Tags

Tags organize related articles across feeds and categories. RSSMonster stores tags per user, displays them on articles, and surfaces frequently used tags in the sidebar for quick filtering.

Where Tags Come From

Tags can be added to an article in several ways during a feed crawl.

Publisher Tags and Categories

RSS and Atom providers can include categories, labels, or tags in an article. RSSMonster extracts those values and carries them into the article’s tags automatically. You do not need to recreate labels that the publisher already provides.

Publisher values are normalized before they are stored. Empty and duplicate values are removed so the same label is not displayed more than once on an article.

Feed Tags

You can configure tags on an RSSMonster feed. Those feed tags are applied to new articles saved from that feed, which is useful for stable labels such as a publisher, project, team, or broad subject area.

Generated Tags

When AI enrichment is configured for a feed, RSSMonster can derive a small set of tags from the article content. These are combined with categories supplied by the publisher.

Rule-Based Tags

Automation rules can assign your own tag when an incoming article matches a regular expression. Rules are useful when publishers do not provide the label you need or when you want one consistent tag across several sources.

For example, if you follow Nintendo and Zelda news, create an Automation action with:

• Name: Nintendo and Zelda
• Type: Assign tag
• Tag value: nintendo
• Regular Expression: [Nn]intendo|[Zz]elda

The rule checks each incoming article’s title, HTML and plain-text body, description, and URL. If any one of those fields matches, RSSMonster assigns the nintendo tag. This example uses character classes so it matches both capitalized and lowercase forms.

Rules run while articles are processed during a crawl. They are intended for incoming articles and should not be treated as a retroactive search over the existing library.

Rule-based tags and Smart Folder queries solve different problems. An Automation rule uses a JavaScript regular expression to attach a persistent tag during article processing. A Smart Folder uses a search expression to build a dynamic view without modifying the article.

Finding Tagged Articles

Tags appear as clickable labels on the articles themselves. Rule-assigned tags have their own visual treatment so they can be distinguished from other tag sources.

RSSMonster also shows the most frequently used tags for the active article status in the sidebar. Each sidebar tag includes the number of matching articles in that status.

Select a tag on an article or in the sidebar to show other articles carrying the same tag. The current status, sorting, grouping, and view mode remain in effect, so an Unread view continues to show only unread articles with that tag. Select the active sidebar tag again to clear the tag filter.

You can also use a tag directly in Search or a Smart Folder query:

tag:nintendo

Combine it with other expressions to narrow the result further:

tag:nintendo unread:true @lastweek sort:recommended

Tag values in search expressions should be written as a single unquoted token. See the Search Guide for every supported expression.