RSS Subscription Extension

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on June 27, 2012

Google's RSS Subscription Extension for Chrome automatically scans pages for RSS feeds and lets you subscribe to them with a single click on the RSS icon in the Omnibar. You must be signed in to Google to use it. It works with Chrome in Incognito mode, too, and supports multiple feeds per page. RSS Subscription Extension is freeware.

As with other Chrome extensions, you might miss RSS Subscription Extension's installation if you blink or look away, and (unlike some other Web browsers) you don't need to restart Chrome to activate it. We opened the Extensions Manager page in Chrome's Tools menu, and then clicked RSS Subscription Extension's Options. Here we could add, remove, and edit our reader options as well as set a default feed and reset the list. When you first use RSS Subscription Extension, the program sets Google Reader as the default reader, with iGoogle, Bloglines, and My Yahoo as options. We could check a box to force RSS Subscription Extension to use our default reader choice when subscribing to new feeds, too.

RSS Subscription Extension is easy to use, too. We browsed to a blog we'd been meaning to follow and opened it in a new tab in Chrome. The Omnibar (address bar) displayed the RSS icon next to the Bookmarks icon. Clicking this opened a tab that let us subscribe to the feed, designate our preferred reader, and display a preview; left-clicking it opened a menu offering direct access to the extension's options as well as the Extension Manager and other features.

We clicked through to a confirmation page that let us change global settings like interface language (more than 40 are available), folder, and tags, as well as the ability to monitor Posts or Comments. We really like being able to preview feeds and subscribe to them with a few simple clicks. RSS Subscription Extension might not have the flashiest name, but it works well and saves time. We recommend it to all interested Chrome users.