Most sites worth following publish an RSS feed, and the FeedBro extension for Firefox lets you follow one while you're on the site. Its new posts then show up in one list, so you don't have to remember to go back, or keep a bookmark you'll never open again.
What is the FeedBro Firefox extension?
FeedBro is an RSS reader. Almost every blog, news site and documentation page publishes a feed: a plain list of what they've posted, written for software rather than for people. A reader keeps an eye on those feeds so you don't have to.
The Firefox add-on is the browser end of your FeedBro account. It does the things that only make sense while you're browsing: spotting that the page in front of you has a feed, following it without a detour, keeping an article you want to come back to, and telling you what's unread without opening another tab.
On Mozilla's add-on site it's listed as FeedBro - Smarter RSS Reader. It's the same extension as the Chrome one, rebuilt where Firefox does things its own way.
How it works
There isn't much to it.
- It finds the feed. Plenty of sites publish one without ever mentioning it. The extension looks for it, so you don't have to hunt for the little orange icon that stopped being fashionable in 2011.
- You follow it. One click, and the feed is in your account.
- FeedBro keeps checking. That happens on our side, whether your browser is open or not.
- New articles wait for you, marked unread, in the popup or on the website.
- You pick up where you left off. Your feeds belong to your account rather than one browser profile, so Firefox at home and the website at work show the same thing.
Setting it up
It takes about two minutes:
- Install it from Firefox Add-ons, then pin it to the toolbar so you can see the unread badge.
- Connect your account. Open the extension and choose Connect your FeedBro account. If you're already signed in to FeedBro in that browser, it's one click. If not, the site gives you a short code to paste in. You never type your password into the extension, and we built it that way on purpose.
- Follow something. Go to a site you read often and open the extension. If there's a feed, Follow Feed is right there.
- Save the odd page. Not everything worth keeping comes from a feed. Save to FeedBro, in the popup or the right-click menu, drops it into your Saved list.
- Catch up from the popup. It has All, Unread, Saved and Feeds tabs. Read what's new, unfollow what you've gone off, and close it again.
Why bother with RSS?
Firefox used to have a feed reader built in. It was removed years ago, and for a while the whole idea seemed to go with it. The sites kept publishing their feeds, though. What disappeared was an easy way to read them.
A reader gives you back control over what you see. You follow the sites you chose, and nobody's model ranks them by what it thinks will hold your attention. Everything new lands in one list instead of twenty tabs you keep open out of guilt. Because unread is tracked per feed, "is there anything new?" gets a straight answer instead of "scroll and find out".
It also scales in a way that checking homepages doesn't: thirty sources take about as long to skim as three.
What's in the extension
- Feed detection on the page you're looking at, including sites that never advertise one.
- Follow in one click, straight from the popup.
- Save any page, from a feed or not, in the popup or by right-clicking.
- A reading popup with All, Unread and Saved, plus a Feeds tab for tidying up what you follow.
- An unread badge on the icon, so you can tell at a glance whether it's worth opening.
- A right-click menu for saving a page, following a site, setting up an alert, or searching FeedBro for the text you've highlighted.
- Article repair. Some sites put two sentences in their feed and keep the rest for themselves. Fix this article on FeedBro sends the page you're on back to your account so the full text is stored with it.
- Optional analytics. Firefox makes add-ons declare any data collection separately. Ours is optional and off until you agree. If you say no, nothing about the extension gets worse; we checked, and a test keeps it that way.
- Tied to your account, not your device. Follow something in Firefox and it's there in Chrome and on the website too.
Collections, alert rules and the rest of the dashboard stay on the FeedBro website on purpose. The extension does the everyday part: notice, follow, save, read.
Who uses it
Mostly people who read more than one homepage can hold: developers keeping up with release notes and changelogs, researchers watching a handful of sites that rarely announce anything loudly, and people who want the news from three specific publications rather than the internet's general mood. Also anyone who has ever thought "I should check that site again" about a site they last checked in March.
Questions people ask
What is the FeedBro Firefox extension?
The Firefox add-on for FeedBro, an RSS and Atom reader. It connects to your account and adds feed detection, one-click follow, page saving and a reading popup to the browser.
Which Firefox do I need?
Firefox 142 or newer, on desktop. There's no Firefox for Android build yet, and we'd rather say so than let you find out the hard way.
Is it the same as the Chrome extension?
Same extension, different plumbing. The popup, the right-click menu and the way you connect your account all behave the same, and both talk to the same FeedBro account.
Do I need my password to connect it?
No. It's one click if you're signed in to FeedBro in that browser, or a short code if you aren't. The extension never asks for a password.
How do I add a feed?
Open the extension on a site that has one and follow it. You can also paste a feed address on the FeedBro website, or import an OPML file if you're moving from another reader.
What does it collect?
The pages you deliberately send it (when you save a page or repair an article), which go to your own account. Usage analytics are optional and off unless you turn them on.
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 Firefox 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.
Other browsers, and any site
FeedBro also has a Chrome extension that works in Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers. In Firefox, the toolbar button works the same way: here is how to follow any site's RSS feed from the browser toolbar (the guide shows Chrome; the steps are the same).
Getting started
Install it from Firefox Add-ons, connect your account, and follow the next site you visit that publishes a feed. That's the whole setup.
If you'd rather look around first, the FeedBro homepage covers what the account adds beyond the browser, and the blog has more guides like this one, plus its own feed.
