A while back I used the RSS reader built into Firefox. When it got removed I kind of forgot RSS existed. I’m curious what people use nowadays.
A while back I used the RSS reader built into Firefox. When it got removed I kind of forgot RSS existed. I’m curious what people use nowadays.
I wrote Miniflux 7 years ago for my own needs. Rewritten in Golang in 2017. The project still active and continue to receive contributions. There is always something to improve :)
I like this but managing the database myself isn’t ideal. Any reason why an embedded database isn’t used?
Miniflux is excellent! No BS, clean and snappy interface.
I’m using it for my project that automatically searches for certain queires on github/hackernews/twitter/reddit/pinboard and puts the results in atom feeds. Kinda like Google Alerts, but actually useful and consumed through a functional RSS interface. I needed to slightly modify the Miniflux frontend for that (making it even more compact) – and it was pleasantly quick and clear (I had no prior Go experience either).
Thanks for your work!
I was looking for something exactly like this!
I have started using it yesterday. Moved away from Innoreader, mainly because I wanted to own the data and not worry about it in future, specifically manage starred articles etc… Miniflux is extremely easy to setup, especially if you’re using docker. I always run Postgres instances anyways, so it integrated well. For people who question db, it’s an advantage having a database like PostgreSQL. And I like that it’s ‘opinionated’ - tech stack and implementation perfectly considered. @0xfg - many many thanks for your work on this.
Hey man, I’ve been using Miniflux for years. Thanks for the awesome work! I really got excited when you rewrote it in Go :)
Eventually I switched to FreshRSS because I can choose a SQLite database there. Together with docker/kubernetes this makes the setup slim and easy. I miss Miniflux’s straightforward user-interface, though.
I moved to Feedly when Google Reader shut down and it was close enough that I’ve stuck with it.
Same, and I don’t want it to disappear in the same way, so I’ve been a paying user ever since.
NetNewsWire. I installed it quite recently, not having used RSS since Apple dropped support in Safari and Mail.
I (co)wrote that RSS engine in Safari/Mail, which was going to be a much grander thing indeed, with support for publishing to blogs and over P2P, before schedule constraints and executive whims whittled down to what it shipped as. (Then I left Apple.)
For a couple of years I used a homemade app built on that framework, but nowadays I use Feedly because it syncs between my devices and has a tolerable UI ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Wow that sounds like it would have been very interesting if it had come completely to fruition.
Yes! I exclusively use the iOS version, since I don’t have a Mac, and I’ve been very happy with the app. Performance, design, and platform integration are all really good.
I’ve been using NewsBlur since 2013, and it works well enough that I’ve been willing to pay the $3/month for it. The main thing I enjoy is having a mobile app that is able to automatically download stories for reading on the subway, and sync its read/unread state with the browser version.
2nd vote for NewsBlur. I’ve been using it since before google reader shut down (I kinda saw the writing on the wall on that one), and it’s been worth it ever since
I’ll chime in for newsblur as well. Simple, gets out of my way, just plain works.
Another vote for NewsBlur. I’ve been using it for a number of years as well (I think since 2013, too!) and absolutely love the “Intelligence Trainer” feature. I’m able to highlight keywords to emphasize or hide from the feeds. It’s like Lobste.rs’s tag filtering but for every feed out there.
It even supports converting email newsletters into RSS feeds (which seems like the opposite approach everyone else takes, hah) which helps clean up my email inbox some.
Also been using it since 2013. Being grandfathered into the $12 a year rate almost feels bad considering how much value I get from it.
Especially since I consume Lobster.rs and HN by RSS. Kind of funny that I read this post through NewsBlur!
Yeah, I lied, I’m paying $12/year myself. It was a no-brainer at that price.
Possibly totally stupid question: is there a Linux client or 3rdparty app for NewsBlur?
Maybe, but not that I’m aware of. I’m happy enough using the browser when I’m not on a phone, so I haven’t looked.
It’s totally open source, you could run your own instance: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur
+1
Mozilla Thunderbird. May as well keep feeds together with my mail if it supported it.
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Yup, ever since I found out Thunderbird already had an RSS reader, I used that since was already using for mail, don’t need yet another app.
elfeed:
I also use TwitRSS to follow Twitter accounts in elfeed; it’s supposedly broken but seems to work for now. When it stops working I’ll just give up on Twitter altogether.
I’ve been a Feedbin subscriber since 2013 and love it (and it’s open source too). I subscribe to a lot of feeds (and some Twitter accounts) for my curation of Read Rust. In fact Read Rust integrates with the Feedbin API to make sharing posts from easier.
I use its web UI on the desktop and Reeder on my phone. Recently Feedbin support was merged into NewsFlash an in development RSS reader using GTK and Rust. Eventually I’d like to use that on the desktop. I miss Reeder for Mac since moving to Linux.
My setup’s similar to yours – I’m a long-time Feedbin user, and really like it. I use the web interface on the desktop, and an old version of Reeder on my iPad/iPhone.
Feedbin has a neat email newsletter tool, too – every user gets a custom email address for subscribing to newsletters. These show up in Feedbin just like a regular feed. I find I don’t read newsletters if they land in my email inbox, but they’re a natural fit in an RSS reader.
bazqux, its not free, though
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I will probably move to them soon for their FB support.
I’m quite heavily into the IndieWeb movement, in which we’ve designed a new standard Microsub which allows for a slightly better API than “regular” RSS/Atom readers, as it allows for you to use different feed formats on the backend. It also splits between the client and the server quite nicely, so I can use Indigenous for Android when on the move, and Monocle when I’m on the desktop. The best thing about the standard, aside from allowing extensible feed parsing, is that I can use different clients to read it, instead of relying on a single provider - which I believe we’ve seen with some of the RSS/Atom readers around currently.
The server I use is Aperture, built and run by Aaron Parecki, and I subscribe to a mix of RSS/Atom, JSON Feed and Microformats2 feeds
I use a self-hosted instance of https://tt-rss.org/, and have been for several years. Both with the standard web-ui & the android app. It’s fine. I really enjoy my read history synced between my various devices. It’s not the most elegant UI, it has some quirks, especially in the web-ui, but it’s gets the job done well enough. I’ve tried a few others, but haven’t come across anything that works quite as well.
Also good luck if you wade into the official forums for support or a bug report.
I’ve also been using it for years because it simply works. Wanted to change servers and use the docker container but I postponed that because that was absolutely not working and I am not in the mood to argue with the maintainer. Not sure what I will do, but I use it together with NewsPlus on Android and don’t really want to change that setup. (That Android app hasn’t been updated for ages but I bought it and will use it as long as it works, because I love it.)
linuxserver.io had tt-rss as a container they supported but had to stop due to reasonable(?) changes asked of the repo maintainer. The forums seem to be rather hostile. I’ve taken to just cloning and building the image myself (which the maintainer IIRC argued is what they think everyone wants to do) but is categorically the opposite of what I want do. I want a trusted repository in which to pull a minimal image that is up to date.
Sad links of despair:
Yes, I also skimmed or read all of those. Some changes were integrated after weeks of discussion but for some reason or other I couldn’t get it to work, just 2-3 weeks ago (could be my setup, sure).
Ahh, if all you want is an image. Feel free to use mine!
https://hub.docker.com/r/dalanmiller/tt-rss
Same here. There is an official package in Arch Linux, I use that.
I also self-host Tiny Tiny RSS. On iOS I use Fiery Feeds which has a much better UI.
Reeder on iOS and Mac, with Feedwrangler as the backend.
I use https://fraidyc.at/ in Firefox (also works for Chrome). It’s nice and unobtrusive.
FreshRSS, really awesome. Switched after I discovered what a hot mess TTRSS is on their forums. No thanks.
+1 for FreshRSS. I use the web interface on my phone and it works really well. Fast and lightweight.
Thanks for this suggestion. I was also using TTRSS for a time, but not really satisfied with it. I’ll give FreshRSS a try.
I use Inoreader as a sync-service for my feeds, they have tons of pro features. You can filter feeds for specific keywords and filter out annoying things. They’ll also automatically export all my subscriptions to dropbox/google drive when I change something, so there’s always a backup available.
The web interface is nice, you can use it with your keyboard, I use mainly reeder for mac and iOS to read on my devices.
+1 for Inoreader, I even pay for it to have more than 250 feeds. The Android app also works well, but I hardly use it these days (no commute).
I love newsbeuter because it’s simple, terminal-based (so I can access it anywhere from a screen session via SSH) and has vi-like keybindings for efficient navigation.
Bastardfeed:
Home-spun and dyed.
It makes me happy to use every day, so it’s been a relative success.
I have a self-hosted instance of Miniflux which I use with Reeder on iOS and macOS. I just recently switched back to Linux for my personal dev machine, so I haven’t found anything for that yet.
Huge shoutout for Inoreader
I am new to rss feeds, but recently I’ve been using feedly, it feels like I have discovered a new way to use the internet
Same, I started using feedly about a year ago. It works and it’s free, but I don’t love it.
I’m currently testing elfeed (emacs) synced to a self-hosted freshrss.
Nextcloud News, running on the server-under-the-stairs together with all other online services I use. I haven’t used any external ‘personal’ services (other than internet access service for obvious reasons) since the late 90’s and see no reason whatsoever to change this. I used to use it in combination with the related Android ‘app’ but moved to using only the web version as that turns out to be a lot faster.
sfeed approaches RSS/Atom in a very Unix way, with multiple output formats possible like Gopher, HTML, plain text, pipe to another application like
dmenu, etc.There is also https://feedbase.org/ that regularly fetches Atom/RSS-feeds and exposes the items using the nntp protocol, allowing you to follow the feeds using a news reader.
From a long term NNTP user this is a fantastic product.
I wrote a cron job that fetches RSS feeds and pipes new items into a folder in my emails.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
I use Newsboat as a backend for fetching RSS items.
I wrote Newsboat-Sendmail which taps into the Newsboat cache to send emails to a dedicated email address.
To make sure the IDs of the emails’ subjects are kept whenever the server asks me to wait before sending more emails, I wrote Sendmail-TryQueue. It saves emails that could not be sent on disk (readable EML format, plus shell script for the exact sendmail command that was used).
Finally I use Alot to manage the notifications/items.
…so basically Thunderbird.
Thunderbird is one client.
I can also use it via the fastmail web ui, or my phone.
Lastly, the chromedriver integration means I get full articles with images, instead of snippets.
Ah, I think I misunderstood its features and your workflow. And now I’m curious. How does the non-RSS bit work? Do you customize & redeploy when adding new sources? In other words, how easy or hard is it to generalize extracting the useful bits, especially in today’s world of “CSS-in-JS” where sane as in human-friendly class names go away?
So, the current incarnation has several builtins, each wrapping a simpler primitive:
My planned-future changes:
haha, I like this one. You’ve turned RSS into newsletters!
mailchimp sells this as a feature.
I use rss2email which basically does the same thing.
I wrote a rss reader which is meant for cronjobs, which is btw the reader I use.
https://gitlab.com/dacav/crossbow
The version 0.9.0 is usable. Soon I plan to release version 1.0.0
I’ve been using feedbin.com for several years. It’s a paid service, but I’ve been a happy customer!
CommaFeed is great. It’s the closest thing I’ve found that resembles Google Reader, which I loved.
https://www.commafeed.com/
Also it is self-hosted, which is big plus for me.
I use FrehRSS for my feeds, and the Reeder app on iOS, which connects to my FreshRSS instance. On the whole it works well and I’m very happy. Plus, it’s self-hosted which is nice.
I’ve used Tiny Tiny RSS in the past, but the lead developer can be obnoxious at times, so it put me off in the end.
I’ve also heard really good things like about Miniflux, but I like the simplicity of uploading the files and configuring a DB in a configuration file. Unfortunately, Miniflux is more involved than this. I do believe they offer hosting for a very small amount though.
I’m using NetNewsWire on macOS and iOS. I wish there was some sort of syncing between devices without a third-party account, but I’m okay with it for now.
NetNewsWire (Mac), Reeder (iOS). Feedbin for syncing. I used FeedWrangler for syncing for a while but its Unicode support was broken. I’ve also used Reeder and ReadKit on Mac; using a sync service makes it easy to experiment with different apps.
Feedbro Firefox plugin.
I use feedbro too, but I’m a bit annoyed it doesn’t interoperate with firefox sync. Otherwise it’s really neat.
I mostly use the “News Downloader” plugin in KOReader on my e-reader.
How do you deal with padding on websites and other messy stuff, do you just go over the pages you do not care about?
I really wish to use it more.
It works better with some feeds than others, so it really depends on individual feeds. I have a couple of feeds where it has to download the full article (because the feed only has a summary), and it ends up dragging in a load of extra stuff (comment sections, footers, etc.). However, at least for the feeds I’m reading, it tends to appear at the end, so I when I get to the end of the article text, I just stop.
Over time, I’ve probably ended up whittling the feeds I read down to a subset that works well with KOReader (I do use other feed readers on other platforms). For content which works well on an e-reader, (text and pictures) it works really well: I get to read the articles away from all the distractions that you have on a computer or smart phone, on a screen that’s comfortable to look at, with my favourite font (alegreya :) ), and all the style tweaks that KOReader provides (once downloaded, articles are written as epubs, so they are treated just like any other book).
The best solution is for the publisher to include the full article text (and nothing else) in the rss or atom feed. Many blogs do do this, and it makes it really simple for the client to produce something which is 100% useful content with zero effort (make sure to set
download_full_article=falsefor feeds like this, so it doesn’t try to download the article instead). When the feed only contains a summary, we have to fetch the actual content from the website. As long as the website is fairly simple and focusses on the content, this still works well in most cases, but can add a little bit of noise with maybe a header, a footer and a comment section. As sites get more complex and add more non-content around and in between the actual content, it gets increasingly hard to separate the content from the garbage.Taking “modern” real-world html and trying to distill out the actual content is a very difficult problem, but there may be more we can do in future (We have per-feed options, so a solution wouldn’t have to work perfectly for every single feed for it to be included: It can be off by default, or able to be turned off for the odd site where it fails, as long as it was an improvement in enough cases to justify any added complexity. Practical suggestions and/or code are always welcome!).
I can recommend the approach by miniwebproxy and filtering certain CSS elements for limiting content.
Thanks for your reply.
Thanks for the link! I’ll have a play with it later. From the description, it looks like it might also deal with the other issue, where what appears to be a simple image or code snippet when viewed in a browser is actually some complex dynamic-loading thing, which ends up being omitted from the output.
I actually implemented such patch to KOReader now so the issue is solved now and will be in 2020.06 version :).
Excellent! I look forward to testing it out!
I use newsboat. It’s simple and works well. It’s also interesting to watch it slowly be rewritten into Rust.
Myself I am using Liferea and the rss plugin of evolution.
Great to see Liferea still going. I used it a long time ago c. 2005.
I still use Fever, a self-hosted reader by Shaun Inman, even though it hasn’t been maintained since 2016.
QuiteRSS on Linux. I haven’t found good cross platform apps so far, but I put the OPML in dropbox in the hope that I can use when I find decent RSS app(s) for Android and Windows.
My personal preference is a native application that fetches RSS feeds locally. I’m rather suspicious of third-party RSS “services” and bizarrely some clients require an account with one.
With that in mind, on Mac I usually use ViennaRSS. Recently I’ve recently been experimenting with NetNewsWire. Both work well but only Vienna seems to have the feature of directly showing you the HTML article for feeds which don’t include content. On Linux, KDE’s akregator is my favourite and basically equivalent. All of them support exporting and importing feed lists so it’s easy to experiment. I never did find one I liked for Windows. All of the ones I’ve mentioned are free and open source.
I’ve paid for an account on bazqux.com for a long time now (nearly 10 years? Edit: 7 years.), and it’s quite nice. The web interface is very google reader-y, and it speaks the api that most gui readers speak for syncing. Can recommend.
BazQux is awesome. I’m disappointed nobody else has mentioned it yet.
I also use BazQux and am very happy with it. I previously used a self-hosted version of tt-rss, but gave up when it started to fail too often on valid feeds with parsing errors and because of its obnoxious maintainer.
Also partially written in the rather obscure functional language ur/web https://github.com/bazqux/bazqux-urweb
More about that in this blog entry and the message it links to.
https://offog.org/code/rawdog/ - “rawdog is an RSS Aggregator Without Delusions Of Grandeur. It is a “river of news”-style aggregator: it uses feedparser to download feeds in RSS, Atom and a variety of other formats, and (by default) produces static HTML pages containing the newest articles in date order.”
I set up a cron job on a small EC2 instance that runs nightly so I’ve got a fresh news page every morning.
NetNewsWire on iOS, using local feeds only.
I just have a few things that get checked at 11a daily by rss2email and go straight to my regular inbox - feeds that are generally a new post each week or less. I definitely don’t have time for much more than that.
I use RSS for several purposes and not always with the same reader, but the two main tools are:
Feedly from 2013 until earlier this year and Feedbin since :) On iOS I use Unread while on the desktop/laptop I use just the web interface of Feedbin.
https://theoldreader.com/
Never had any problems with them.
Feedly + Reeder for MacOS and iOS.
I use sfeed, simple, scriptable and can create any output to any program you wish as it saves feeds in CSV. I recommend reading about it as it is nice and non-bloated (whatever that means).
https://codemadness.org/sfeed-simple-feed-parser.html
rss2email + Pocket
I’ve been using The Old Reader (Web) along with Reeder on iOS. The Old Reader is the only service I found that emulated Google Reader’s functionality without a bunch of garbage discoverability functionality or weird interface stuff.
I’ve been working on a Dork Web issue about how I use RSS as I use it so extensively, but in terms of what I use:
I have used other tools like Miniflux, TT-RSS, Nextcloud news and other web-based readers but honestly I don’t like using a web browser to avoid browing web sites.
Reeder 4 (https://www.reederapp.com/). Mac/iOS only.
Flym
A free reader for Android.
Using a self-hosted FreshRSS installation right now. Just updated today. Developer has been responsive to ideas. 👍
I pay for newsblur.com
I was an happy user of InoReader, but when they change licensing model it was not enough for me. So I stumbled upon Feed Wrangler and I subscribe it.
Pros
Cons
I have fallen in love with the Fraidycat browser extension. I really appreciate how it doesn’t show me a growing number of posts that have been published that I haven’t read.
Self-hosted TinyTinyRSS. Use the official TTRSS app from fdroid on Android and FeedReader on Linux.
I use Leaf: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/leaf-rss-news-reader/id576338668?mt=12
I’m a sucker for native apps.
I’m a huge native app fan too. Leaf looks nice.
Hm… probably a bit of an outlier here but since I use Claws Mail as my e-mail client, I use its RSSyl plugin as news reader. It is fast and works pretty great. Have been using this combo for at least the last 10 years.
RSSyl is actually through what I keep up with lobste.rs :-)
Not really a reader though, but we subscribed to a couple of RSS feeds in Slack.
I use feed2toot to read my RSS on fedi =)