Brave News: Brave desktop users get custom RSS feeds support
Users of the Brave desktop web browser who use Brave News, a service that displays news from various online sources on the browser's new tab page, may now add custom RSS feeds as sources.
Introduced in 2021 on Brave for iOS, support for custom RSS feeds was a much requested feature. It allows users of the browser to add any RSS feed to the news listing that is displayed on the new tab page.
Up until now, users of the desktop version of Brave could only select news sources that Brave added to the News feature of the browser. Called Brave Today initially, the feature is now known as Brave News.
Brave users may scroll down on the browser's new tab page on desktop machines to get to the section. Users can customize the listing with a click on the customize button on the page.
Brave displays a list of categories, Business, Top News, Food and so on, and the preselected sources that users may enable or disable individually. One shortcoming up until now was that there was no option to add other sources to the listing.
Brave 1.36.109, released on March 2, 2022, adds support for the missing feature. To add a custom RSS feed to Brave, select customize while on the new tab page and enter/paste the address into the Feed URL field at the top. Select "add source" once you are done to add the feed to Brave. The feed is added to the news listing from that moment on.
One difference between custom feeds and the list of preselected feeds is that custom feeds lack images, even if they may have them. You only get the title, name of the publication and when it was posted.
Brave users who want to display news from custom sources only can do so, but they need to disable each preset source individually, as there is no option to unsubscribe from them all using a button or switch in the interface. An option to import an OPML file, a file that has data on multiple feeds, usually exported from feed readers, might also be appreciated by users. For now, each feed needs to be added individually.
Closing Words
Support for custom news is coming to Brave for Android as well in the future. Brave desktop users may use the new feature to customize the news listing on the browser's new tab page.
Most Internet users who rely on RSS feeds for their news reading may use dedicated RSS feed readers, as these provide better functionality. Mainstream users may like the integration of news feeds in their browsers though. Note that Brave displays ads as part of the news feed.
Now You: how do you keep yourself informed?
Thanks for the info. I didn’t even know they made custom backgrounds possible. So finally i will use their new tab. If only their Andriod app gets a pitch black theme now.
@Klaas Vaak
RT Is(!) MSM. The catch is to fool people into believing that the truth is on the other side of the net. Don’t be a tennis ball! They pull both sides’ strings, while faking to be fighting each other for the gullible public’s entertainment. RT is as factual as A. Jones is sober… Let that sink in. :)
@Neutrino: yes, RT is Russian MSM, as is Sputnik, but they both present a lot more reliable news than what the Western MSM presents, and their news analysis adds a lot more value than Western “analysis” does.
As for your Alex Jones analogy is concerned, I am not interested in the man, and the analogy is bunk.
It is incredible how hard it is for people in the West to accept that Russia can and does produce better news and analysis, the same way those same people cannot accept that militarily Russia leaves the U.S. far behind in terms of technology – just look at how the West freaked out when Russia showed off its hypersonci missles, developed with 1/10th of the annual defence spending compared to the U.S., which is trailing 10-15 years behind technologically.
Seems like it is hit and miss just like anything Brave these days, that’s why sometimes I want to switch browsers but anything else is not better either
Browsers have been focusing on nothing about web and everything else and when they add these interesting features it is still not perfect. Also, the whole manifestv3 will just cause trouble for many reasons, like I don’t know if I switch to Opera if it will work fine eventually or they will surrender to google ambitions or a fork like Yandex or whatever like that.
Brave is the only one clear about manifestv3, plus Brave adblocker on paper is close to ABP in functionality, so I wouldn’t even worry about adblocking issues.
But also Brave took like 4 years to finally implement custom backgrounds in the dashboard so I guess at least it is good I can see news with the background I choose! It is available in Nightly, same as Sidebar, which is turned on by default, but it seems weird, not like Opera’s one.
But literally all about this update was WALLET, and like someone said, it seems to be a Wallet browser now, because they have been useless for a while.
Today I added Ghacks to Brave news and it didn’t load these articles from today, who knows why.
But I also read the commits from Brave news-aggregator and they pulled a Microsoft/Google clown move removing RT from sources. So all “anticensorship” “we are better than Big tech who tells you what you can read and what you can’t” it is all BULLSHIT.
I manually added the RT feed, and from all the RT languages around, only French and Spanish subdomains worked. Tass, I tested it and English didn’t load and Russian did… so suspiciously somehow the same list, in the same domain, with just a different language, the one most people would understand somehow didn’t work.
Brave Search doesn’t even have goggles system today which was suppose to fight censorship… well, if they remove a source just like Microsoft and Google did, and how western has been censoring alternative news that give you a different side of the story… then how are they even different?
The wallet browser now is just like any other company, are they going to really support manifestv2 for long? or they will flipflop like they have done many times?
I remember there was literally an issue in Brave where they were discussing to do something and someone jumped questioning how they were going to implement that without any performance test to see if it would slow down the browser, because it probably would, but some Brave would do it without any test.
I mean, Brave became the company that some dude was wasting time changing some words because GOOGLE said that you have to change them, you know because “they could be offensive for some people” BS.
So people can’t just come and tell me they are not also… or some are not infiltrating Brave contributors and doing their ‘work’ of doing things the way Google and Big tech agenda want to.
I wish I had twitter account so I could ask Brendan Eich what he thinks about it, I know he probably has little to no voice in how Brave is being shaped and that’s worrisome because he talks all nice and great against Big tech but Brave seems to be no different in many ways and the focus on cryptoscam is bigger than the need of a real browser.
I mean people will complain and say “but RT” blabla. The source was removed 4 days ago, so it seems all the Brendan Eich talk about how censorship from Big tech is bad has collapsed in a second. So people can agree or disagree or dislike and like it, but Brendan Eich said something and Brave browser contributors (or whatever we can call them) do the opposite?
The Wallet browser seems like they are not different, but there are not many alternatives left around, either big tech or the ‘big’ name browsers that might support manifestv3 or clowns that talk about censorship and de-platforming or forks that are small and will not update often or ever.
I don’t even use Brave rewards so pretty much the whole wallet browser is becoming useless to me.
I read your issue on brave github before you posted on ghacks comment section. I tried all your RSS feed url (.xml links) and some of them failed on thunderbird too. Furthermore, I don’t think the problem is with brave, but it is probably from RT (cannot say for sure).
Out of 6-7 links you listed, only 3 worked, while all others failed. You can contact RT support to see what exactly is the problem with their RSS feeds.
Also, your issue seems to be deleted on brave github. I think it was #21456, either done by you or by brave team.
@bramsonlenton
Even if you don’t use the rewards, by using Brave, you are supporting the crypto shilling.
You can read about Gabe Newell stance on crypto few days ago.
I would have RT removed from Internet if I had the chance!
If you knew who is behind it, and what a shilling, slimy piece of s*** it is. you’d do it too.
Good Job they’ve got rid of it… by default at least!
@Neutrino: even if what you say about RT is true, which it isn’t, it still gives a lot more factual info than any of the Western MSM whoring outlets do. But hey, don’t let that deter you from slamming RT and parroting the MSM party line.
yay more means for eich to push cryptoscammy shite at me
@iluvbrave
What does RSS functionality have to do with Brave Rewards? I am telling you in all honesty, the stupidity of some people in the gHacks comment section is insufferable at times.
What does Brave Rewards have to do with pushing cryptoscammy shite. I am telling you in all honesty, the stupidity of some people in the gHacks comment section is insufferable at times
@iluvbrave
Clean up your troll cave, bro… It reeks of bullshit.
good news, something I was waiting for
you mean we’re at the point where browsers adding back a feature they almost universally killed off years ago because “rss is for old people lol” is actual news and something worthy of praising? chrome was a mistake