from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do you RSS?

by Grae on 6/19/20, 6:13 PM with 71 comments

There is building momentum around a return to blogging and RSS. Perhaps we're near a tipping point.

To give another push: How do _you_ RSS? What are your preferred tools? What are the highlights of your feed these days and why? What practices and workflows bring you value? What considerations should consumers and producers of RSS content be aware of?

  • by gpanders on 6/19/20, 6:48 PM

    I self host Miniflux [1] and am really happy with it, although recently I have moved toward using Fraidycat [2]. I really like the way that Fraidycat groups things by author, whereas traditional RSS readers just give you a feed. This enables me to follow high-volume publishers (such as Marginal Revolution) without the anxiety of seeing the Unread count in my reader creep ever higher.

    The only downside of Fraidycat for now is that you can only use it as a browser extension, so it doesn't work on mobile.

    [1]: https://miniflux.app/ [2]: https://fraidyc.at/

  • by tmarman on 6/19/20, 7:29 PM

    I have been using Feedly since Google Reader was shut down. Use it across iPhone, iPad and web. I also use it to capture other articles and bookmarks on my boards.

    I have subscribed to Pro for awhile but mostly for search and a few other things. I think they do have feed limits on the free tier.

    I’ve tried and used a lot of different readers over the last 20 years but for me the most important is sync of read status across my consumption devices.

    I have a lot of feeds across many different categories. HN, lobsters, dotnetkicks and a bunch of other high volume aggregators make up one category. Then I have feeds for startup/VC blogs, engineering blogs, some hyper local stuff, and some other non tech categories I’m involved in (food, wine, etc)

  • by Shorn on 6/20/20, 2:58 AM

    When Google reader shut down I switched to, and now pay for, https://inoreader.com for reading (they have a free ad-supported tier or paid tiers). The HTML and iOS browsing experience is excellent.

    For dealing with sites that don't support RSS, I run a paid service https://kopi.cloud - it allows you to give out anonymous mail addresses to services such as Twitter, Linked-in, Facebook, etc. that can be configured to publish all mail received as an RSS feed.

  • by geoffhill on 6/19/20, 7:02 PM

    I use NewsBlur in Firefox and via the Android app, and I'm very happy with it.

  • by obarthelemy on 6/19/20, 7:34 PM

    I do most of my browsing from RSS. I've got a handful of sites in my browser's bookmarks, and about 40 in my RSS feed. I've got Feedly Pro, and use both the Windows Web client and a few different apps on Android (I'm trying to wean myself of gReader Pro, but the thing still works after 5+ yrs w/o updates, and is just perfect). I dismiss 90% of RSS items because dupes or not interested (there's a reason those sites didn't make my bookmarks). I might dismiss a bit less is there was a snooze option, but there isn't. I'll do most of my reading in-app, and switch to the browser only if I want to read or add to the comments. My main issue currently is sites getting borked by google's "html simplifier" (whatever they call it). The thing I love most aside caching + offline reading is Firefox Andoird ability to open pages in the background, so I can sift thourgh my RSS items, dismiss 90%, and open a few pages that I'll get to once I'm done cleaning up my RSS feed and have time.

  • by anotherevan on 6/19/20, 11:32 PM

    Most importantly: http://hnapp.com/ to produce an RSS feed for Hacker News. I use a feed that returns anything reaching a score of 50 or gets 40 or more comments.

    http://hnapp.com/rss?q=score%3E49%20%7C%20comments%3E39

    Have used Newsblur since Google Reader closed and been very happy with it on desktop and Android.

    https://www.newsblur.com/

    I use Pocket to save articles I want to read later, which makes them available on my Kobo ereader. (I'd switch to Instapaper if my ereader supported it, it seems to handle sites Pocket often chokes on.)

  • by Grae on 6/19/20, 6:38 PM

    Personal pain point: Math seems to be a growing topic on the web and tools like MathJax are a popular tool for talking about Math. But (most? all?) RSS readers won't render MathJax. Does anyone have a simple and effective way to handle display issues like that?

  • by jnamaya on 6/19/20, 7:17 PM

  • by hombre_fatal on 6/19/20, 7:15 PM

    I recently got back into RSS and have been using (free) NetNewsWire on macOS/AppStore (https://github.com/Ranchero-Software/NetNewsWire).

    Though RSS clients in 2020 really need to be scraping the origin website. 50% of my feeds are just one-liner blurbs.

    RSS clients that just do RSS feel anachronistic. I've been browsing some other solutions, but the modern client really should be a hub that can turn any website into a feed.

    Someone linked Fraidycat which is on the right path, objective-wise.

  • by nikivi on 6/19/20, 7:16 PM

    I read most blogs with Reeder (over 1000 blogs). Top blogs are in 1. folder, the rest are in 2. folder.

    Here is an export of all the subscriptions (stored with Inoreader): https://gist.github.com/nikitavoloboev/63b5d2418122fcd6949d8...

    How I use Reeder: https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/research/blogs

  • by ctas on 6/19/20, 8:20 PM

    I'm using my self-built reader called Feedist (not public) . It's extremely lightweight and built in boring PHP. The most important feature to me is the personal recommendation page which shows me the top 50 new posts in my subscribed feeds based on my previous reading behavior. It uses almost the same scoring algorithm as HN behind the scenes. It's so accurate and saves me a ton of time. Subscribing to a lot of feeds creates a lot of noise and this makes it easier to find content I might enjoy.

  • by vroomik on 6/19/20, 7:04 PM

    Moved to inoreader - free tier for up to 150 feeds, works on mobile too

  • by neonate on 6/19/20, 7:16 PM

    I specifically installed Waterfox so I could keep using SageRSS. It's ancient, but I've never found anything else that comes close to being as good. People have made modern copies, but they got subtle things like font sizes and preview windows wrong so I found that they all fell in an uncanny valley for me.

  • by miteyironpaw on 6/19/20, 9:32 PM

    I run an instance of Selfoss. I found this thread because selfoss polls hackernews via https://hnrss.org/frontpage?count=1

  • by marczellm on 6/19/20, 9:44 PM

    I use both https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/feedly-notifi...

    (as a browser sidebar it really turns the RSS feed reader "builtin limited web view's rendering issues" dilemma around)

    and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/livemarks/

    and I can definitely recommend both.

  • by s9w on 6/19/20, 6:58 PM

    Inoreader has always been great, better than google reader that everyone is mourning. I've been using it for 7 years now. Today I use it mostly for Github commit feeds actually.

  • by sebastian65 on 6/20/20, 10:59 AM

    Recently I've created https://rosselo.com, which provides useful and elegant news dashboard. Works in browser on every device.

    It's under development now - freemium model will be presented soon (among other things). So don't hesitate to try it out, the current "trial" is in fact unlimited now so the whole service is currently entirely for free.

    Any feedback will be appreciated!

  • by rcarmo on 6/19/20, 10:47 PM

    Reeder on iOS and Feedly as a back-end. I don’t read news any other way, although I maintained this for a while:

    https://github.com/rcarmo/rss2imap

    Edit: I use Reeder because I can pull in articles in “Reader view” from obnoxious title-only feeds with a single tap. Don’t do those, post full articles or I most likely will keep looking for alternatives to your content...

  • by agazso on 6/19/20, 7:25 PM

    After I stopped using FB I missed a mobile news reader app that works without having to install a server or create an account.

    So with some friends we created an app called Feeds https://github.com/felfele/feeds

    It does everything on the phone and there is no ads or tracking whatsoever. You can also mute content with keywords.

    It is open-source and currently in open beta for iOS and Android.

  • by fpadilha on 6/19/20, 9:21 PM

    If you are looking for something more robust, I would recommend Fluxonaut (https://fluxonaut.com). It's only for Windows and is still in beta but you can mix RSS, Twitter and YouTube quite nicely through multiple screens!

    (Full disclaimer: I'm a founder, but I truly feel it's the best way to consume RSS if you use 2+ monitors on Windows =) ).

  • by rwbhn on 6/20/20, 7:25 AM

    Reading this via Feedly on Android. For audio podcasts when I'm biking I use BeyondPod Pro [1] - tried a bunch of options, it was the only one I found which reliably downloads episodes while on wifi and plays them with no issue while offline.

    [1] http://www.beyondpod.mobi/android/index.htm

  • by mantas on 6/19/20, 6:52 PM

    Vienna RSS client for Mac does all what I need. Feeds with simple organising. Flagging interesting articles. Good enough search.

    As for producers - depending how noisy your feed is, please keep it long enough to fetch several days' content. It sucks if I don't open up the client and something goes missing pushed out by newer content.

  • by ragebol on 6/19/20, 7:24 PM

    I use netvibes.com and have been for I don't know how long.

    My dashboard there has some 8-ish tabs for different topics I follow, each with ca. 6 feeds.

    I can mark each feed as read or a whole tab at once. Each tab has a counter of how much new stuff it has, so I can get a tiny sliver of excitement when there is some news about topic x.

  • by chenxiaolong on 6/19/20, 7:23 PM

    I use the Feedly web UI on desktop and NetNewsWire (which is open source) on iOS. I'm not a huge fan of the Feedly web UI because it doesn't support scraping the source page for the full article text. Too many of my RSS feeds only include the first paragraph or even just the subtitle.

  • by bastard_op on 6/19/20, 10:17 PM

    Hardest part these days is finding the rss feed. It used to be $url/rss, and gold. Then people moved on to fakebook and twitting, and it was forgotten.

    I use theoldreader.com for news since google reader died, so long as I find decent content and an actually rss feed, I tend to add here.

  • by animesh on 6/19/20, 8:47 PM

  • by ehPReth on 6/19/20, 7:10 PM

    I’ve been using rss2email from https://github.com/rss2email/rss2email — seems to works well for my needs

  • by hitchnsmile on 6/19/20, 9:07 PM

    Self hosting https://github.com/lawzava/mynews

    Flexible and configurable rss/atom feeds from a single binary

  • by disposekinetics on 6/19/20, 7:14 PM

    I'm fond of FreshRSS. It almost fills the void left by Google Reader.

  • by biermic on 6/19/20, 7:49 PM

    Newsboat (a currently maintained fork of Newsbeuter). It's a wonderful easy to use commandline RSS reader.

    https://newsboat.org

  • by onyva on 6/19/20, 9:26 PM

    I use fieryfeeds on iOS. It integrates with Nextcloud news and Pocket and is quite featurefull. I moved most of my reading off twitter which I used to access with Tweetbot.

  • by daledavies on 6/19/20, 7:28 PM

    I hosted Tiny Tiny RSS myself for years after Google Reader closed, I must say it was very stable and hardly ever needed intervention.

    But eventually I got fed up and moved to Feedly.

  • by angelbar on 6/19/20, 9:44 PM

    When google shutdown its rss service, I switch to https://protopage.com ... its really good

  • by dave333 on 6/19/20, 7:50 PM

    Google reader -> Digg reader -> Inoreader free version. BBC and NYT news feeds, Business Insider and Hacker News for biz and tech respectively.

  • by pipiscrew on 6/20/20, 7:33 PM

    the mother of all parsers https://github.com/feedjira/feedjira

    sure Inoreader for android

    sure https://bit.ly/37Mtlq2 for browser, perfect to guest it on 2nd monitor, gets updated every hour.

  • by vandyswa on 6/19/20, 7:07 PM

    I host my own tt-rss, and the install FeedMonkey (via my own sources.vsta.org) which provides a very nice viewer.

  • by TwoNineA on 6/19/20, 7:04 PM

    Self host FreshRSS and use Reeder on iOS.

  • by devinegan on 6/19/20, 11:28 PM

    Tiny Tiny RSS self hosted. tiny Reader for iOS. There is an open source Android app as well.

  • by winrid on 6/19/20, 7:55 PM

    I use "Reader" on Android.

    Make your content either plain text or HTML that doesn't require JS.

  • by eiro on 6/19/20, 8:40 PM

    i really like https://newsboat.org/. very few keystrokes to remember, super fast, ~/.newsboat/urls is a simple file with 1 feed a line.

  • by newtronic on 6/20/20, 3:26 PM

    I use Feedbin in a browser on a computer, and in an app on phone and iPad.

  • by sys_64738 on 6/19/20, 11:07 PM

    My solution for sites that don't offer RSS is to ignore those sites.

  • by hprotagonist on 6/19/20, 6:51 PM

    i switched to feedly when google reader died, and carried on as normal.

  • by markandrewj on 6/19/20, 6:59 PM

    Anyone have recommendations for an Android RSS reader?

  • by captn3m0 on 6/19/20, 9:00 PM

    Reeder on iPhone + MiniFlux, like many people here.

  • by moltar on 6/20/20, 5:01 AM

    I use Feedly with Reeder app.

  • by timbit42 on 6/19/20, 8:17 PM

    QuiteRSS on Linux

  • by mdrachuk on 6/19/20, 7:25 PM

    Reeder + Feedbin

  • by rp00 on 6/19/20, 11:12 PM

    Paid inoreader