Ask LH: How Can I Remove Multiple Stars In Google Reader?

Dear Lifehacker, Got a quick question you guys might be able to help with. I’ve got a bit of a build-up of starred items on my Google Reader account. I use Byline on the iPhone & iPad and check the Google Reader site regularly and hence the starred items seem to build up quickly. I’ve Got a nice chunk of items built up at the moment and I’ve been looking at the web interface trying to find a way to remove all or even multiple starred items at once, but the only way I can find it to get rid of each stared item one-by-one. There’s got to be an easier way… right? Thanks, Starry-Eyed

Dear Starry-Eyed,

Clearly, we’re huge fans of using Google Reader, but we’ve got to admit that there’s a bit of a gap here. There’s no obvious way of de-starring multiple items at once that we could spot. The fastest option we could think of involves using keyboard shortcuts:

  • Type g then s to go to your starred items.
  • Hit space to select the first item.
  • Hit s to remove the star. (The s shortcut toggles the starred state on and off.)
  • Hit j to go to the next item in the list.
  • Repeat steps three and four until the list is empty. (If you want to keep something, just skip hitting s for that item.)

Once you hit the ‘repeat’ stage that’s actually pretty quick, but still not as fast as a proper ‘deselect all starred items’ option. If any readers know of an alternative Google-compatible RSS reader that does offer that option, we’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Cheers
Lifehacker


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