Can I temporarily stop Google Reader?

November 5, 2009 2:18 PM

Is it possible to temporarily stop Google Reader feeds from updating?

I'm going on vacation for a week sans any technology whatsoever except an emergency cell phone, and I don't want to come back to eighty bazillion unread Google Reader items.

I know I can "mark all as read" when I get back, but I'd just as soon turn off the information spigot entirely, if that's possible, and turn it back on when I get home. I have about 150 subscriptions, so I'd rather not unsubscribe/resubscribe to them all individually.

I'm not one of those people who will care what I miss while I'm gone, so I have no desire to see the vast number of unread items that will await if there's a way to avoid doing so. My search of Greader help and of the askme archives didn't uncover any ideas, but I'm not the most effective searcher in the world so I thought I'd ask.

posted by pdb to technology (7 answers total)

You've answered your own question. "Mark all as read" when you return. There's no "off" button.
posted by GuyZero at 2:21 PM on November 5, 2009 [2 favorites]

I'm confused. Using "mark all as read" when you return will only expose you to eighty bazillion unread items for the split second it takes you to click it once you go to google reader... so how is that not turning off the info spigot?
posted by sharkfu at 2:22 PM on November 5, 2009

Don't forget that when you come back, you can also mark things as read which are older than 1 day, 1 week, and 2 weeks.
posted by jaimev at 2:32 PM on November 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

sharkfu - it's turning the spigot off after I'm standing ankle-deep in water, to torture the metaphor. It's not a huge deal, I just wondered if there was something I was missing.
posted by pdb at 2:33 PM on November 5, 2009

If you really have to stop them, you wouldn't have to unsub and resub all of them individually if you use an OPML file. In Google settings, there is an Import/Export tab. You can export all your subscriptions to what is essentially a text file on your computer.

So:
Export file, go to the Subscriptions tab, select all, unsubscribe and when you come back, just import them all from the file.

It probably won't save your shared or starred items, but it should retain your folders or tags.
posted by soelo at 3:00 PM on November 5, 2009

When you turn the spigot back on, you would then receive the 80 billion unread items from when you were away. That's the nature of the beast, unfortunately. Mark as read and start from zero.
posted by CharlesV42 at 8:11 AM on November 6, 2009

I don't know if that would really happen, CharlesV42. When I add a new feed to Reader, I only get ten previous items. I can ask for the older ones of course, but only ten show up as new/unread. I just tried it with the Onion and got exactly ten.
posted by soelo at 10:20 AM on November 6, 2009