How to Use RSS to Follow Users on Bluesky

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In this tutorial, we'll learn how to use RSS to follow users on Bluesky. More specifically, we'll learn how to figure out the URL of the RSS feed that has a user's posts on Bluesky.

First, get the URL of a user's profile page. Let's use Bluesky's official Bluesky account as an example:

To get the URL for its RSS feed, all we need to do is add /rss after the URL.

https://bsky.app/profile/bsky.app/rss

Now we can give this URL to an RSS client to subscribe to their posts without even having a Bluesky account.

Caveats

Bluesky's RSS feeds only contain the text of the post, it doesn't contain attached media (images, videos, etc.). The text of the post does contain any links and hashtags included in the post.

This means that if you're following someone for updates or announcements, RSS will work just fine for you, but if you're following an art account that posts photography or illustration, that won't be included in the RSS feed. This makes perfect sense because images (and particularly video) is a lot heavier to transfer than just text.

However, RSS can still be useful nevertheless if you're following dozens of accounts, because you can organize your follows into folders in RSS clients that support the concept. So you could, for example, place all your favorite users in one folder so if any of them posts something you won't miss it, their posts won't get lost amid the posts of everyone else. See [Comparison of RSS Readers] for details.

Written by Noel Santos.

About the Author

I'm a self-taught Brazilian programmer graduated in IT from a FATEC. In a world of increasingly complex and essential computers, I decided to use my technical expertise in hardware, desktop applications, and web technologies to create an informative resource to make PC's easier to understand.

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