Frequently asked questions

How do I find a feed?

Some sites list an alternate link in their header. In Firefox, you can install Awesome RSS extension and it will show an RSS icon in the address bar for such pages. Clicking the icon will open the feed.

selfoss also supports feed auto-detection. If you enter a URL of a web site into selfoss’s “Add source” form, and selfoss will look for an alternate link, as well as for some common file paths.

Some sites offer a feed but do not provide any machine findable link. They might still include a link with an RSS icon somewhere in the footer or sidebar.

If a site does not provide a feed and you still want to subscribe to its changes, you might need to try a proxy like RSS-Bridge.

Why does selfoss keep logging me out?

selfoss uses PHP’s built-in session support to remember that the user is logged in. The session identifier is stored in a cookie, which is set to expire in one month. If you are logged out sooner, make sure your web browser is not set to clear cookies on exit.

Additionally, PHP has session.gc_maxlifetime option in php.ini that defaults to 24 minutes, try setting it to a larger value.

This setting should be change globally (e.g. in php.ini), otherwise the session might still end up being cleaned by PHP when another app runs on the same server and has shorter lifetime.

How do I subscribe to a password protected feed?

If the site uses HTTP basic authentication, just enter the username and password before the url:

https://user:password@example.com/rss

How do I import my subscriptions from YouTube?

Previously, it was possible to get OPML file with your subscriptions directly on YouTube. Unfortunately, Google removed this option so you will need to get the data from Takeout and use one of the tools listed in this Reddit thread:

Manually
Python script
JavaScript code to paste into developer tools (Takeout not needed.)
Online tool

Once you have the OPML file, you can import it using the import link at the top of Sources settings page.