Add your first subscription URL

A subscription link is an ordinary http or https address, usually with a token on the end. It is not the same thing as an ss://, vmess:// or trojan:// share link: those pack up the parameters of a single route, while a subscription returns a whole configuration — dozens or hundreds of nodes, plus proxy groups and rules.

Make sure you copied the right format

• Provider dashboards usually carry a button along the lines of Subscribe or Copy subscription link, and it opens two or three choices: Clash, universal (base64 or v2ray), sometimes Surge and Quantumult as well.
• A Clash client wants the one marked Clash or Meta. That endpoint returns YAML.
• Grabbing the wrong one is easy to spot: after importing, the profile card shows zero nodes, or the client throws a parse error outright. The link is not broken, the format simply does not match.

Where the link goes in the client

1. Open the profiles page. Clash Verge Rev calls it Profiles; FlClash keeps it under the configuration tab.
2. Use the input box at the top or the plus button, and set the type to remote / Remote / URL — not local file.
3. Paste the whole link. Check that it starts with http and that the end has not been cut off.
4. Give it a name you will recognise, such as the provider initials plus the expiry month. The default is usually a random string or simply Subscription, and once you have three of those you cannot tell them apart.
5. Confirm, and let the download finish.

That fetch goes over whatever network you are on right now and takes a few seconds. If it spins forever or times out, jump straight to the last section.

Added is not the same as running

This is the step people skip. A new card in the list only means the client has stored that configuration, not that it is using it. Click the card to make it the current profile — some clients want a right-click and Use, others light up a small dot on the card itself. The giveaway that you missed it: the proxies page is bare, or still showing nodes from the previous profile.

Once it takes effect the card carries a few numbers: node count, data used against the plan total, and an expiry date. The proxies page grows a set of groups you can expand to see node names and latency. That is what success looks like, and it is a good moment to run a latency test.

Where first imports come apart

• Copying out of a chat app drags along curly quotes, a leading space or an invisible line break. Run the link through the browser address bar or a plain text editor before pasting.
• A long link wraps inside the message bubble and you select only half of it. Check that the token at the end is complete.
• Some providers decide which format to serve from the User-Agent, and a client whose UA is not on their list receives an empty file. Same symptom, zero nodes — but a different client works fine.
• The same link added four times over, leaving a stack of identical cards where the active one is the oldest. Delete them all and start again.

When the link itself will not load

Some providers host the subscription domain outside the wall, which makes a closed loop: you need a node to fetch the subscription, and the nodes come from that subscription. Clients offer a switch worded something like update through proxy, but it does nothing while you have no working node at all. The way out is to get online by any means first — a backup domain from the provider, a temporary node, a single share link from someone else — and only then pull the real subscription. The subscription update guide walks that path in more detail.