Google Chrome will now let you follow your favorite sites to get an updating feed of new content they publish. Once the feature goes live for you, you’ll see a new “Follow” button at the bottom of the three-dot menu when you open a website on Chrome for Android. You can tap on it to follow that website. Likewise, you can unfollow a website from the same menu.
The feature works in the same manner as following an account on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter, where you get new content from those accounts on your timeline. Here, any new articles published by the sites you follow on Chrome will surface on the new tab page. A new “Following” tab will appear alongside the existing “Discover” tab of recommended articles. If you have followed multiple sites, articles from each site will be listed separately.
This feature is based on RSS, so it is dependent on sites providing RSS support. We, Android Headlines, do provide RSS support, so you may follow us to quickly access our latest articles. As Adrienne Porter Felt notes, who is a director of engineering on Chrome, websites cannot initiate a follow action. Readers will have to manually tap the three-dot menu and then tap the “Follow” button at the bottom to follow a website, given it has an RSS feed.
The new Follow feature is now rolling out on the Chrome stable build
Google has been testing this feature in the experimental Canary versions of its Chrome browser on Android since May this year. The company is now rolling it out on the stable build. However, the feature is still in testing and has yet to roll out publicly to users around the world. Some users may receive it automatically with the latest version of Chrome for Android (version 94+) but you can also manually enable it by entering chrome://flags in the address bar. Here, search for “web feed” at set it as “enabled.” The “Follow” button will now appear for you.
You might have guessed by now that this feature will be initially available to Chrome users on Android only. But Felt has confirmed that iOS support is coming soon. The feature is also in plans for the desktop version of the Chrome browser. Unfortunately, we don’t have an ETA (estimated time of arrival) for it yet. We will let you know as and when we have more information. Meanwhile, you can click the button below to download the latest version of the Google Chrome browser for Android from the Play Store.