How-To Geek
Change Default Feed Reader in Firefox
If you have set the default feed reader for Firefox, you no longer have an option to preview a feed before adding it to your feed reader of choice. This can be a little frustrating when trying to quickly look at a feed without actually adding it.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with the way RSS works in Firefox, notice the orange RSS icon in the address bar
When you click on that icon, you’ll be taken to a page previewing the feed. You might want to notice that this preview page does not show the full feed, just previews of each post.
You’ll notice the checkbox for “Always use Google Reader to subscribe to feeds”. Firefox also supports bloglines and yahoo as well.
You can select this checkbox to set the default feed reader for the first time. If you want to change it later, you will need to open Tools \ Options, and click on the Feeds tab.
You can set the default application to handle feeds here. If you want to reset back to the default, you can change the radio button to “Show me a preview and ask me which Feed Reader to use”.
Note: If you are a serious RSS user, you should use Google Reader.
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Comments (11)
Programmer by day, geek by night, The Geek, also known as Lowell Heddings, spends all his free time bringing you fresh geekery on a daily basis. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 02/25/07
You can also do this with netvibes.
http://blog.netvibes.com/?2006/10/25/83-firefox-2-and-netvibes
I did it with a new RSS reader Particls.
I know this article is a little old, but it was the first one when I googled the topic. I noticed in Firefox 3, the Feeds tab doesn’t exist. It has changed to Applications. From there you can scroll down to Web Feed to change your default Feed Reader.
Hope that helps.
@Jonathan Thanks a million for this tip! I was having a hard time figuring out how to change the default reader! Now it seems so obvious :)
Thanks! I wanted to change the feed from the default I had selected and was lost on where to do it. Thanks for this posting!
Thanks so much. I thought I had lost my mind. I knew how to change feeds two days ago. Got a firefox update today and couldn’t figure it out. Whew. Thanks!
Actually, you can also edit browser.feeds.handlers.application in about:config to point to the reader you want to use (the address will be passed to it as the first argument). This is the most convenient way of setting a reader in a dot-directory, for example a custom binary directory called ~/.bin. It beats me why Mozilla have chosen to use the stupid “browse file”-dialog to locate binaries.
To restore or change the way the rss feeds behaves in firefox 3 you must go to TOOLS and then select Options and then under applications type Live Bookmark and then under action , select it and choose the way you want to receive it or display..
None of these work anymore. New ideas?
Never mind. Figured it out. Thank you, Jonathan.
I use firefox 5 and I don’t have any rss tab in options!
why?