Flickr RSS Feed Generator

Flickr RSS Feed used for Mac OS X screen saverMac OS X has used to have a screen saver that takes an RSS feed of images as a data source. Naturally I thought Flickr would provide good RSS feeds for tags, and users. Flickr offers these feeds, but unfortunately limits them to 20 items and does not offer any sorting or filtering options. To gain more control over RSS feeds of Flickr images, I made this Flickr RSS Generator. This generator uses the Flickr API to retrieve images determined by parameters you specify and returns an RSS feed, whose URL you can paste into the screensaver options screen in OS X.

tags


tag mode


sort order


maximum number of images to return


If you are interested in programmatically retrieving photos for your website or application, check out Flickr's API. It's free! You are most likely going to be interested in the flickr.photos.search method.

If you are looking for the RSS functionality that was removed from the OS X screen saver system preference, you can find the option hidden in iPhoto. In iPhoto, choose 'File' > 'Subscribe to Photo Feed...' and then paste the URL of the RSS feed in the box that pops up. Exit iPhoto after your computer thrashes for a few moments as the images are cached locally. The RSS feed will appear as a 'Photo Library' under 'Source' in the screen saver system preference. you're out of luck.