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Show HN: DitchTheBell – Linux-based desktop notifier for RSS/Atom feeds (github.com)

50 points by Escher21 ↗ HN
Ditch The Bell is a desktop notifier for RSS/Atom feeds that lets you closely configure features of the freedesktop notification specification to unlock the most customizable feed notification experience possible on Linux.

I developed this program because I wanted a single, centralized location to easily manage my desktop notifications for all of the various websites I want to get updates from. Before creating this application, I found existing solutions unsatisfactory due to the following reasons:

- Built-In Notification Services: Some websites offer built-in desktop notification services, but these often require an account, staying signed in, and running a browser service worker continuously on your PC.

- RSS Readers: While existing RSS readers with notification support provide a simple solution, these project balance numerous aspects of reader development. Notifications and their configurations are usually not the priority in these projects.

- Custom Scripting: Implementing custom scripts using general-purpose notification tools like notify-send or GObject-Introspection is viable but becomes a maintenance headache as more granular control is introduced.

These alternatives are sufficient for basic notifications but lack the lightweight nature and advanced configurability that power users desire. Ditch The Bell fills this gap, offering granular control over your RSS feed notifications without the limitations of the approaches mentioned above.

Check it out!: https://github.com/EscherMoore/DitchTheBell

14 comments

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jersa
Hey, this looks promising. I think I might try it out. I'm using mako, which itself works well enough that I rarely think about it, so I might as well poke it with a stick and muck around with an alternative option becuz whyyyy not?

Thanks for posting, I'll return with some feedback should I get around to testing it out soon enough.

Escher21
It seems there may be some confusion. This project is an RSS/Atom feed notifier; it is not a notification server. It can be used with any notification server implementing the FreeDesktop Notifications Specification such as Mako, not act as an alternative. Please share your thoughts if you try it out!
zwayhowder
I like the look of this for automation of some of my GitHub notifications. We have a small engineering team and we are all drowning under the number of notifications. This could really help with managing the load.
Escher21
Nice! I have plans to add filtering to better manage larger feeds when you’re looking for specific things, so maybe that will help further.
[dead] tbaeder
[flagged]
tlhunter
And they couldn't even bother to add a screenshot.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
pvg
I have no opinion on the project itself

That's the purpose of Show HN, though.

but a 5.7MB PNG file displayed in the README

Take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

atoav
While I agree in principle, this is a "Show HN" and pointing out the annoyances with a thing is kinda the point of the whole gig, don't you think?

After all, the reason people post their projects on here is that they expect people to give them feedback on how it is perceived.

pvg
No, pointing out annoyances is not the point of the whole gig. It's constructive feedback and critique. There's definitely room for feedback on presentation, verbiage, etc. But grousing about a minor annoyance is pretty shallow even as nitpickery goes and has the tendency to eat up threads. You can see the Show HN-specific guidelines here https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
Escher21
The PNG is an art piece hand-drawn by a friend, and I wanted to preserve its quality. What is a suitable size range I should try to downscale the image to?
atoav
Just scale it down to 1080px height and save it as a jpeg with 75% quality. Nobody will ever see the difference. Most browser windows will never display that picture bigger anyways (that means you can use computationally more expensive downscaling offline vs realtime downscaling by the browser).

I wouldn't vectorize it, that would have you lose the hand-drawn feel of it.

Escher21
Okay, I've scaled it down to 1080 pixels in height as you suggested which brings it down to 1.5MB. I had to preserve the PNG format in order to maintain transparency.