Export Google Personalized Homepage Feeds to OPML #

Update on 2/1/2010: iGoogle no longer supports inline gadgets, which includes this module. The alternate OPML export method described by Google Operating System still works however.

The recently released Google Reader homepage module makes it even easier to keep track of feeds on the Google Personalized Homepage. Unlike the built-in feed handling of the homepage, it keeps track of read state, can display item contents inline (in a floating bubble) and takes up much less room. However, if you've been using the homepage's feed modules, moving the feeds to Reader is a tedious process, since the site does not provide an export functionality.

I've created a simple inline module that adds an OPML export feature to the hompage. It does this by going through the DOM, looking for feed modules, and extracting the feed URL from them. It also handles Google News modules, which can be mapped to feeds, but are not quite the same as far as the code goes. To use it, click the "Add to Google" button below:

Add to Google

Once you've gone through the module adding process (and allowed inlining), simply click the "Export OPML" button. This does not work in Internet Explorer, since it does not support data: URIs. Then, do a "Save As..." on the pop-up window and import that OPML file into Google Reader (click "Edit Subscriptions" then "More Actions..." then "Import Subscriptions") or any other feed reader.

This module is not endorsed by Google, and is not guaranteed to always work (especially on non-US Google domains).

40 Comments

When using google reader, it s impossible to listen audio files within the personnal page: it has to be listen separately. Couldn t it be made within the page?
I was looking for just this, and was pleased to discover your work. Thanks!
Love it, but with google acting up lately (as of 6/24) and not loading many if not all feeds, this kept telling me "can't get feed title" and would not export feeds that it couldn't find the title of. So I modified just a little to automatically use the url of feeds where the title of the feed is not available. Now you can get all your feeds out of google homepage, even if the feeds say "Information is temporarily unavailable."

add it to your google homepage here:
http://elitefxgames.com/rss/igoogle-opml.htm
As of September 2006 this module is not working. Any help?
Brad, thanks for the improvement, I've incorporated it into the original module.

Chris, I'm not having any trouble with this, even with the latest Personalized Homepage release (with tabs and the ability to minimize modules).
I wish this exported all rss feeds on the homepage and not just those on the currently selected tab :-( now that Google had added tabs, this gadget is not so useful
What about if my Google Home page uses tabs. Do I have to add that Export OPML module to each tabbed page. UGG I got 7 tabs.
Drat, I was *really* hoping this module would work. :(

It appears to be broken in FF2.0/Safari/Webkit/Omniweb -- all the output goes to the address bar with funky encoding. :(
Exactly what I was looking for when I hit the seven tab max on hp, last week. Thanks for saving us time ;-)
Thanks for this handy tool!

Bonsito and Ken, it's just a matter of selecting a tab, adding the widget, and then repeating for each tab. Worked like a charm for me.

I'm using Firefox 2.0 on OS X, by the way, and having no trouble.
I had just set up a bunch of pages to feed to my iGoogle page, and now they've all disappeared. I put alot of effort into subscribing to all these feeds, adding them to my Google homepage. They were there all day. I left my computer for a couple hours, and they're all gone. My Google homepage is back to square one.
recently i ahve started using google reader.i want to know hoe can i dlete unwanted feeds list from my subscribtion list and also how can i delete all the read material from my existing subscritions
Man, this ia a kickass workaround. Well done.
Thanks for having this. Quick question (not sure this is the best place for this). If I've made a folder and want to delete that folder in my Google Reader, I cannot seem to be able to get rid of it. There's no feeds in it, I just want to get rid of it altogether. Yet it remains!
This is a great little tool; thanks for cooking it up.
I tried using it and this is what I got:


This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.

What am I doing wrong?
Easy and fast with firefox. Thank you from Portugal.
Works great!
i had to go through trial and error to figure out how to move feeds from my google homepage to google reader. but it did work.

1. add the button in the post at the top to your google homepage. do that by clicking on the button. (i use firefox and tabs. not a problem. just move the "button" from one tab to another on your google home page when you're finished with it.)

2. once the button is on the google homepage, click on it. it "exports" the relevant feeds to a new browser page (or tab).

3. go to that page; execute the "save as" file command. it saves that page to your computer.

4. go to google reader|setting|import/export. browse your computer to select the "OPML file" (it is the file you just saved to your computer). upload that file.

5. the relevant feeds then appear (more or less) in google reader.

My effort to move 95 feeds from google homepage to reader worked flawlessly. thank you for posting this gadget.
Perfect Tool! Thanks!
since a couple of weeks the widget is no longer working :(
Excellent, work perfectly to import my feeds from igoogle to flock, thanks
no style sheet associated with the page (IGoogle) so doesn't work. Please help
This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Not having much luck with this file.
Wow, great. Worked like a charm. Thanks a bunch.

(Tip for IE users : USE FIREFOX, YOU MORON).
Thanks! this worked perfectly ... In Firefox :)
Thank you, thank you! I can't tell you how much time this little application saved me. I'd been dragging my feet in switching gmail accounts because all my feeds are in iGoogle. This saved me many many manual hours. Wonderful!
Using FF, clicking on the button after allowing inlining did nothing for me. No tabs were opened.
I made a script that exports feeds from all the iGoogle tabs.
Thanks for that. I will try.
Hello, I'm getting the same error others have gotten :This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below."

I would REALLY like to use this gadget so I would really appreciate any help on how to resolve. Thanks
Same here: even though I am using Firefox, all I get is the following:

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.


opml version="1.0">
head/>
body/>
/opml>

Please help!
Firefox is useless garbage with RSS. I have many XML feeds that have this stupid error coming up in Firefox. Now the fun part is if you refresh enough times, it will eventually load the damn RSS like ANY OTHER CLIENT. How retardedly random can browsers get.
Ionut Alex Chitu's solution worked for me! Thanks!

Go here.
hola buenos dias me gustaria que alguien me ayudara para poder poner mis comentarios con RSS, y poderlos compartir.Gracias.
Hi guy,
Unfortunately it shows a message for mine: Sorry, this gadget uses the inlining feature, which is no longer supported
and doesn't work.
Замечательно!!
This comment has been removed by the author.
grazie grazie grazie:D:D:D<3<3<3

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