Tiger Tip: Import OPML into Safari RSS

As you may have noticed, Safari RSS doesn't offer any options to import OPML files. That really sucks if say you want to give Safari RSS a chance, but you have hundreds (maybe thousands) of feeds already in and the thought of bookmarking them all over again makes you physically ill.

Have no fear – Jon Hicks has a brief "How To Import OPML into Safari RSS" post over at his excellent blog at Pimp My Safari.

Since a few people *cough*C.K.*cough* were having trouble getting this to work with Jon's instructions, I'll show you the easier way. The magic ingredient in this recipe is Firefox, not Safari and you don't even need to enable the debug menu in Safari to import bookmarks anymore.

First thing  you need to do is export an OPML file from whatever news reader you're currently using. NetNewsWire, NewsFire and most others give you the "export feeds" option under the File menu. If your doesn't... hmmm... well yours is lame and you should switch to one that does.

Next, you need to install the Sage extension for Firefox. If you don't already have Firefox, now would be a good time to download it.

Once you've re-launched Firefox, click on the Tools menu and select Sage to open the Sage sidebar. Now click on Options (in the Sage sidebar), then click on OPML Import/Export, navigate to to where you save the OPML file you exported earlier and import it into Sage.

Now close Firefox and switch over to Safari. Under the File menu in Safari, select Import Bookmarks. Now navigate to your Firefox bookmarks.html file, which you'll find in your Firefox profile folder. The path will be something like this:

/Users/xxYOURUSERNAMExx/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxPROFILENAMExx/bookmarks.html

Click the Import button and you're done.  Your newly imported bookmarks will appear at the bottom of Safari's bookmarks sidebar in a folder (ahem... Collection) called Imported 5/1/05 (or whatever the date is when you do this). Inside that collection, you'll see Sage Feeds. Everything inside Sage Feeds should look familiar.

Happy RSSing!