News widget (RSS)

With the News widget, you can check your favorite sources of news right straight from your desktop. The technique we use here is called RSS (Really Simple Syndication), and yes, it's really simple to use.

Instructions:

1. Add a News widget
2. Personalize your News widget
3. Context menu
4. Settings menu
5. General Settings
6. Advanced settings
7. Background
8. Resources

1. Add a News widget     [back to top]

There are several ways to add News widgets to your start.me page. 

Add a News widget with the green + icon.

1. Click the Add icon in the top right corner.
2. Select "Add news feed (RSS)"
3. Browse through our list of feeds or type in the name of the news site you want to add.
4. Once you've found your feed, select it.
5. Confirm by clicking "Add Feed" to add a feed to your start.me page.

You can add multiple RSS feeds to your News widget, even if they don't appear in our suggestions list. All you have to do is go to a news source, locate the RSS URL you want to follow and then copy and paste the URL in the entry field.

Add a News widget with the Chrome extension

If you use a Chrome or Safari browser (or a browser built on these platforms), you can also use the start.me extension to add RSS feeds.

1. Make sure you have installed and activated the start.me extension or add-on. Consult this support section if you want to read more about the installation process.
2. Surf to the website you want to add to your news feed. You can click a bookmark or go there directly by typing the address in the address bar (or Omnibox).
3. Now click the extension button. You will see the Add bookmarks pane.
4. Click on the second option: Feeds. Now you will see a list of all available RSS feeds the site has to offer.
5. You can select the feed you want and add it to a new widget or an existing one. Confirm by clicking 'Add feed'.

That's it!

2. Personalize your News widget     [back to top]

You can quickly personalize the way your News widget appears.

3. Context menu     [back to top]

Access the context menu through the arrow in the top right corner of your News widget. 

You can add extra News feeds here, Edit existing ones, copy or move the entire widget to another page and refresh its content. You can also delete the News widget or open the Settings pane, to personalize it even more. And there's a quick access to the help section (this very article). 

4. Settings menu     [back to top]

This is the place where you can change appearance and behavior of your News widget. The title of your widget, colors, number of articles shown, transparency, all of this and more can be accessed here.

5. General Settings    [back to top]

Change the title of your News widget as you please. You can decide how many articles you want to display in your widget and if you've added more than one news feed, you can decide how to view them. You can also change the icon by uploading your own or selecting one from our database.

 6. Advanced settings     [back to top]

In the advanced settings pane, you can really change the behavior of your News widget. This is where you decide if you want to truncate headlines or not. You can also decide to show images with the headlines, and how many. Do you want to see a summary of the article? Decide here. The same goes for pagination.

7. Background     [back to top]

One final set of options concerns the background color of your News widget. You can find this in the third and final pane of your Settings menu. Also: this is where you decide on the transparency of your widget, from opaque to completely see-through (and colorless).

It's up to you.

8. Resources     [back to top]

• If you want to learn more about RSS and why you should use it, read this article on Lifewire.