The way we consume content on the internet is increasingly driven by walled-garden platforms and black-box feed algorithms. This shift is making our media diets miserable. Ironically, a solution to the problem predates algorithmic feeds, social media and other forms of informational junk food. It is called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and it is beautiful.
What the hell is RSS? RSS is just a format that defines how websites can publish updates (articles, posts, episodes, and so on) in a standard feed that you can subscribe to using an RSS reader (or aggregator). Don’t worry if this sounds extremely uninteresting to you; there aren’t many people that get excited about format specifications; the beauty of RSS is in its simplicity. Any content management system or blog platform supports RSS out of the box, and often enables it by default. As a result, a large portion of the content on the internet is available to you in feeds that you can tap into. But this time, you’re in full control of what you’re receiving, and the feeds are purely reverse chronological bliss. Coincidentally, you might already be using RSS without even knowing, because the whole podcasting world runs on RSS.
Come on everyone. Share your best RSS setup. No wrong answers
Self hosted FreshRSS, read both on the web client and on NetNewsWire linked to the installation on my phone.
Built a few feed hydrators for sites with shitty feeds with no content in the feed.
Not my blog, but a great write up on how to do it: https://hamatti.org/posts/i-built-custom-rss-hydrator-for-better-github-and-youtube-feeds/
Capy reader on my phone. Lightweight and filters blacklist out.
Since i’ve found no readers for shell that just dump the important bits, without ncurses background shenanigans and whatnot, i’ve made my own in 100 lines POSIX shell. It’s kinda slow (500 ms), since it calls multiple times awk per line. Maybe i’ll redo it in python sometime.
FreshRSS docker container on my VPS.
Paying for Newsblur’s hosted version - I need its keyword filtering feature and I like to support small companies :)
Theoldreader.com on the desktop and gReader Pro on Android. That app is ancient but still works and no modern app comes close to its UI.
FreshRSS self hosted. Just navigate to the website in your browser, install it to android via a browser ‘app’. Assign the app to a gesture.
Now i swipe from the left and my RSS opens. Fully self hosted with no tracking beyond the websites you visit.
I installed Read You for my android client. I don’t have the fancy gesture set up though.
I use Feeder on android from fdroid. It was like a breath of fresh air going through a list of things I’m interested in, reading articles, and not getting sucked into the comments because there just aren’t any.
Added bonus, its very limited so there’s no doom scrolling, and refreshing the feed only updates with something new like every few hours. Spend a lot less time on my phone now.
TBH I just use the Feeder app on my phone. Fully self-contained. No account, no server, no middleman of any kind. Just the app.
I’ve been meaning to set up something more elaborate, but this really does work fine, and I like to mention it in these threads for anyone who’s interested in RSS but thinks it’s a big lift to set up. It can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Download an app and start adding publications that interest you. That’s all it takes to get started.
Don’t forget to backup your subscriptions. Its really easy, it just generates a opml textfile, which every other reader could import.
Akregator on desktop, Read You on mobile.
I use Feedbro on Firefox. It allows you to create rules for feeds with specific checks/actions (for example to filter out items that contain specific words)
NetNewsWire on iOS has been awesome for years. Free and open source to boot.
I have paid for Newsblur ever since they cancelled Google Reader. I also use elfeed on various emacs instances for project and update feeds of various types.
a pretty basic newsboat setup though i do have a script set to update it every 30 minutes (maybe i could set it to wait longer, i dont need immediate news forever)
TheOldReader.com
Free for 100 feeds, although it added a small ad in the home page recently, which can be blocked btw.
News Explorer on macOS, iOS and ipadOS. Syncs everything, so whatever device you pick up, you can continue reading where you left off. Also supports following people on Mastodon and YouTube channels via RSS.
Yeah, this has been fantastic. Oh, and it can convert the R-word to a feed. ;)
I use it for podcasts, the app is gPodder but doesn’t require a gPodder account. It does have a search function though.
Mines very basic I just replaced the Google feed using Octopi launcher so a swipe left opens capyreader instead. It’s recent so haven’t put all that much on there just UK headlines some basic tech stuff and the onion of course.
Nextcloud News and its app