I turned my RSS feeds into an e-ink newspaper to stop reading on my phone

# I turned my RSS feeds into an e-ink newspaper to stop reading on my phone Source: [https://heyjonny.dev/posts/rss-to-eink-newspaper/](https://heyjonny.dev/posts/rss-to-eink-newspaper/) I really like personal blogs\. I read them for entertainment, learning, and to keep myself updated on the latest trends in software engineering\. I prefer to read them in a horizontal position, like on a couch or a deckchair outside in the sun\. That explains why I almost never read them on my computer and always on my phone\. I don’t necessarily enjoy that, though, since it makes my eyes tired\. This never bothered me enough to actively do something about it\. But when I came across a pocket\-sized e\-reader called the X4 by Xteink, I got an idea\. At only 4\.3 inches, the X4 fits nicely in the palm of your hand\. It also has no touchscreen and no backlight, and doesn’t ship with a preinstalled bookstore\. While most people probably think of this as inconvenient or old\-fashioned, a small community has gathered around this device\. They even created an open source firmware for it called Crosspoint\.[1](https://heyjonny.dev/posts/rss-to-eink-newspaper/#user-content-fn-1) At this point I already fell in love with the whole idea and ordered myself one\. It took some time to ship it from China to Germany, and I worried the package might get stuck in customs\. Luckily it didn’t\. Once I got it, I wanted to try the stock firmware first, but it left so little impression that I can barely remember what it looked like\. Within a few seconds I disliked it and wanted to install Crosspoint\. To my greatest surprise, I had it installed after just three clicks\. I then bought a DRM\-free e\-book, copied it to the X4, and started reading\. I expected a lot more fiddling, but it just worked\. Big shout out to all the contributors, you really nailed this\. But the real reason I wanted the X4 was to read my blog posts on it instead of my phone\. I would just need to create an e\-pub from them and load them onto the X4\. My own little newspaper\. With the help of AI, I could build it in a couple of minutes\. I use Feedbin as my RSS reader, which comes with a handy API\. I just had to fetch all my unread posts, mark them as read, and create an e\-pub from them\. I also needed to filter out some feeds, since I subscribe to YouTube channels, JS\-heavy blogs, and link\-only newsletters that don’t make sense to read on e\-ink\. I won’t annoy you with the details, but if you want to take a look, you can find the project on GitHub\. I called it[feedpaper](https://github.com/jonashonecker/feedpaper)and you can install it via Homebrew\.[2](https://heyjonny.dev/posts/rss-to-eink-newspaper/#user-content-fn-2) With a freshly printed feedpaper on my X4 \(and my phone at home\), I drove to one of my favorite outdoor cafés and enjoyed a good read with a latte\. If you make your own feedpaper someday, I’d love to see a picture of it\.  1. [Crosspoint](https://crosspointreader.com/)runs not only on the[X4](https://www.xteink.com/products/xteink-x4), but also other ESP32C3 based devices\.[↩](https://heyjonny.dev/posts/rss-to-eink-newspaper/#user-content-fnref-1) 2. it didn’t make sense to me to support any OS other than macOS, but if you want to check it out and can’t get it running manually, let me know\.[↩](https://heyjonny.dev/posts/rss-to-eink-newspaper/#user-content-fnref-2)