I use the share functionality in mobile apps to simplify RSS adds to my reader. Open a feed in my browser > click share > choose my RSS app (Feeder) and the app loads the shared URL in its add feed section.
When you say you “downloaded the link” and “imported it into the app”, are you talking about an actual file? Adding a single link to an RSS reader is normally done by copying and pasting the URL of the feed, not by downloading the content of the feed itself.
There is a file type (whose name I forget) for storing and importing collections of RSS feed URLs, but that’s generally just used for moving your feed collection from one reader to another.
Sort of tangential. This is the one of the ideas behind the `` in the Atom spec (also commonly used in RSS feeds via XML namespaces). It means that if you have the RSS feed as a file and open it the reader can both import the items in that file, but also subscribe to the feed (if it has network access). It is nice when feeds have this, but I think few readers actually support this.