Help

FeedFilters takes a source RSS feed plus your filter rules and gives you back a new feed URL you can subscribe to in any reader. This page covers the common things people ask.

The basics

Is FeedFilters a feed reader?: No — and this trips people up, so it's worth being clear. A feed reader is the app or website where you actually read posts. FeedFilters sits one step earlier: it takes the feed your reader would pull from, applies your rules, and hands back a cleaned-up version at a new URL. You still need a reader to read in.
What is RSS, exactly?: RSS is a standard format that lets sites publish their latest posts as a machine-readable list. A feed reader subscribes to a bunch of those lists and shows you everything new in one inbox-style view — no algorithm, no separate logins for each site, no email newsletter clutter. Most news sites, blogs, podcasts, and even YouTube channels publish an RSS feed, often without advertising it on the page.
How do I actually read my feeds?: You'll need a separate feed reader. Popular options include NetNewsWire (free, Apple platforms), Reeder (paid, Apple platforms), Feedly and Inoreader (web, cross-platform), and FreshRSS or Miniflux if you want to self-host. Pick one, then paste your filtered URLs into it — or use Export OPML to import the whole list at once.
How do I find a site's RSS feed?: Most sites publish one even if they don't link to it on the page. The easiest path: paste the site's homepage URL into Add Feed and we'll scan the page for any feeds it advertises. If that turns up nothing, try common paths like /feed, /rss, or /atom.xml appended to the homepage. For YouTube channels, Reddit subreddits, and Substacks, every page has a feed at a predictable URL — a quick search for "RSS feed for {site}" will usually find it.
Why not just filter inside my reader?: Some readers offer filtering, some don't, and the ones that do tend to bury it. Filtering at the feed level means your rules follow the feed regardless of which reader (or how many readers, or which device) you use them in. If you ever switch readers, your filters come with you.
Does FeedFilters change the items themselves?: No. We pass items through exactly as the source publishes them — title, link, author, summary, and full content if the source includes it. The only thing we do is decide which items to drop.
Does it work for podcasts and YouTube?: Yes — if your reader (or podcast app) accepts an RSS URL, it'll work. Podcast enclosures and YouTube video links pass through untouched, so playback in your app works the same as a direct subscription.

Adding feeds

Two ways:

One at a time. Hit Add Feed, paste the source URL, set your filter, save. If the URL is a regular web page rather than a feed, FeedFilters will look it over and offer the feeds it finds — pick one and continue.
OPML import. OPML is the standard file format readers use to export and import a whole collection of feeds at once. Export an OPML file from your current reader and upload it on the import page. You'll get a review screen showing which feeds imported cleanly, which look like duplicates, and which failed — so nothing imports without your say-so.

The recommended way to use FeedFilters is to import your collection via OPML, set up filters, then export the filtered list as OPML and load that into your reader. You keep your existing list of subscriptions intact; the URLs your reader fetches just point through FeedFilters now.

Each feed gets an icon pulled from the source itself; if the source doesn't supply one, you'll see a generic placeholder.

Organizing with folders

Feeds live at the root by default. To organize them, create a folder with Add Folder, then either move feeds into it (selection mode → Move) or pick the folder when you add a new feed. Folders nest as deep as you like.

Deleting a folder deletes everything inside it, so you'll get a confirmation prompt first.

How filters work

Each filtered feed has a mode — include or exclude — and a list of tags.

Include keeps only items that match at least one tag. Use it to follow a single topic from a busy feed.
Exclude drops items that match any tag. Use it to mute topics you're tired of.

An item "matches" a tag when the tag appears as a whole word, case-insensitively, in the item's title, summary, or content. Multi-word phrases work as one tag (climate change), and dotted or punctuated tokens like Node.js or C++ match as written. The tag cars matches "cars" but not "Oscars".

Except tags

Except tags are an override of the main filter pass. They behave differently depending on the mode:

In include mode, except tags drop items that would otherwise have been kept. Use them to whittle down a topic: include cars, except Tesla → everything about cars except Tesla coverage.
In exclude mode, except tags rescue items that would otherwise have been dropped. Use them to keep a few specific things from a muted topic: exclude AI, except Anthropic → mute AI noise but keep Anthropic posts.

Basically, except tags are always overrides — subtract from "kept" in include mode, add back to "kept" in exclude mode.

Global filters

Global filters apply on top of every feed's own filter, in addition to whatever per-feed rule you set. You'll find them on the feeds list.

Always include tags keep matching items regardless of per-feed rules.
Always exclude tags drop matching items regardless of per-feed rules.
If an item matches both, exclude wins.

Use them for blanket rules — "I never want to see anything about cryptocurrency from any feed" — without editing each feed individually.

Subscribing in your reader

Each feed you create has its own URL. Hit the copy icon next to the feed in your list, or open the feed page to see it. Paste that URL into your reader the same way you'd add any RSS feed. The output updates whenever the source does.

To migrate to another reader, use Export OPML — the export contains your filtered URLs (not the original sources), so the new reader subscribes through FeedFilters.

If instead you want to leave FeedFilters and go back to the unfiltered originals, your account page has a Download source OPML button. That export uses each feed's original upstream URL with your folder structure preserved — load it into any reader and you're back where you started.

Editing and removing feeds

Click the pencil icon next to any feed to change its name, folder, filter mode, or tags. Click the trash icon to delete it. Deleting a feed only stops your filtered URL from working; the source feed itself is untouched.

For bulk operations, hit the checkbox-toggle button on the toolbar to enter selection mode. Tick the feeds and folders you want, then use Move or Delete from the toolbar.

If a source has been throwing errors for a while, FeedFilters pauses its fetches and shows a "Paused" banner on the feed. Hit Resume to try again once the source is back.

Account & sign-in

You can sign in with a password, with passkeys, or with both. Manage all of this from your account page.

Changing your email.: Enter the new address and we'll send a verification link there. Until you click it, the old address still works. We also send a notification to the old address with an undo link, in case the change wasn't you.
Changing your password.: Standard "current password + new password" flow. Other logged-in sessions sign out automatically.
Adding a passkey.: From the account page, expand Add a passkey and follow your browser's prompt. If you currently have a password, you'll be offered the option to remove it at the same time — we recommend doing so, since a passkey-only account can't be compromised by a leaked password later, but keeping both is fine if you'd rather have a fallback.
Exporting your source feeds.: Account → Download source OPML gives you an OPML of every feed at its original upstream URL with your folder structure preserved — the escape hatch for going back to the unfiltered originals in another reader.
Deleting your account.: Account → Delete this account. Re-authenticate (password or passkey), confirm, and your user record, feeds, sessions, and passkeys are removed.

Troubleshooting

A feed isn't updating.: Open the feed in your list to see when it was last fetched and whether the source has been throwing errors. FeedFilters caches results for a short window, so newly published items can take a few minutes to appear in your reader.
Items I expect to match aren't matching.: Tag matching is whole-word, so AI won't match "training" but will match "an AI model". If a tag has punctuation (C++, Node.js), match as written. If you're filtering a feed that puts everything in the title with no body, the match still works — we check title, summary, and content.
I'm not getting verification or password-reset emails.: Check your spam folder first. If it's not there, write to the address below and we'll sort it out.
I lost access to my passkeys.: Most passkey users don't have a password to fall back on, so use the forgot-password flow. We'll email you a reset link; from there you can either set a password or register a new passkey, and your old passkeys are removed.
OPML import skipped a feed.: The review screen explains why — usually the URL is a duplicate of one you already have, or the source didn't return a parseable feed. You can re-add anything that was skipped from the regular Add Feed flow.
I want to stop using FeedFilters and go back to the originals.: From the account page, hit Download source OPML. That gives you an OPML of your original upstream feed URLs (folder structure preserved), which you can load into any reader to re-subscribe directly. After that, Delete this account if you don't plan to come back.

Still stuck?

Feel free to contact us at feedfilters@flatsix.net and we'll try to help you out.