Summary: Vivaldi makes it very easy to subscribe to new RSS feeds, but it doesn't provide much of the functionality you would want to manage a large amount of feeds. It supports folders, but can't reorder feeds, and although you can set categories for articles, the function to filter by category is hidden in a completely unexpected place. That said, if you already use Vivaldi as a browser and you only want to follow a few feeds, Vivaldi's RSS capabilities could be more than enough for you.
Legend
✅ Positive remark.
⚠️ Caveat or issue.
❌ Missing functionality or critical issue.
Default Feeds
Vivaldi doesn't come with any RSS feeds installed by default.
Adding a Feed
✅ Vivaldi makes it extremely easy to subscribe to RSS feeds.
When you visit a webpage that has an RSS feed associated to it, Vivaldi displays an RSS logo icon in the address bar. If you click on it, a dropdown menu appears showing you all feeds associated with that webpage, and letting you either subscribe or preview the feed. Clicking on the preview option opens the feed's URL in a separate tab.
✅ You can also add feed URLs directly by clicking on the RSS logo icon on the sidebar and clicking the button with a plus (+) icon.
Web (<link>) Support
✅ Vivaldi doesn't support adding webpage URLs if you click on the plus (+) icon, it expects an RSS feed URL in that case, however, you can just visit the webpage in the web browser and click the RSS logo icon on the address bar to add it.
The only reason I have this criterium in other reviews of RSS clients is because you would need to copy the URL from the browser to paste it in the RSS client. In Vivaldi you don't need to copy anything, so it's even better than usual.
✅ Vivaldi supports webpages that declare multiple RSS feeds, letting you choose which to add as a dropdown menu.
✅ Because Vivaldi shows you that a webpage supports RSS as an indicator in the address bar, you can discover that some webpages support RSS that you would never be able to discover otherwise. See [How to Use RSS to Subscribe to Search Results on Bing] for one of my findings.
Custom Automatic Update Intervals
✅ Vivaldi supports specifying the update frequency per RSS feed.
⚠️ It's not possible to specify arbitrary values. The refresh intervals available are:
- Every 5 Minutes.
- Every 15 Minutes.
- Every 30 Minutes.
- Every Hour.
- Every 2 Hours.
- Every 6 Hours.
- Every 12 Hours.
- Daily.
- Weekly.
- Never.
It's not perfect, but it does cover what most people will ever need.
✅ It's possible to make an RSS feed never update automatically.
OPML Support
✅ Vivaldi supports importing and exporting OPML outlines, which can be used to transfer RSS feeds from one RSS client to another. It's not obvious how to do it (it's in the File menu on the browser, not in the feeds panel), but it's possible.
- https://help.vivaldi.com/mail/mail-feeds/import-feeds-from-other-feed-readers/ (accessed 2024-10-23)
Viewing Articles
✅ Vivaldi displays all articles from all feeds at once when "Feeds" is selected.
✅ Vivaldi is a web browser, so it has no trouble displaying the content inside the RSS feed. It doesn't apply any styling by default.
✅ Vivaldi adds an "Open Article" link at the bottom of each article that opens the associated webpage in a new tab. You can right click on it to copy the link's URL like any typical link in the web browser.
❌ Vivaldi can't display the associated webpage where the article is displayed. That's rather odd since many other RSS clients feature built-in web browsers just to be able to do this, and Vivaldi is a web browser that can't do it. Although it's very easy to just open the webpage in a new tab, I don't see why it couldn't just try to load the webpage in a tiny vertical rectangle. Many websites have responsive layouts these days, so I think they would fit just fine in a narrow vertical pane.
❌ Vivaldi doesn't support thumbnails for articles that contain images.
Layouts
✅ Vivaldi provides three different view modes. They look like this:
- The first has a pane at the left listing the articles, and one at the right showing the content.
- The second is the same as the first, but it displays the articles as a table with columns instead of as cards.
- The third also uses tables, but places the list pane on top and the content pane at the bottom.
You can switch view modes by clicking on a button on the top-right corner of the feeds screen whose tooltip reads "Toggle View."
✅ It's possible to close the side pane that displays the feeds for more space.
Managing Feeds
❌ It's not possible to move or reorder feeds by drag and drop. You can't reorder them through the settings window, either.
✅ Feeds can be renamed via context menu or by pressing F2 after selecting them.
⚠️ F2 triggers a completely different browser action when a feed isn't selected.
✅ You can manually fetch all feeds.
❌ You can't manually fetch a single feed.
Folders
✅ You can place feeds into folders.
✅ Folders can be nested.
Note: this functionality was added in version 7.0, just after I first reviewed Vivaldi.
Feeds Panel
✅ Feeds have context menus with related actions.
⚠️ Double-clicking a feed doesn't do anything.
❌ Doesn't support multiple selection.
Managing Articles
✅ You can change a feed's title.
✅ Articles can be marked as read or unread.
❌ A lot of the interface for RSS articles uses terminology for e-mails, likely due to Vivaldi also being an e-mail client and the RSS functionality being built on top of its e-mail client functionality. You can "reply" to RSS articles which opens a dialog to write an e-mail and automatically fills the destination e-mail address with the name of the author of the article (which isn't a valid e-mail address and will get rejected by your e-mail provider if you try to send it).
Articles List
✅ Vivaldi uses colors to indicate the status of an article. New messages appear as blue. After you click on them they become black, but are still unread. Unread messages have a blue square at their corner, while read messages don't.
⚠️ Using only colors to convey information is not accessible.
⚠️ Vivaldi keeps all messages unread until you explicitly mark them as read by pressing the keyboard shortcut K. Even if you click the "Open Article" button that doesn't affect the status of the message.
In table view:
✅ Columns can be clicked on to sort the articles.
✅ Columns have context menus. You can hide and show columns using this context menu.
✅ There is a column for whether an article was read or not, displaying an icon that is blue rectangle when it's unread, and nothing when it's been read.
In card view:
✅ Although there are no columns, you can still sort in card view via a dropdown list button on the top of the pane.
Categories and Tags
⚠️ Vivaldi doesn't exactly have support for categories and tags in RSS feeds.
In Vivaldi, there's a concept called "Flags" and "Labels." Setting a flag displays a colored flag on an article. Setting a label sets a text label such as "Work" or "Important" on the article. You can only set one flag per article. You can set multiple labels per article.
Although this appears to be Vivaldi's realization of the concept, they don't actually function as categories and tags because you simply can't filter articles by them. They appear on the articles, and you can sort articles by flag or label, which makes flagged or labelled articles appear on the top (or at the bottom) of the articles list, but you can't see only the articles that you marked as "Important" for example.
At least not in the RSS feeds panel.
You can filter your flagged or labelled articles if you go to the e-mail panel, even if you don't use e-mail. They'll appear there when you click on their flag or label.
✅ You can easily add new labels by clicking on an "Add New Label..." menu item.
❌ Vivaldi doesn't support setting articles' categories automatically from the categories declared in the RSS feed.
Automation
❌ It's not possible to automatically filter RSS articles on Vivaldi using a keyword for example to separate them. Vivaldi might have such functionality for e-mail, but I don't see it for RSS.
Search
✅ Vivaldi provides basic search capabilities. Articles can be searched for with a search box above the articles pane. Clicking on a settings button inside the search box at its right side shows advanced options. And clicking on a "Show more" link at the bottom-right corner of the advanced options shows ultra-advanced options.
| Search what? | How? | Supported |
|---|---|---|
| Articles | By title | ✅ Yes. |
| Articles | By content | ✅ Yes. |
| Articles | By author | ✅ Yes. |
| Articles | By date | ✅ Yes. |
| Articles | By category | ❌ No. |
| Articles | By status | ❌ No. |
| Articles | By feed | ⚠️ Yes. |
| Feeds | By title | ❌ No. |
| Feeds | By comment | ❌ No. |
| Snippet | By text | ⚠️ Yes. |
⚠️ Although you can't specify which feeds to search in, the search box only searches the selected feed. To search all feels, click on the "Feeds" root item in the feeds pane.
⚠️ To search the text inside the article's content, press Ctrl+F after clicking inside the article pane.
Other Observations
Vivaldi could be some users' first experience with RSS thanks to its integration by default in the web browser, so it's a bit disappointing how confusing the experience feels. Toolbars and context menus in the RSS panel are filled with functions meant for e-mail, and some functionality is simply not accessible in the RSS panel, only via the e-mail panel. Vivaldi isn't the only multi-responsibility RSS client that makes this sort of confusion. Thunderbird also has some RSS features that use e-mail terminology.
Leave a Reply