Rename tags in Google Reader

Posted July 27th, 2008 in Applications

Google Reader (and other RSS readers) allow you to group your feeds into categories or "tags" as Google refers to them. It's not currently possible to rename a tag in Google reader so instead you need to create a new tag, assign all the feeds currently in that tag to the new tag and then delete the old tag. This post illustrates with screenshots this way to rename a tag in Google Reader.

Once you've logged into Google Reader, click the "Manage Subscriptions" link down the bottom left of the screen. You can also get to where we need to go to rename the tags from the "Settings" link in the top right and then clicking the "Subscriptions" tag when the new page loads. The screenshot below shows the "Manage Subscriptions" link with a red box around it and a red arrow pointing to it.

Once the full list of subscriptions has loaded, type the tag name into the "filter by name, tag or URL" box on the right side. Again this is shown in the screenshot below with the red box and arrow. It will automatically filter and just show those feeds which match the filter text.

Create the new tag that you want to "rename" the old one to by selecting the "Change Folders" drop down box next to one of the feeds, and selecting the "New folder" option from it. This will assign that feed only to this new tag.

Now click the link that says to select "All XY subscriptions" (in the example below it's 47) and all the feeds in the filter list will be selected. Now click the "More actions" drop down box to open it up and select the new folder you just created. You can repeat this to remove the old tag as well, although if you want to delete the tag altogether it's not required.

Finally, click the "Tags" tab in the navigation as highlighted with the top red box in the screenshot below, and then click the trash can icon next to the tag you want to delete.

All done! It would be much easier if there was a rename tag function, but there isn't at the current time so this would appear to be the only way to rename tags in Google Reader at present.