RSS & News Feeds

Follow news and websites with Google News and custom RSS feeds, right inside your launcher.

Following feeds in Tree Launcher

Tree Launcher can pull articles from news sites and blogs into a page, so your reading lives alongside your apps and notes. Feeds live in collections, and everything starts from one Feeds item, which offers three ways to add them:

  • Google News — a free, ready-made feed.
  • Custom Feed / Search — a Pro collection of custom or searched feeds.
  • Import OPML — a Pro option that brings across everything from another reader at once.

Adding a News feed (free)

  1. Enter Edit Mode and tap +.
  2. Choose Feeds (under Pages), then Google News on the Add a feed sheet.
  3. On the Add News Feed sheet, pick a Country, Language, and optional Category (Technology, Business, Sports, and more).
  4. Tap the send arrow to add it.

The feed is sourced from Google News, so it follows the top stories for the region, language, and category you choose. It's created as a collection called News holding a single feed. To change it later, open the collection's Manage Feeds (see below) and tap the feed to reopen the same options.

Adding RSS feeds (Pro)

An RSS collection can hold one or more feeds.

  1. In Edit Mode, tap +, choose Feeds, then Custom Feed / Search.
  2. On Add RSS Collection, give the collection a name. Tap the send arrow to create it empty, or tap Manage Feeds to create it and start adding feeds straight away.
  3. In Manage Feeds, add a feed. You'll see the same Add a feed choices; pick Custom Feed / Search to open Add RSS Feed, where you can either:
  4. Search the curated list of popular publishers and pick one, or
  5. enter a Feed Name and paste the feed URL for any site that publishes RSS (https addresses only).

When you search, each result shows the publisher (for example, The Economist for a feed titled "Science & technology") so you always know the source.

Managing the feeds in a collection

Manage Feeds is where you add, rename, or remove individual feeds. From the parent page in Edit Mode, focus the collection and tap Properties to open Edit RSS Collection, then tap Manage Feeds. Or open the collection and tap-and-hold to jump straight there.

To rename the collection, change its Collection Name on the Edit RSS Collection sheet, or tap the title — or the pencil at the top — of the Manage Feeds sheet.

Importing from another reader (Pro)

If you already follow feeds in Feedly, Inoreader, NetNewsWire or almost any other reader, you can export them as an OPML file and bring the whole list across in one go.

Two ways to import

Pick the file inside Tree Launcher. In Edit Mode, tap +, choose Feeds, then Import OPML and select the file. To add to a collection you already have, use the same Import OPML option from its Manage Feeds sheet.

Share the file to Tree Launcher. Open the OPML file in your file manager, cloud drive or email, tap Share, and choose Tree Launcher. Same result, whichever is more convenient.

What happens to your folders

Most readers let you group feeds into folders, and those folders are kept.

  • Creating new collections (from a page, or by sharing a file) makes one collection per folder, named after the folder, plus one for any feeds that weren't in a folder. Turn off the Keep folders as separate collections switch on the import screen to put everything in a single collection named after the file instead.
  • Importing into a collection you already have flattens everything into it. A collection holds feeds, so there's nowhere for folders to go — the screen tells you before you confirm.

Before anything is saved

The import screen shows exactly what it found — every feed, grouped the way it will be saved — along with where it's going. Nothing is written until you tap Import.

Feeds already in the destination are skipped, so re-importing an updated export only adds what's new. You'll see a count afterwards, such as "42 added, 5 already present." The same feed can live in more than one collection, so only the collection you're importing into is checked for duplicates.

If the import doesn't work

  • "That file isn't an OPML feed list" — the file was read but isn't OPML. Exports are usually named .opml; a .json or .csv export won't work.
  • "No feeds found in that file" — it's a valid OPML file, but there are no feeds in it.
  • "Couldn't read that file" — the file couldn't be opened. Try downloading it again, or copy it to your device first if it's in cloud storage.
  • Tree Launcher isn't in the share sheet — some apps label OPML files in a way Android doesn't recognise. Use Import OPML inside the app and pick the file directly instead.

Reading articles

Tap a feed or collection to open the reader. Tap any article to open it in your browser. Feed contents are cached briefly, so reopening a feed is fast and avoids hammering the source.

Notes & limits

  • Some sites rate-limit or block automated feed requests. If a feed shows an error such as "Too many requests" or "No internet connection," it usually clears on its own after a short wait.
  • Not every site offers RSS. If a custom URL doesn't load, confirm the site publishes a feed (often at a /feed or /rss address).