# RSS: a public service announcement

> RSS is great, and you should know about it. If you do, move along. If you don't, read on.

I wanted to explain what RSS was to those of you who don't already know. Because it's really great and you should be using it.

## Like the postal service, for websites

Without RSS, you have a bunch of websites that you like visiting. (_Why, thank you_.) They put out regular content and you don't want to miss anything. So you remember them all and you go there regularly, or you leave tabs open and refresh them, or some other barbaric nonsense.

Here the onus is on you to _fetch_ that content. You have to reach out to each individual place and grab what's new. You're going to miss things, or just forget things, and it's a lot of work.

### Your mail gets delivered

This isn't how your postal mail works. Imagine if you had to go to each of your contacts and say, _excuse me, do you have any new mail for me_?

Eventually you'd forget to ask Aunty Doreen for her mail _because it's always about Gerald and isn't he perfect_ and then she'd get upset and cut you out of the will.

### RSS is like your postman

The mail service serves as an aggregator of your mail. They collect it all, bring it to one central place – your mailbox – and you can go there at your leisure and read about Gerald's latest test scores _damn the little weasel he never fails_.

## Get some (free) software

We're going to use [NetNewsWire](https://netnewswire.com) because it's been around since the dawn of time, is free, and open source. ([NewsBlur](https://newsblur.com) is a website that does the same job. And there are many others – just [search](https://kagi.com/search?q=rss+reader&r=au&sh=oIxq3J2UDf4gO8fyn3Wl2A).)

Download it and go to **File → New Feed…** Copy/paste the URL of this blog post in there. Click **Add**. Done.

You'll see all of my old posts load. (You can select them all and 'mark as read'.) And when I publish new stuff, it'll just arrive. You don't need to do anything.

### Add some more sites

The vast majority of blog-like sites have an 'RSS feed'. That's what NetNewsWire needs. But you don't need to care about that. I can't remember the last time that I had to do anything other than add _any_ URL from the site. The feed should be discovered automatically.

### That's it?

Basically. Stop going _to_ sites. Let them come to you.

And ask on the [forum](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com) or [Discord](https://discord.com/channels/822215537589354566/1267672996068196504) if you need help.