Feb 19 2008
Jeremy Schoemaker

How To Speed Up Safari RSS Reading

By Jeremy Schoemaker 24 comments

I really like the Safari RSS reading capability built right into the web browser. Not to long ago though it was DOG SLOW. It would take minutes to show me new stories and I was starting to get frustrated with it.

Here is what my Safari browser looks like:

Safari

I really like it cause its non intrusive but like I said above… recently it got really slow. By slow I mean when I would click on the site that had new articles (had the number of unread articles next to it) and it would grind my computer for a bit… I always wondered what the hell was going on.

By default Safari is set to “display all”

This means it will display every article at once… I changed this to “last week”. On sites like Techcrunch they use a lot of images and there is sometimes 15 stories a day.

Then I headed to the Safari preference panel and changed the Remove articles time period from Never (I cant imaging how many stories were saved over the last year):

RSS

I changed it to 1 week so anything older then 1 week now gets removed.

These 2 simple changes drastically improved the speed of my Safari RSS reader.

  1. Ken Savage said on February 19th, 2008 at 11:26 pm

    PCs rule!

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  2. RacerX said on February 19th, 2008 at 11:28 pm

    Reason #428 to be jealous of the Mac guys…

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  3. Ronald Su said on February 19th, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    I don’t personally use a MAC but i am always being tempted by people to try owning one. I guess it is something either you’ll love it or you’ll hate it. :)

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  4. Erica DeWolf said on February 19th, 2008 at 11:59 pm

    I wasn’t aware that Safari had this feature. Very cool!

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  5. Matt Packer said on February 20th, 2008 at 1:10 am

    It’s the simplest things that often work the best.. Personally I’ve been using Google Reader on Firefox for handling my RSS feeds, however I’ve been starting to play a little more with Safari since the v3 beta came out..

    Thanks for the tip!

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  6. Bent said on February 20th, 2008 at 1:39 am

    I never ever experience with safari before..but i thought safari much more fun!

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  7. Sftco Insurance said on February 20th, 2008 at 7:04 am

    go great tips, we actually use google rss reader with windows.

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  8. Syed Balkhi said on February 20th, 2008 at 7:12 am

    when i buy my Mac Air then this will be something i would be doing ;)

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  9. Pat said on February 20th, 2008 at 7:55 am

    Why not just use feedreader for RSS feeds? Much easier and more efficient. You don’t even have to open your browser.

    feedreader.com

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  10. Simlock verwijderen said on February 20th, 2008 at 8:36 am

    Never known. Thanks for sharing, I will use it now!

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  11. big money said on February 20th, 2008 at 8:41 am

    I’m not sure what I have, it has a Shoemoney RSS tab, you click on it and it drops down all the Shoemoney articles from the last week and it updates after like 7. It’s an RSS button, but it’s not in the address bar.

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  12. Paul said on February 20th, 2008 at 10:22 am

    Does PC have a similar tool?

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  13. Brad said on February 20th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    I wasn’t aware anyone actually used Safari RSS :)

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  14. Terry Tay said on February 20th, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    Very nice tip and informative post. There is nothing worse than something slowing you down. As they saying goes - “Time Is Money”, and you don’t want to have to waste time waiting when you don’t have to. Over time a little tip like this can save you a load of time.

    It’s the same way about websites. You don’t want to have a site that takes too long to load, you’ll lose your visitors and possibly money.

    [Reply]

  15. Start Blogging said on February 20th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

    I recently got a mac that I use occasionally- it’s mainly the family computer. I have yet to try out Safari’s RSS program but this’ll sure make it easier.

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  16. Rob Hager said on February 20th, 2008 at 11:03 pm

    Thanks for the tip, I was getting frustrated with my computer taking forever to load.

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  17. Rob Hager said on February 20th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

    Thanks for the tip, I was getting frustrated with my computer slowing down too.

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  18. Rob Hager said on February 20th, 2008 at 11:24 pm

    Thanks for the tip, I was getting frustrated with my computer slowing down to a crawl.

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  19. Rob Hager said on February 20th, 2008 at 11:25 pm

    Thanks for the tip.

    [Reply]

  20. Simlock verwijderen said on February 23rd, 2008 at 5:42 pm

    I’ve made the changes and it is really speeded up. Thanks for this revealing tip!

    [Reply]

  21. Bonus Ringtones said on February 28th, 2008 at 2:46 am

    arg i hate to admit it but macs seem cooler and cooler everday….

    but PCs for life baby!

    [Reply]

  22. HardGeek said on March 11th, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    That’s reall a cool tutorial

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  23. Chip said on March 13th, 2008 at 3:47 am

    I use NetVibes to read RSS feeds. I installed Safari for a quick ride, and I liked it. It’s on my desktop now, waiting to be opened from time to time, just for testing. I’m a web designer.

    [Reply]

  24. Speedlinking - 21 Fevereiro 2008 | MUIOMUIO.NET said on February 21st, 2008 at 3:59 am

    [...] How to Speed Up Safari RSS Reading [...]

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