How To: View Your Favorite RSS Feeds In Notification Center Without Jailbreaking
by Ammaar Reshi
June 28, 2011
Notification Center is probably one of the most popular features to hit iOS 5, and it didn't take much time before people found a way to create their own custom widgets by hacking their devices. Jailbreaking isn't for everyone though; some people prefer not to bog down their devices with all sorts of experimental tweaks, so today I am going to show you how you can view your favorite RSS feeds directly in Notification Center without having to jailbreak. Pretty cool, right? Follow along with the steps below:
What Devices Does This Work On?
- iPhone 3GS, 4
- iPod touch 3G, 4G
- iPad 1, 2
- The iOS 5 beta
- Boxcar app
- Download the Boxcar app from the App Store (it's free).
- Launch Boxcar and accept its request for push notifications.
- Sign up or log-in to your Boxcar account (it'll take a second).
- Now tap on "Add service."
- Scroll down and tap "RSS or Atom Feed."
- Enter a name for your feed, for example, "AppAdvice."
- Now type in the website's URL, it does not have to be the RSS feed URL, Boxcar automatically finds the feed.
- Now in Advanced Settings do the following:
- Sound: This one is up to you, if you want to hear a sound when something new is posted just pick one otherwise select "None." Opens: I prefer opening no apps because I just want notifications, but if you want go ahead and select something else. Alert: Full Message - leave this as is. Update Badge: I've turned this off; again, I only want notifications, nothing to do with Boxcar.
- Now hit save.
- Once that's complete you're all set, now you can go into Settings and customize the way you want the notifications to be displayed, for example a banner or pop-up, or if you want the notification displayed on the lockscreen or not, etc.
Conclusion
That's it! You will now receive updates from your favorite sites, right in Notification Center, simple, right? Oh, and while you were following along, you may have noticed that Boxcar has tons of other options besides push notifications for RSS Feeds so this is just the tip of the iceberg. Play with the different sources within the app, tweak the settings and customize what appears in your Notification Center. Note: If you get stuck anywhere in this tutorial, just leave a comment below and I'll try to help.
