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. There are two ways to add a feed:

  • News — a free, ready-made feed powered by Google News.
  • RSS — a Pro collection of custom or searched feeds.

Adding a News feed (free)

The News item creates a single Google News feed.

  1. Enter Edit Mode and tap +.
  2. Choose News.
  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. To change it later, open the item in Edit Mode and adjust the same options.

Adding RSS feeds (Pro)

The RSS item creates a collection that can hold one or more feeds.

  1. In Edit Mode, tap + and choose RSS.
  2. Give the collection a name.
  3. Add feeds in one of three ways:
  4. Search the curated list of popular publishers and pick one.
  5. Paste a custom feed URL for any site that publishes RSS.
  6. Import OPML to bring across everything from another reader at once.

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

Open the collection and use Manage Feeds (or tap-and-hold) to add, rename, or remove individual feeds. Tap the title — or the pencil in the top corner — to rename the collection itself.

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 RSS, then Import OPML and select the file.

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 a new collection (or sharing a file) makes one collection per folder, plus one for any feeds that weren't in a folder. A switch on the import screen lets you put everything in a single collection 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).