How do I get images from linked posts?

Pull in images from the full article page when feeds don’t include them directly.

Many feeds only include a thumbnail or no images at all. The images you want are on the article page the post links to. Article content tells LightWatch to visit each linked post and pull in the images it finds there.

This is a premium feature.

Turning it on

  1. From the Home tab, tap the More menu in the top right.
  2. Tap Settings, then tap Feeds.
  3. Tap the feed you want to configure.
  4. Under Content, toggle Enable article content on.
  5. Tap Configure article content.

Visual selector picker

The easiest way to configure selectors is with the visual wizard. Tap Pick Article Selectors Visually to load the article page, then tap elements directly to prefill the selectors. You can fine-tune from there.

Configuring selectors

The configuration screen has three sections: Article Title, Article Date, and Article Content. You only need to fill in Article Content to get images — the other two are optional overrides for the post title and date.

Each section has some or all of these fields:

  • Selector — A CSS selector targeting the element on the page (e.g., .article-body, .post-title).
  • Attribute — Which attribute to read from the matched element. Leave blank to use the element’s text content. Set to something like src or href to pull a specific attribute value.
  • Format — A regular expression with a single capture group () to extract part of the matched text. Whatever the group captures becomes the final value. For example, ^(.+?) \| on a title like “My Photo | Photography Blog | 2024” would extract just “My Photo”.
  • Titlecase — Converts the result to title case. Useful when a site’s titles are ALL CAPS or all lowercase.

Article Content

Enter a CSS selector targeting the container elements that hold <img> or <video> tags — not the images or videos themselves. LightWatch finds all media inside matched containers automatically (e.g., .article-body, .gallery). If images and videos live in different parts of the page, use a comma-separated list of selectors (e.g., .photo-gallery, .video-embed). Article media gets merged with whatever the feed already provides.

If a container also has images you don’t want (like icons, avatars, or social links), make the selector more specific, use comma-separated selectors to target the right areas, or add :not() to exclude them.

Article Title and Article Date

These override the title and date that come from the feed. The selector for each must match exactly one element per article.

LightWatch validates your selectors against real article pages and shows match counts as you type.

Using an AI agent to find selectors

If you’re not sure what selectors to use, you can paste the following prompt into an AI agent like ChatGPT or Claude along with a link to an article page. It’ll give you the selectors to enter.

I'm configuring an RSS reader called LightWatch to extract content
from article pages. Please visit this URL and inspect the HTML to
find the right CSS selectors.

URL: [paste article URL here]

I need values for these specific text inputs in the app. Leave a
field blank if it's not needed.

**Article Content**
- Selector: CSS selector targeting container elements that have
  <img> or <video> tags inside them. Target the container, not the
  individual media tags — the app finds all images and videos within
  matched elements automatically. If images and videos are in
  different parts of the page, use a comma-separated list of
  selectors (e.g. ".photo-gallery, .video-embed"). Avoid matching
  containers that also hold unwanted images like icons, avatars, or
  social links — use more specific selectors or :not() to exclude
  them.

**Article Title**
- Selector: CSS selector matching a single element with the title.
- Attribute: which attribute to read, or blank for text content.
- Format: a regex with one capture group () to extract the clean
  title. Whatever the group captures becomes the final value. For
  example, ^(.+?) \| on "My Photo | Blog Name | 2024" extracts
  "My Photo". Leave blank if the title is already clean.
- Titlecase: yes or no. Use yes if the title is ALL CAPS or all
  lowercase.

**Article Date**
- Selector: CSS selector matching a single element with the date.
- Attribute: which attribute to read, or blank for text content.
- Format: a regex with one capture group () if the date needs
  extracting from surrounding text. Whatever the group captures
  becomes the final value. Leave blank if the element contains
  just the date.

Limitations

Article content selectors depend on the structure of the linked pages staying reliable. If a site redesigns its HTML, the selectors may need updating. If this happens, you will receive a status notification every time the feed checks for updates informing you that it isn’t finding content where it expects to.