Did you mourn the demise of Google Reader? Well, Google is starting to roll out an RSS reader replacement in the latest stable release of the Chrome browser for Android.
The experimental feature is called Follow, and it taps the existing RSS format to serve up the latest articles from websites you’d like to read.
Google initially introduced the feature in May through a beta-like Chrome Canary release. But on Friday, the company began adding Follow to the browser’s stable release, according to the Director of Engineering Adrienne Porter Felt. (The day before, Google updated Chrome to version 94.0.4606.80.)
“Starting today, we’re experimenting on Chrome stable with a Following feature,” Porter Felt said in a tweet. “You can choose websites to follow, and their RSS updates will appear on Chrome’s new tab page.”
The feature is already enabled for some percentage of users, she added. Otherwise, you’ll have to dig into Chrome’s settings to activate it. Type “chrome://flag” in the address bar to access experimental features, and then search for Web Feed, and hit enable.
Once activated, you can begin following websites that have an RSS feed. To follow a site, visit the destination in Chrome, then tap on the three-dot button in the browser’s upper-right corner. A drop-down menu will then appear, which should show you a button called “+ Follow.”
Once you click Follow, you can begin viewing the latest articles from the site whenever you open a new tab. A subsection called “Following” should appear that’ll index all the articles. The same “+ Follow” button in the three-dot panel will also let you unfollow a website.
According to Porter Felt, an iOS version of Follow is in the works. “Let me know what you think — this project is near and dear to my heart and I really want to make it awesome,” she added in a follow-up tweet. A desktop version is also planned, but “a bit further out,” Porter Felt said.
