bahdotsh/feedr

Source: https://github.com/bahdotsh/feedr

Feedr - Terminal RSS Feed Reader 📰

Feedr is a feature-rich terminal-based RSS feed reader written in Rust. It provides a clean, intuitive TUI interface for managing and reading RSS feeds with elegant visuals and smooth keyboard navigation.

Demo

Features

• Dashboard View: See the latest articles across all your feeds, sorted chronologically
• Feed Management: Subscribe to and organize multiple RSS/Atom feeds
• Feed Auto-Discovery: Paste any webpage URL and Feedr will detect and offer to subscribe to its RSS/Atom feeds
• Starred Articles: Save articles for later with a dedicated starred view
• Categories: Organize feeds into custom categories with create, rename, and delete support
• Tree View: Browse feeds in a hierarchical tree grouped by category
• Advanced Filtering: Filter articles by category, age, author, read status, starred status, and content length
• Dual Themes: Switch between a dark cyberpunk theme and a light zen theme with t
• Live Search: Instantly search across all feed titles and article content
• Summary View: “What’s New” screen shows articles added since your last session with per-feed stats
• Read/Unread Tracking: Persistent read state tracking across sessions
• Mark All Read: Quickly mark all visible items as read with m
• Article Preview: Toggle an inline preview pane in the dashboard view
• Link Extraction: Extract and browse all links from an article with l
• Full-Text Extraction: Strip away summaries and read the actual article content inline via Mozilla Readability — manual on Shift+F, or auto-extract on refresh per feed with fulltext = true
• Help Overlay: Press ? for a scrollable keybinding reference overlay
• OPML Import: Bulk import feeds from OPML files via feedr --import <file.opml>
• Browser Integration: Open articles in your default browser
• Mouse Support: Click to select items and scroll with the mouse wheel
• Background Refresh: Automatic feed updates with configurable intervals and smart rate limiting
• Rate Limiting: Per-domain request throttling prevents “too many requests” errors (ideal for Reddit feeds)
• Vim-Style Navigation: Use j/k alongside arrow keys for navigation
• Rich Content Display: HTML-to-text conversion with clean article formatting
• Authenticated Feeds: Support for custom HTTP headers per feed (e.g., Authorization: Bearer ...) for private/authenticated RSS feeds
• Compact Mode: Automatic compact layout for small terminals (≤30 rows), with manual always/never override in config
• CLI Config Management: Get, set, and list configuration from the command line (feedr config), or use the interactive TUI config editor (feedr config --tui)
• Configurable Keybindings: Remap any key action via the [keybindings] section in config.toml
• External-Command Hooks: Newsboat-style macros (pipe-to, exec) bound to keys, plus exec_on_new notifications fired per new item — all with shell-free argument templating
• Configurable: Customize timeouts, themes, UI behavior, and default feeds via TOML config
• XDG Compliant: Follows standard directory specifications for configuration and data storage

Installation

Prerequisites

• Rust and Cargo (install from https://rustup.rs/)

Using Cargo Install (Recommended)

cargo install feedr

Arch Linux (AUR)

Feedr is available on the AUR. Install it using your preferred AUR helper:

paru -S feedr
# or
yay -S feedr

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/bahdotsh/feedr.git
cd feedr
cargo build --release

The binary will be available at target/release/feedr.

Usage

Run the application:

feedr

OPML Import

Import feeds from an OPML file:

feedr --import feeds.opml

Configuration Management

View and modify settings from the command line:

feedr config list                      # List all settings with current values
feedr config get ui.theme              # Get a single value
feedr config set ui.theme light        # Set a value (with validation)
feedr config --tui                     # Open interactive TUI config editor

Available config keys use dot-notation (e.g. general.max_dashboard_items, network.http_timeout, ui.theme, ui.compact_mode). Run feedr config list to see all keys. Feed management (default_feeds) is only available through the TUI editor.

Quick Start

1. When you open Feedr for the first time, press a to add a feed
2. Enter a valid RSS feed URL (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/rss)
3. You can also press 1, 2, or 3 to quickly add Hacker News, TechCrunch, or BBC News
4. Use arrow keys (or j/k) to navigate and Enter to view items
5. Press o to open the current article in your browser
6. Press t to toggle between dark and light themes

Keyboard Controls

All keybindings below show their defaults. You can remap any action via the [keybindings] section in your config file — see Configurable Keybindings.

General Navigation

Dashboard View

Feed List View

Feed Items View

Item Detail View

Starred View

Categories View

Filter Mode (press f on Dashboard)

Mouse Support

Configuration

Feedr supports customization through a TOML configuration file that follows XDG Base Directory specifications. You can edit the file directly, use feedr config get/set from the command line, or use feedr config --tui for an interactive editor.

Configuration File Location

• Linux/macOS: ~/.config/feedr/config.toml
• Windows: %APPDATA%\feedr\config.toml

The configuration file is automatically generated with default values on first run if it doesn’t exist.

Available Settings

# Feedr Configuration File

[general]
max_dashboard_items = 100           # Maximum number of items shown on dashboard
auto_refresh_interval = 0           # Auto-refresh interval in seconds (0 = disabled)
refresh_enabled = false             # Enable automatic background refresh
refresh_rate_limit_delay = 2000     # Delay in milliseconds between requests to same domain

[network]
http_timeout = 15              # HTTP request timeout in seconds
user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Feedr/1.0; +https://github.com/bahdotsh/feedr)"

[ui]
tick_rate = 100                # UI update rate in milliseconds
error_display_timeout = 3000   # Error message duration in milliseconds
theme = "dark"                 # Theme: "dark" (cyberpunk) or "light" (zen)
compact_mode = "auto"          # Compact layout: "auto", "always", or "never"

# Optional: Define default feeds to load on first run
[[default_feeds]]
url = "https://example.com/feed.xml"
category = "News"

# Authenticated feed with custom HTTP headers
[[default_feeds]]
url = "https://private.example.com/feed.xml"
[default_feeds.headers]
Authorization = "Bearer your_token_here"

Configuration Options Explained

General Settings

• max_dashboard_items: Controls how many items are displayed on the dashboard (default: 100)
• auto_refresh_interval: Automatically refresh feeds at specified interval in seconds (0 disables auto-refresh)
• refresh_enabled: Master switch to enable/disable automatic background refresh (default: false)
• refresh_rate_limit_delay: Delay in milliseconds between requests to the same domain to prevent “too many requests” errors (default: 2000ms). This is especially useful for Reddit feeds and other rate-limited services.

Network Settings

• http_timeout: Timeout for HTTP requests when fetching feeds (useful for slow connections)
• user_agent: Custom User-Agent string for HTTP requests

UI Settings

• tick_rate: How frequently the UI updates in milliseconds (lower = more responsive, higher = less CPU usage)
• error_display_timeout: How long error messages are displayed in milliseconds
• theme: Choose between "dark" (cyberpunk aesthetic with neon colors) or "light" (zen minimalist with organic colors). Can also be toggled at runtime with t.
• compact_mode: Controls the compact layout for small terminals. "auto" (default) enables compact mode when terminal height is ≤30 rows, "always" forces compact mode, and "never" disables it. Compact mode uses single-line items, a minimal title bar, and an abbreviated help bar to maximize screen real estate.

Background Refresh Example

To enable automatic refresh every 5 minutes with rate limiting:

[general]
refresh_enabled = true
auto_refresh_interval = 300  # 5 minutes
refresh_rate_limit_delay = 2000  # 2 seconds between requests to same domain

Note: Rate limiting groups feeds by domain and staggers requests to prevent hitting API limits. For example, if you have multiple Reddit feeds, they will be fetched with a 2-second delay between each request to avoid getting blocked.

Default Feeds

You can define feeds to be automatically loaded on first run:

[[default_feeds]]
url = "https://news.ycombinator.com/rss"
category = "Tech"

[[default_feeds]]
url = "https://example.com/feed.xml"
category = "News"

# Optional per-feed refresh threshold (seconds). When this elapses since
# the last refresh, the next auto-refresh tick is triggered — currently
# all feeds are refreshed together (no true selective per-feed refresh).
# Requires `general.refresh_enabled = true`.
[[default_feeds]]
url = "https://example.com/fast-feed.xml"
refresh_interval = 60

Authenticated Feeds

Some RSS feeds require authentication or custom HTTP headers. You can configure per-feed headers:

[[default_feeds]]
url = "https://private.example.com/feed.xml"
[default_feeds.headers]
Authorization = "Bearer your_api_token"

[[default_feeds]]
url = "https://another-api.example.com/rss"
[default_feeds.headers]
X-API-Key = "your_api_key"
Cookie = "session=abc123"

Headers are sent with every request for that feed, including refreshes.

Full-Text Extraction

Most RSS feeds ship only short summaries. Feedr can fetch the linked article URL and run Mozilla Readability (via the dom_smoothie crate) to extract the actual article body and render it inline.

• Manual: in the article detail view, press Shift+F to extract the focused article. Press Shift+F again to toggle back to the original summary, or after a failure to retry.
• Auto on refresh: set fulltext = true on a feed and Feedr will auto-extract newly-seen items on each refresh (same “no firehose” rule as exec_on_new — the first observation of a feed seeds silently).

[[default_feeds]]
url = "https://example.com/summary-only-feed.xml"
fulltext = true

Notes:

• Extracted content is in-memory only — it is not persisted to disk. A restart re-extracts on demand.
• Per-feed auth headers are not sent to the article URL (article URLs are typically third-party hosts; forwarding Authorization would leak credentials).
• Pages with very short extracted bodies (likely JS-rendered or behind a wall) fail gracefully and fall back to showing the original summary.

External-Command Hooks

Feedr supports newsboat-style external commands for two workflows: macros (key-triggered chains that act on the focused article) and exec_on_new (a notification hook fired per newly-seen item after each refresh).

Commands are not run through a shell. Templates are tokenized once at config load, and %X placeholders are substituted into individual argv tokens — feed content can never break out of an argument. For pipes, redirection, or globbing, write a small shell script and invoke that.

Template Variables

Expanded in every argv token of macro and hook commands:

Macros

A macro binds a key to an ordered chain of steps. Trigger with <prefix><key> (default prefix is ,). Steps are separated by ;. An optional trailing -- "description" overrides the help-overlay label.

[macros]
y = 'open-in-browser ; pipe-to "yt-dlp %u"'
w = 'pipe-to "wallabag-cli add %u" -- "Save to Wallabag"'
n = 'pipe-to "tee /tmp/out.txt" stdin=metadata'

[macro_options]
prefix = ","                  # the macro-prefix key
pipe_default_stdin = "body"   # body | title | url | metadata | none

Step kinds:

• <action> — invoke a built-in action. Supported in macros: open-in-browser, toggle-star, toggle-read, mark-all-read, refresh, toggle-theme, extract-links, fetch-full-text, help.
• pipe-to "cmd %u" [stdin=…] — suspend the TUI, run the command, and pipe article content to its stdin. stdin is one of body (default), title, url, metadata, or none.
• exec "cmd %u" — spawn the command detached (no stdin, no terminal takeover).

Chains halt on the first step error. Press Esc after the prefix to cancel; an unbound follow-up surfaces a “No macro bound” error. Macros are also rendered in the help overlay (?).

exec_on_new Notifications

Fire a command once per newly-seen item after each refresh. The first successful fetch of each feed seeds the seen-set silently — you do not get a firehose on initial load or first run.

[hooks]
exec_on_new = 'notify-send "New: %t" "%f"'

Children are spawned detached so the TUI never blocks on them. Crash semantics are at-most-once: feedr persists the seen-set before spawning, so a kill mid-fire loses a notification rather than re-firing on the next launch. Prefer idempotent commands (e.g. wallabag-cli add is safe; mail-me is not).

Security Notes

• The shell is never invoked, so feed content in %t / %a / etc. cannot escape an argument.
• Do not wrap your command in sh -c "... %t ..." — that reintroduces shell injection through item titles. Write a script file and invoke it instead.
• ~ / $HOME / $VAR are not expanded — use absolute paths.
• If a macro’s command template has unbalanced quotes or names an unknown action, feedr surfaces a startup warning rather than failing silently at trigger time.

Configurable Keybindings

Remap any action by adding a [keybindings] section to your config file. Each action can be bound to a single key string or an array of keys:

[keybindings]
quit = "x"                          # Single key
move_up = ["Up", "k", "w"]         # Multiple keys
force_quit = "Ctrl+x"              # Modifier keys
toggle_theme = "F5"                # Function keys

Available actions:

Supported key formats: Single characters (q, ?, /), special keys (Enter, Space, Tab, Esc, Backspace, Up, Down, Left, Right, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown, Delete, F1–F5), and modifier combos (Ctrl+q, Shift+Tab, Alt+x).

Data Storage

Feedr stores your bookmarks, categories, read/unread state, and starred articles in:

• Linux/macOS: ~/.local/share/feedr/feedr_data.json
• Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\feedr\feedr_data.json

Backwards Compatibility

Feedr automatically migrates data from older versions to the new XDG-compliant locations. Your existing data will be preserved and automatically moved to the correct location on first run.

Dependencies

• ratatui: Terminal UI framework
• crossterm: Terminal manipulation
• reqwest: HTTP client (with gzip/deflate/brotli support)
• feed-rs: RSS and Atom feed parsing
• html2text: HTML to text conversion
• chrono: Date and time handling
• serde: Serialization/deserialization
• clap: Command-line argument parsing
• opml: OPML import support
• toml: Configuration file parsing
• scraper: HTML parsing for feed auto-discovery
• url: URL parsing and manipulation
• dom_smoothie: Mozilla Readability port for full-text extraction
• encoding_rs: Charset detection for non-UTF-8 article pages
• shlex: Shell-style tokenization for macro/hook command templates

License

MIT

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request