSS or Atom feed, even when there's no visible "subscribe" button. FeedBro looks for it automatically.
- Follow it. Once the feed is in your account, FeedBro starts checking it for new articles.
- Organize if you want to. On the FeedBro website you can group feeds into collections so related sources stay together.
- Read what's new. New articles appear in your FeedBro reading list, in the extension's popup or on the full dashboard on the website, marked unread until you get to them.
- Come back anytime. Your feeds and reading progress belong to your FeedBro account, not just the browser, so the extension and the website show the same thing.
How to use FeedBro in Chrome
Setup takes a few minutes:
- Install the extension. Get FeedBro from the Chrome Web Store and pin it to your toolbar.
- Connect your account. Click the FeedBro icon and choose Connect your FeedBro account. If you're already signed in to FeedBro in that browser, it takes one click, and you never type a password into the extension. If you don't have an account yet, there's a free plan.
- Follow a feed from any page. Open the extension on a site that publishes a feed. If FeedBro detects one, you'll see a card with a Follow Feed option.
- Save a page for later. Not every page worth keeping comes from a feed you follow. Save to FeedBro, in the popup or the page's right-click menu, puts it in your Saved list.
- Read and manage feeds from the popup. The popup has All, Unread, Saved and Feeds tabs, so you can catch up on new articles or unfollow a feed without leaving the page.
Why use an RSS reader in Chrome?
RSS is older than most of what we now call social media, and it's still one of the most direct ways to follow a website:
- You follow the site directly, with no algorithm deciding what you get to see.
- Everything lands in one list instead of a dozen open tabs or bookmarks you meant to revisit.
- You see what's new, because unread articles are tracked per feed.
- It scales with how much you follow. Whether it's three blogs or thirty, checking one reading list is faster than checking each site.
With the reader in the browser rather than in a separate app, following a new site takes a couple of clicks from wherever you are.
FeedBro features
What the Chrome extension has today:
- Automatic feed detection on the page you're viewing.
- One-click follow from the popup for feeds FeedBro finds.
- Save to FeedBro for any page, whether or not it comes from a feed you follow, in the popup or the right-click menu.
- A reading popup with All, Unread and Saved views, plus a Feeds tab for managing what you follow.
- An unread badge on the toolbar icon, so you can tell at a glance whether there's something new.
- A right-click menu for saving a page, following a site, or jumping to FeedBro to set up an alert or search, without opening the popup first.
- Tied to your account, not your device. Feeds you follow and articles you save belong to your FeedBro account, so the extension and the website match.
Organizing feeds into collections, alert rules and the rest of the account dashboard stay on the FeedBro website. The extension covers the everyday part: finding feeds, following them and reading.
Who is FeedBro for?
Anyone who follows more writing than a single homepage or social feed can reasonably show them:
- Readers who follow a regular rotation of blogs.
- People who want news from specific sources rather than a general feed.
- Researchers keeping an eye on several sites at once.
- Developers following release notes, changelogs or engineering blogs.
- Professionals tracking the industry publications in their field.
- Anyone who'd rather organize the sites they read than remember to check each one.
FeedBro Chrome extension FAQ
What is the FeedBro Chrome extension?
It's the browser extension for FeedBro, an RSS/Atom feed reader. It connects to your FeedBro account and adds feed detection, quick follow, page saving and a reading popup to Chrome.
Is FeedBro an RSS reader?
Yes. FeedBro reads RSS and Atom feeds, the formats most blogs, news sites and many other publishers already support.
Can I use FeedBro to read RSS feeds?
Yes. Once you follow a feed, new articles appear in your FeedBro reading list, which you can read in the extension's popup or on the FeedBro dashboard on the website.
How do I add an RSS feed to FeedBro?
Open the extension on a page that publishes a feed. If one is detected, you can follow it from the popup. You can also add a feed by its URL on the FeedBro website.
Does FeedBro work with websites that provide RSS feeds?
Yes. FeedBro looks for the standard RSS/Atom feed links a site publishes and can follow any feed it finds that way.
How do I use FeedBro in Chrome?
Install it from the Chrome Web Store, connect it to your FeedBro account, then follow feeds and read new articles from the popup as you browse.
New: a whole page for reading
Since this was written, the extension has grown a reader: a whole page in its own tab, with your collections and feeds on the left, the article list in the middle and the article itself on the right. Open it with the Open Reader button in the popup, from the toolbar icon's right-click menu, or with Alt+Shift+R. It also fetches full articles in Chrome itself rather than on our server. That's how it reads sites that turn servers away, and publications you subscribe to and are signed in to. Here is what the reader does.
Use it in other browsers, or add any site
FeedBro for Chrome also works in Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers. And you can follow almost any site straight from the toolbar: here is how to follow any site's RSS feed from the Chrome toolbar.
Get started
The FeedBro homepage covers what the account and dashboard offer beyond the extension, and the FeedBro blog has more guides like this one, with its own RSS feed if you'd rather follow it that way. To start, install the extension and connect your account. Following your first feed takes a couple of minutes.
