Wells Code

Beacon

Following sites and people

Paste a site or feed address and let Beacon look for RSS, Atom or JSON Feed. It follows Mastodon and Bluesky accounts too.

Beacon on iPhone, iPad and MacUpdated 15 October 2026

Beacon is in private preview. Apply to test Beacon

Add a feed

  1. Choose Follow (+, or ⌘N on Mac).
  2. Paste the address of the site. The ordinary homepage address is fine; you do not need to hunt for the feed URL.
  3. Beacon finds the feed behind that address and shows it before you commit: its name, description, how often it posts and its latest headlines. If a site has several feeds, choose one.
  4. Choose a Folder if you like, then Follow.

On a Mac you can also follow a site from any of its pages, in Beacon’s own browser (see Browse in Beacon on Mac).

Beacon supports RSS, Atom and JSON Feed.

Follow as many feeds as you want; the 14-day free trial and every payment option include the complete library.

When a site has no obvious feed

Many sites publish a feed without linking to it. Things worth trying:

  • The site address itself, as discovery finds most of them.
  • Common paths such as /feed, /rss or /atom.xml.
  • A section address rather than the homepage, for sites that only publish per-section feeds.

If the site genuinely has no feed, Beacon cannot invent one.

Following Mastodon and Bluesky accounts

Paste a Mastodon handle, such as @name@server, or a Bluesky handle, such as @name.bsky.social, into Follow. A link to someone’s profile or post on bsky.app works too. There’s no sign-in: Beacon follows the account’s public feed, and it arrives like any other feed, replies included. People appear under People in the sidebar rather than mixed into your sites.

On Mastodon, a reply shows the posts it answers above it, so you can follow the conversation. Bluesky’s public feed doesn’t include that, so Bluesky replies show on their own.

To keep posts out of the Timeline, open the Timeline’s ⋯ menu and turn off Posts.

Importing lots at once

If you are arriving from another reader, do not follow feeds one at a time (see Import and export OPML).

Images and privacy

Settings ▸ General ▸ Load article images controls whether remote images are fetched. Turning it off prevents article-image loading. Feed refreshes and requests to read an article still contact the publisher; this switch does not make Beacon offline.

Getting started with Beacon Follow your first sites, choose how you like to read, and bring the sites and people you choose into one reader. Folders, pins, Smart Folders, Saved and muting Group feeds the way you think, save a search as a folder that stays current, keep what you want to come back to, and quiet what you don’t. Refresh, feed health and tidying up How often Beacon checks for new articles, how it flags feeds that have broken or gone quiet, and how old items clear themselves.