Keyword Filtering Guide

Feed Notifier can filter RSS feeds to eliminate entries you aren’t interested in reading.  It doesn’t take many feed subscriptions to result in a lot of popups, so this feature can be very handy in making Feed Notifier even more useful.

Feed Notifier uses a custom-built filtering language to allow complex rules to be defined while keeping simple rules easy to write.

Exclusive Filtering

Use exclusive filters to eliminate entries that contain certain keywords. To make a filter rule exclusive, put a minus sign “-” before the keyword.  To exclude multiple keywords, join each rule with “and”.

-apple
-apple and -orange

Inclusive Filtering

Use inclusive filters to require certain keywords to be present in each entry. To make a filter rule inclusive, put a plus sign “+” before the keyword, or just write the keyword itself (the + is optional).  To allow entries that contain at least one of several keywords, join each rule with “or”.  To require entries to contain all keywords, join each rule with “and”.

+apple
apple or orange

In general, inclusive filters will filter out a lot more than exclusive filters, as they require particular keywords to be present.

Keyword Phrases

If you want to filter out phrases instead of single words, or if your keyword contains any special characters: +-‘()”, you can surround the keywords in quotes.

-"barack obama" and -"john mccain"

Using Parentheses

You can use parentheses to join rules in more complex ways.

(apple or orange) and (banana or grape)

The above filter would require at least one word from both of the two groups to be present.

Negating Rules

You can negate rules with the “not” keyword.  In many cases this is identical to using + instead of – (and vice versa) but it can be useful with more complex rule structures.

apple and not orange
apple and -orange

The above rules are identical.

Limiting Filters to Specific Fields

By default, filters will check each entry’s title, link, author and content for keywords.  You can apply filters to specific fields by prepending a qualifier.  The available qualifiers are title:, link:, author:, and content:.

-author:"John Doe"
title:apple or title:orange

Matching Case

By default, the filtering is case insensitive but you can enable this option to perform case sensitive filtering.  A checkbox allows you to enable or disable matching case when you add new rules.

Matching Whole Words

By default, the filtering matches whole words only.  For example, if the rule keyword is “apple”, the filter will not match “apples” or “applebees”.  You can disable this option to match any substring in the entries.  A checkbox allows you to enable or disable matching whole words when you add new rules.