There are essentially two types of feed readers: desktop applications and web (or browser-based) applications. Alternatively right-clicking (or control-click if you're on a Mac) on the RSS icon or text link, selecting Copy Shortcut (Internet Explorer browser) or Copy Link Location (Mozilla Firefox browser) and then pasting the resulting link directly into a feed reader is another way to subscribe. Although some applications will have an automated process to subscribe to a news feed, the basic way to subscribe is by simply clicking on the RSS icon and/or text link. By adding a feed to a feed reader, a user becomes subscribed to the feed. In order to take advantage of these feeds, users require either a desktop-based or web-based application called a “feed reader” or “aggregator” that can read these RSS-formatted files.

Websites that have their own RSS feed(s) for notifying users of new syndicated content will usually display a standard icon (in most cases a rounded orange square with white radio waves inside ) and a text link (hyperlink) to their feed's URL (Uniform Resource Locator), a file located on a web server that is written following a particular standard format.

Rss feed website