Recommend me an RSS feed reader

🦥󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠@lemmy.world to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 85 points –

You might not be aware but Lemmy has RSS built into it. I just noticed myself so I wanted to check out the current state of RSS clients and well, nothing seems to be quite what I'm after.

What RSS clients out there are worth looking at? I notice several have self-hosted server solutions which is interesting. I don't care if it's free, open source, paid or whatever though, I just want a good experience.

95

FreshRSS - Not too big on RSS, but for me it does the job. Also, If I understood correctly there is an Open API so you can use another Client with FreshRSS Back End

https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS

Another vote for FreshRSS. It's a self hosted solution. I'm a bit of a data hoarder so mine is set to never purge articles, and edits are treated as new articles.

Clients I use:

I’ve been so happy with rediscovering rss via FreshRSS and NetNewsWire that I’m chiming in on old threads. That is all. 🤙🏻

FreshRSS is amazing. Super powerful. I used to use tt-rss but it was unstable, limited in its clients (API emulation) and a very hostile developer.

Sadly I haven't yet got Kbin's RSS to work with FreshRSS. It claims there is no feed. Which is a shame. But yes I use FreshRSS daily 👍

I'm using the opinionated and self-hosted reader Miniflux in combination with a browser plugin for Chrome. This way I see the amount of unread RSS items and I can either click them to open them or just mark them as read. Not sure if it's for everyone, but I like it a lot :) Just figured it should get a mention here.

Another vote for Miniflux. If you like a Reader-type interface, check out reminiflux (it's just an alternative frontend).

miniflux is great. If you don't want to self host, the developer offers a hosted version that is very reasonably priced and I like to think it contributes to the development of the software.

This with the matrix integration works great for me.

I've replaced ttrss with Miniflux and I'm very happy with it. No need for a mobile app, the web interface is just fine on both desktop and phone.

I selfhost FreshRSS and connect to it with Reeder on iOS.

Have you tried Unread on iOS? I ask because my setup is FreshRSS -> Unread, so I'm curious if it's worth buying Reeder.

I haven’t. I just installed it to check it out, but I don’t even see a freshRSS sync option.

Ah, I use the fever API.

Ok it works, I tried it a little bit. I like the swipe left/right to get to move around and get options, but I’m not a fan of the way groups/categories work. On Reeder I get the classic folder structure: each feed is inside the category. On Unread I can select the single feed (but they’re all unorganized) OR I can select the category (in that case the feeds are mixed by default, or they’re ordered by website but in that case I have to manually scroll through all posts of other websites of the same category before I can get to the one I want to read). I don’t know if I explained myself, but I basically find it quicker to get to the content I want using Reeder’s way. In the same category/topic I might have feeds that I check daily and other ones that I barely check every now and then, and that’s not a problem with Reeder (I do a weekly “mark all as read” if the backlog gets too long), while I feel it gets a little hard to do the same thing on Unread.

Anyway, that’s how I browse feeds. If you like Unread, go on with it. Sorry for the wall of text.

Awesome, thanks for giving me an in depth comparison!

Yeah, I basically just look at all of my feeds in one list most of the time, though I do have groups in Unread. I guess I’m not super clear on how reeder differs, but if it is actually better for reading infrequent articles and stuff I’d be curious. I should probably just pay the $5 and try it…

FreshRSS is ugly and sometimes clunky but seems to be unparalleled for features and support (Reeder + Netnewswire for clients) as far as selfhosted options go

This is how I ended up on FreshRSS. It's not my favourite looking thing or anything, but it seems to work the best (especially in terms of supporting mobile apps). I wish it was more tag centric, though. It's kind of clunky having to make single categories for everything.

I just try to stay out of the actual webui as much as possible, pretty much only going in to change filters. maybe there’s an extension for better tagging?

Nextcloud News, if you already have Nextcloud set up. There's also an Android app for it that connects to the server.

^ This. The Android app is quite nice. For iOS readers, you should use netnewswire

Agreed, Nextcloud News is awesome! The app too. And it's a given that Nextcloud itself is already awesome.

I love Reeder for iOS. For service I’ve been using Feedly since the beginning so I’ve stuck with them. But these days there is probably better (and cheaper) options.

I use Reeder as well, with my feeds coming from Feedbin. Reeder has an option to use iCloud to hold & sync feeds across your devices, but I haven’t had good luck with that.

TT-RSS tiny tiny RSS, it also has a good Android app

I've been running tiny tiny rss (aka ttrss) on a vps for well over 10 years. It's been rock solid through many upgrades. It's got a great web interface & android app. There's a decent sized community for it. The only drawback is that primary dev (fox) does not tolerate (what he conciders) dumb questions. The new docker compose deployment is brain-dead simple.

Have you looked at Inoreader?

I set this up and like the UI but it does that stuff where it says things like "Hey you have duplicates do you want to remove them? Oops sorry you gotta pay for that" and "Hey we noticed you're using a adblocker". Everything has to be a subscription service these days.

I used to self host TT-RSS (Tiny Tiny RSS) and eventually got tired of maintaining it so I looked for something else. Inoreader is subscription based but I like it the most out of all the ones I've tried.

Look here for a comparison of what you get from the free account vs the Pro subscription. https://www.inoreader.com/pricing

What was hard about maintaining ttrss? I spun up a docker a couple years ago and really never touch it.

It was not difficult but eventually a new version of TT-RSS equired a newer version of php and my provider did not have it nor were they going to upgrade anytime soon. So I looked for a hosted option.

If you want someone else to do work for you and pay for expenses upfront for you, you should expect to pay for thator have your interaction with that service be sold to advertisers at a minimum.

Sure, but I don't think it has to be a subscription nag. They're free to monetize as they wish but I don't have to use it either when non-subscription alternatives exist.

I use Liferea, which

  • Discovers web feeds from web page's alternate link
  • Embeds WebKit to render HTML in full
  • Supports RSS comments
  • Has configurable enclosure handler, so I can open YouTube in mpv

If you want one for your phone, Feedly is pretty good. On desktop, I use Liferea.

I've been using Feedbro (Firefox plugin) for a while and it does the job.

Also my recomendation if you don't need anything fancy.

I like the integration into the broser a lot: Instead of switching between the reader and the browser, i just switch between browser tabs.

The only weird thing with this addon is the company that makes it. They put a lot of work into their browser addons without any obvious way of monetarisation. i can not explain to myself how they make money.

So maybee don't use it if you are on some three letter agency's naughty list ;)

I was using feedbro until I noticed some bots started hitting my freshrss url that is not public. Switched to yarr for desktop and feeder for mobile.

Fluent Reader

This looks neat. I can't get it to pull images though, any ideas?

In settings under sources, you can try changing the default target to load the full content if the images are not shown. It depends on the RSS implementation.

This is exactly what I did but it's not pulling them. Might be on Lemmy's side perhaps?

Edit: it's not pulling in preview images like in the screenshots. It's pulling article images from other feeds like Hacker News though when you open the full article.

Could be. I haven't tried with Lemmy. Will try later and mention you with my results.

I use the Miniflux standalone podcast reader with Wallabag and submit selected articles to Wallabag for later reading. I also use the Newsboat CLI client which can sync with Miniflux installations as an alternative to the web interface it's comfortable.

TT-RSS (Tiny Tiny RSS). It's the most complete for selfhosting.

I use mozilla thunderbird for rss feeds but it depends on your OS. Desktop? Phone? Windows? Linux?

Thunderbird is basically an email client so the RSS feed reader mimics that, which is not what I'm after (kinda reminds me of being at work). Thanks for the suggestion though!

On Android nothing comes close to gReader Pro with The Old Reader as sync Backend. Sadly the app is discontinued, however the apk can be used just fine.

I use the Vivaldi web browser, which has its own built-in RSS reader. It's basic, but all I need and the fact its in the browser means I'm a lot more likely to check out my RSS feeds and not forget about them.

Someone posted this a while ago on r/apple, might as well throw it on the pile

feeeed (iOS)

I use miniflux which is minimalist, yet has a lot of features.

As miniflux serves the Fever API, I can use nice RSS clients that sync across all my devices (like Reeder for iOS and macOS).

Also interested in a good client for MacOS or iOS. I've been using freshrss for the serverside of things, and it works amazingly well!

The ones I like to use are Feeder for Android, Gnome Feed Reader for Linux and FluentReader on Windows. Honorable mention to vore.website for a super minimal web-based RSS reader.

TT-RSS (Tiny Tiny RSS). It's the most complete for selfhosting.

TT-RSS tiny tiny RSS, it also has a good Android app