HN Explorer

Ask HN: How do you RSS?

44 points by Grae ↗ HN
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?

73 comments

[ 182 ms ] story [ 1339 ms ] thread
Grae
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?
rbinv
That won't work unless you embed scripts into the RSS and run those (which kind of defeats the point of "really simple syndication" and would lead to JS-heavy monstrosities).
chuckgreenman
Isn't there a way to default back to a rendered image if MathJax isn't supported?
vehemenz
You could CDATA a MathJax-produced SVG, but I don't know how well that would be supported in RSS readers. I doubt accessibility extensions would work correctly either.
gpanders
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/

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obarthelemy
Firefox/Android accept all desktop extensions.
unicornporn
...and it's probably the most important reason I wont buy an iPhone.
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hprotagonist
i switched to feedly when google reader died, and carried on as normal.
mantas
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.

s9w
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.
markandrewj
Anyone have recommendations for an Android RSS reader?
staffordrj
I just started using Flym and I love it. You can also install it from F-Droid.
drdeadringer
Podcast Addict. Free with ads, chump change to make the ads go away.

It has discovery, search, and the ability to add RSS by url address too.

I use it for podcasts, webcomics, and even a comedian's "upcoming gigs" feed.

geoffhill
I use NewsBlur in Firefox and via the Android app, and I'm very happy with it.
tomjen3
I came to this post through newsblur, which does a decent job on sites that doesn't give a full feed.

Though I would want to try out a local reader that works offline, just because that would be nice.

vroomik
Moved to inoreader - free tier for up to 150 feeds, works on mobile too
nickthegreek
Another vote for inoreader. I glady pay inoreader at a higher level than features that I need in order to help ensure I never go thru a google reader debacle again. Inoreader also integrates in facebook pages, twitter accounts and youtube subscriptions to your RSS list.
fxj
I got a pro subscription and I read all my news feeds and twitter through it. I am willing to pay 50 euros per year for such a great service. I also like the android and ios apps which do a great jobs reading news on mobile devices.
TwoNineA
Self host FreshRSS and use Reeder on iOS.
vandyswa
I host my own tt-rss, and the install FeedMonkey (via my own sources.vsta.org) which provides a very nice viewer.
disposekinetics
I'm fond of FreshRSS. It almost fills the void left by Google Reader.
hombre_fatal
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.

neonate
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.
chenxiaolong
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.
ragebol
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.

agazso
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.

daledavies
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.

tmarman
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)

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

https://newsboat.org