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How to export your Google Reader data

Google Reader will cease to exist after July 1. If you haven't migrated to another news reader yet, you only have a few days left before it's too late to export your data out of Google Reader.

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Ed Rhee
Ed Rhee, a freelance writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is an IT veteran turned stay-at-home-dad of two girls. He focuses on Android devices and applications while maintaining a review blog at techdadreview.com.
Ed Rhee
2 min read

If you're still hanging on to Google Reader, it's time to let it go. After Monday, Google Reader will no longer be available. People with only a few subscriptions will be able to migrate to another service without much hassle, but those with more than just a few will want the option to bulk-import the subscription data. Even if you don't move the data to a new service right away, it'll be nice to have for future reference.

To export your Google Reader data, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Go to Reader settings, then click on the Import/Export tab.

Step 2: Under "Export your information," click on the "Download your data through Takeout" link. You can also go to https://www.google.com/takeout/#custom:reader directly.

Step 3: Once Takeout shows 100 percent and provides an estimate of the number of files and size, click on the "Create archive" button.

Google Reader Create archive
Screenshot by Ed Rhee/CNET

Step 4: At the next screen, click on the Download button to download your Google Reader archive as a ZIP file.

Google Reader download archive
Screenshot by Ed Rhee/CNET

When you open the archive, you'll see several JavaScript files (JSON) and a "subscriptions.xml" file. The XML file contains your list of subscriptions and is what you'll import to your new news reader.

Google Reader acrhive
Screenshot by Ed Rhee/CNET

Keep in mind that some Google Reader alternatives, like Feedly and Digg Reader, don't support importing subscriptions -- at least not yet. If you think you'll want to try either of those services, you might want to use their Google Reader import options while you still can.