Sage-Like is a customizable RSS feed reader extension for Firefox

Ashwin
Jun 29, 2021
Firefox
|
10

How do you stay up-to-date with your favorite websites? I prefer RSS feeds, it's easier to manage and provides a convenient reading experience.

Sage-Like is a customizable RSS feed reader extension for Firefox

QuiteRSS has been my go-to choice for a long time. I use browser extensions occasionally, to see if they offer something better.

Sage-Like is an RSS feed reader extension for Firefox. What it lacks in offline reading capabilities, it makes up for in user-friendliness, organization and customization.

The add-on requires several permissions to function, but its description explains what each permission is required for. The extension's interface opens in the browser's sidebar. Click the plugin's button to collapse or view the GUI. Sage-Like comes with a few categories and feeds out of the box. You may delete these and start from scratch. Let's add a feed. The extension has its own right-click menu, use it and select New Feed. Paste the URL of the RSS feed in the location box, optionally give it a name or let the add-on detect it automatically. Click the save button to finish the process.

Sage-Like add an rss feed - sidebar

There's a simpler way to add feeds, visit a website that has an RSS feed, the add-on will detect it and place a button in the address bar, click it and then on the Add to Sage-Like button, and your new feed is ready.

Sage-Like add an rss feed - address bar button

If the add feed button doesn't appear in the address bar, open Sage-Like and hit the Discover feeds option, it's the one with the magnifying glass icon. This tool is sort of like a refresh button to detect the RSS feed subscription on the website.

Sage-Like tooltip

Back on the sidebar, hit the first key on the toolbar to refresh the feeds, this forces the extension to fetch the latest articles from the site. Select a feed and the posts in it will be listed on the bottom half of the side panel. Mouse over a heading in the pane, to preview a portion of the post. The posts from the selected feed are displayed on the right-pane of the tab, this is the feed preview. You may access a feed in a new tab instead, sans the sidebar.

Sage-Like feed preview - tab

Sage-Like renders the content as the RSS feed allows it, some sites allow the full article, while others only display a summary. Click the menu button in the top left corner of the fee preview, this brings the feed's jump list. The pop-up lists all articles in the feed, click on it to jump to the relevant post.

Sage-Like jump list

The preview pane uses the browser's right-click menu, so you can use it to open links and perform other actions. Left-clicking an article's title will load it in the same tab. You can change the behavior from the add-on's options, to make it open in a new tab.

Sage-Like RSS feed reader extension for Firefox

Let's get back to Sage-Like's sidebar, right-click anywhere, and select New Folder to create a new directory. This is helpful in organizing the sites that you've subscribed to. Drag and drop a feed over another to move it, this also works for moving feeds from one folder to another. Search through the feeds using the filter option at the top of the bar.

Sage-Like sidebar context menu

Sage-Like has a separate context menu for feeds and folders, using which you can mark an entire tree as read or unread, open a selected feed in a different tab or window. I particularly like the option that opens all unread articles in new tabs with a single-click.

You can customize the colors and font used by Sage-Like, from the add-on's options. Define how often the extension should refresh the feeds in the background, it does so every hour by default. The feeds are synchronized across devices using Firefox sync. The add-on's options page has an import and export tool, that is handy for backing up or loading an OPML file, in case you're moving from a different RSS Feed program.

Sage-Like is not an open source extension, its support page is hosted at the Mozilla forums. The extension does not require registration, or has ads or other annoyances. It is a fork of an old plugin called Sage.

Summary
software image
Author Rating
1star1star1star1stargray
2 based on 8 votes
Software Name
Sage-Like
Operating System
Firefox
Software Category
Internet
Price
Free
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Comments

  1. pd said on July 6, 2021 at 10:15 am
    Reply

    Been using this for a quite a while after being left in the lurch by the killing off of XUL APIs.

    Very, very capable replacement, for my use case at least, for Sage.

    Thanks to the author who even added an open-in-new-tab option, a must have for me, despite not really liking the idea.

  2. Anonymous said on June 30, 2021 at 4:20 am
    Reply

    I prefer QuiteRSS. I like it separated from my browser.

  3. owl said on June 30, 2021 at 2:17 am
    Reply

    In this article,
    > Sage-Like is not an open source extension, its support page is hosted at the Mozilla forums.

    This add-on is explicitly marked “License: GNU General Public License, version 3.0”, so it unquestionably conforms to the Free Software Foundation definition.
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sage-like/
    License: GNU General Public License, version 3.0
    https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

    Mozilla has provided discourse.mozilla.org to support add-on developers.
    discourse.mozilla.org: Mozilla provide free hosting and update services and can help you reach a large audience of users.
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/about
    Incidentally, since discourse.mozilla.org is an official hosting service of Mozilla, hosted add-ons are naturally reviewed by Mozilla and strictly monitored to make sure that no illegal.

    This is because the developer of the add-on “Sage-Like” (arielg) has designated discourse.mozilla.org, a public tool provided by Mozilla, as the bug tracker for user support (bug reports and requests).
    https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/support-sage-like-sidebar-based-rss-feed-reader/43383
    About add-ons developer’s arielg
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/13267716/

    1. anon said on June 30, 2021 at 3:47 pm
      Reply

      @owl

      You have talked a lot to say very few useful things.

  4. Gerold Manders said on June 29, 2021 at 7:11 pm
    Reply

    Also seemed to have issues when importing my QuiteRSS .opml file. It says the import was successful, but they never appeared in the list.

    It was also complaining about the feeds that it did detect from my bookmarks folder. Sage expects these to be formatted in .json or XML. But only 2 of the 174 entries there actually showed content. All the rest of the feeds were apparently badly formatted. However, these work fine in QuiteRSS.

    I lost interest after this.QuiteRSS has become very unstable for me. It works fine when you leave it alone.It receives the entries. when you access the entries, things suddenly become unresponsive and the software crashes. So I am interested in a RSS client that can handle the feeds and I was hoping that Sage would fit the bill.

    RSSOwl also fails miserably and QuiteRSS was its replacement a year or two ago. So again, I’m looking for a replacement that can handle large(r) amounts of feeds properly.

    Sage clearly isn’t it.

    1. exi3ting said on June 29, 2021 at 9:11 pm
      Reply

      @Gerold Manders

      I never used QuiteRSS but from your description is seems like the problem lays in the QuiteRSS’s stored feeds.

      IMHO the feeds stored in the application got corrupted in some way and that is reason why it crashes when you access the entries. And then the problem is carried away to the OPML file when exported which in turn causes Sage-Like to misbehave.

  5. user said on June 29, 2021 at 1:43 pm
    Reply

    It’s always great to have more open source alternatives, but their features are minimal compared to Feedbro.

    1. Anonymous said on June 29, 2021 at 5:30 pm
      Reply

      @user

      It is not open source. Check the article.

      1. user said on June 29, 2021 at 7:15 pm
        Reply

        @Anonymous

        Oh, it must be a mistake. In addons.mozilla it says it’s GNU v3.

  6. m3city said on June 29, 2021 at 1:20 pm
    Reply

    Nice one! I loved built in RSS in FF years ago. When it was dropped i dropped out from RSS. Thanks for presentation.

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