Mac OS X 10.4.4 Special Report: RSS feeds not working in Safari; fixes

CNET staff

Sept. 2, 2009 9:08 a.m. PT

3 min read

MacFixIt reader Donald Albrecht reports an issue where RSS feeds no longer automatically update in Safari after installing Mac OS X 10.4.4.

Donald writes:

"I have been having an issue since the Mac OS X 10.4.4 update. My RSS feeds no longer automatically update. I have to navigate to the page before the unread feeds are recognized and then the counter in the bookmarks bar will update. Have reset Safari, dumped plists, resubscribed to feeds, etc."

"This occurs on my G3 iMac, G4 iBook, and 1.42 Mini. All are updated to Mac OS X 10.4.4."

Disabling .Mac bookmark synchronization generally resolves this issue.

One reader writes:

"After more research...and trying out all of the "fixes" that I have come across...it seems that the issue with RSS feeds not automatically updated is tied to .Mac synchronization.

"RSS feeds update normally if 'Bookmarks' is deselected in the .Mac sync preference pane. Of course, now my bookmarks are no longer being synced. This temporary fix worked on all three of my Macs."

Another potential fix (failing the aforementioned) is to delete the file ~/Library/Syndication/Database3.

One reader writes:

"I too was having this issue. Thought I was crazy since I hadn't seen the issue reported elsewhere. I also tried resetting Safari, and trashing plists. If I would subscribe to a new feed, all my feeds would update...once. Then stop again. The fix for me was to trash the file ~/Library/Syndication/Database3"

Another reader adds:

"I've observed this too: Even manually reloading a feed: URL sometimes doesn't have any effect. I found that by replacing feed: in the URL bar with http: and pressing Return, you can force Safari to request a fresh copy of the feed. (The URL will be replaced by feed: again once Safari has loaded the new items and presented them to the user.)"

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