Leaving Reader to Die: How to Import your Google Reader Feeds to RSSOwl

By: Bob Kingsley

Google Reader has been helping its users aggregate and read RSS feeds since 2005. Its ease of use and universal availability has made it a widely used tool for this function. Given its popularity and positioning as a scion of web giant Google, many Reader users may be surprised to find their RSS reader of choice is living on borrowed time. Google has plans in place to shut down its Reader service on July 1^st, 2013.

While this will pose a significant annoyance to long time users, Google has provided sufficient time to swap to another feed aggregator. If you’re in this position, we want to help. There are many services and applications that can step in to take over for Reader; we recommend the open-sourced application RSSOwl. This application is free of charge, supports all major operating systems and is simple to use. You’ll just have to export your Reader feeds to an XML file and import that into RSSOwl.

To get started, log into Google Reader, click the settings button in the top-right corner of the window and select “Reader Settings.”

Select the “Import/Export tab and click “Download your data through Takeout.”

From Takeout, click “Create Archive” and then click “Download.” Save the file to an easy to remember location on your hard drive. The downloaded file will be a ZIP archive which you can extract using Windows File Explorer by right-clicking it and selecting “Extract All.”

You’ll now need to downloadRSSOwl and install it on your computer. When the installation is complete, launch the application to get started.

Click “File” and select “Import” from the toolbar to open the RSSOwl import wizard. Select “Import Feeds from a File or Website” and click “Browse.”

Navigate to the folder where you extracted the Google Reader download. Select “XML” from the drop-down list next to the “File Name” field and select the file “subscriptions.xml.” Click “Open” and then click “Next."

Select the feeds you want to download and then click “Finish.” This will import your feeds using the same folder structure you had on Google Reader.

RSSOwl will need a minute or so to download all of your feeds. This could take more or less time depending on the volume of feeds you’re trying to import. When it’s all done, your list of RSS feeds will show up on the left column of the RSSOwl window. Select a feed to view its articles in the top-right section of the window. Select an article to view it in the bottom-right window. Click the article’s title in the reading window to view it in your Web browser.

We warn you that there appears to be a faster way to accomplish this task by syncing RSSOwl with your Google Reader account. Unfortunately, while this method is indeed faster, it doesn’t allow you to disconnect from your Google account once it’s done. If you use the sync method, when Google shuts the gates on Reader, you won’t be able to update your feeds. Follow the method described above and you’ll have no troubles at all.