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How advanced filters work in Feeds Reader

Content filters, personal feeds, regular expressions, research automation
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David Logan
Updated 1 year ago

The content filter is a very powerful and flexible feature that can significantly ease the task of searching for the targeted content in the ocean of information coming through your content feeds. Filters are applied to articles based on the regular expression method. If you have a Gmail account and use filters there, our Feeds Reader filters are very similar.

To create an advanced filter, go to the Settings > Advanced settings. In the Filters tab press "Create filter




Filter objects


Each filter object may contain an arbitrary amount of regular expression rules and actions. Each expression may have an inverse set, which inverts the matching results. On top of that, the filter may also have an inverse flag, which inverts the final matching.

Filter object may be configured to successfully match when either one or all rules match.

Regular expressions may be applied to several article (feed item) elements, such as title, content, author, etc.

Please, do not include delimiters (e.g. /) when defining a rule's regular expression.

Filters are sequentially applied in the user-specified order. It is possible to reorder filters using drag and drop. If no manual sorting is specified, filters are sorted alphabetically according to the user-configured caption. If no caption is specified for any filter, the loading order is not guaranteed.



Matching articles and applying actions


Note: filters are applied only when your feed is checked for new updates, they will not retroactively apply to articles already shown in your feeds.

Available filter actions:

  1. Delete article - do not show such articles in the feed
  2. Mark as read - automatically mark such articles as read
  3. Set starred - automatically set such articles as starred
  4. Assign tags - automatically assign specified tags to such articles
  5. Assign to personal feed - automatically assign such articles to a specified personal feed
  6. Stop / Do nothing - stop further filters for such articles


Example: filter articles and add them to a personal feed


For our example, we will filter articles that contain specific keywords from content feeds and add these articles to one of our personal feeds.

We go to the Advanced settings, to the Filters tab, and press Create filter.

This is going to be our test filter so let's call it the same. Enter "Test filter" in the Caption field (you can rename it later).



First, we have to set match criteria - a trigger that will initiate our filter.

We go to the Match section and press Add.

Here we specify our regular expression. For our example, it will be just a keyword - Facebook.



In the on field drop-down, we choose Title and content.

Both settings mean that we wish to filter articles that contain the word Facebook in either title or description.

Then we choose what feeds we wish to filter. We can choose either one specific feed, a whole category, or all of your feeds saved in Feeds Reader. Choose and press Add rule.

Note: you can set several rules at a time, and you have to do so if you wish to filter feeds also by a different keyword or to filter several categories or whatsoever.

Now we go to the Apply actions section and press Add.



In the Perform Actions, drop-down choose Add to personal feed and then choose a personal feed from the list. Press Add action.



As we already said, you can set several rules for one filter, as well as several actions. For example, we can set to filter all our content feeds by two keywords - Facebook and Twitter - add them to our Personal Feed 1, and then mark them as Read.

As soon as you create all your rules and actions, press Create.



Your filter is set.

In the same way, you can create other filters using different regular expressions and actions. In the Filters tab, you will see the list of your filters and will be able to manage them from here.




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