Who still uses news feeds in 2020? Young people today do not even know what news feeds are anymore. But the news feed is far from obsolete. Almost every blogging platform offers an Atom or RSS feed.
I have been using RSS feeds for years to retrieve news in a structured way or to find out when new software versions are available, security vulnerabilities have been announced, and so on.
For several years, I was very happy with Tiny Tiny RSS. It is an application written in PHP that you host yourself and can extend with plugins. I have since switched to the much more lightweight Miniflux.
Miniflux was written in Golang and can conveniently be run via Docker. The application itself uses hardly any resources. A PostgreSQL database is required for data storage. That too can conveniently be run in a Docker container.
Here you can see the docker-compose.yml from my Docker setup.
version: '3' services: miniflux: container_name: miniflux image: miniflux/miniflux:latest restart: unless-stopped depends_on: - miniflux_db environment: - DATABASE_URL=postgres://miniflux:<database-password>@miniflux_db/miniflux?sslmode=disable labels: - "traefik.enable=true" - "traefik.http.routers.miniflux.rule=Host(`miniflux.example.com`)" - "traefik.http.routers.miniflux.tls=true" - "traefik.http.routers.miniflux.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt" - "traefik.http.services.miniflux.loadbalancer.server.port=8080" miniflux_db: container_name: miniflux_db image: postgres:latest restart: unless-stopped networks: - mynet environment: - POSTGRES_USER=miniflux - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=<database-password> volumes: - ./volumes/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
I host the application at home on a small Intel NUC and run a small reverse proxy with Traefik in front of it. This works great, and the Traefik proxy also obtains its own SSL certificates automatically through Letsencrypt.
My Requirements
I use Android on my mobile phone and would like to access my news feeds from there. In fact, I read most of my news on my phone.
When I am at the office, I want to access the news from my Macbook. At home, I have a workstation running Arch Linux.
In an ideal world, this setup lets you access your news feeds from anywhere.
My feed setup
Miniflux offers a REST API. Unfortunately, it is not very widely supported yet. So the Fever API is the interface of choice. Fever is actually the protocol of an outdated service that has since been discontinued. But there are still a number of applications on the market that speak this protocol. I had also equipped my previous Tiny Tiny RSS solution with a Fever plugin.
Android
On Android, I installed the Readably app. It can connect to the Fever API.
You can see the result here:
Apple MacBook
In my view, the best feed reader app for Mac is Reeder. Version 4 is now available. Although version 3 already did everything I needed, I bought an upgrade to support the developer. There is not much to say about it. The application is extremely stable and synchronizes with my Miniflux server without any problems.
Reeder 4 app on my Macbook
Linux
On my Linux system, I always liked using the FeedReader app as a Flatpak. The app offers synchronization with Tiny Tiny RSS. Unfortunately, it does not support Fever or Miniflux. I am considering adding this to the app myself. Unfortunately, I do not have the time for it. But that would be my ideal solution, and everything would be perfect for me.
Alternatively, you can also use the Miniflux server through its web interface. This can also be installed as a PWA. It works once you have installed a Google Chrome browser.
Miniflux PWA
What I am missing in the application here, though, is a view grouped by category. And I only want to read the unread posts in those categories. But when necessary, I also read my news through the Miniflux interface.
Miniflux also offers interfaces to various other systems. The application is deliberately kept small and lean.
Here is the official feature list:
- Supported feed formats: Atom, RSS 1.0/2.0, RDF and JSON
- OPML file import/export
- OPML URL import
- Support multiple enclosures/attachments (Podcasts, videos, music, and images)
- Play videos from YouTube channels directly inside Miniflux
- Categories
- Bookmarks
- Fetch website icons (favicons)
- Save articles to third-party services
- Available in Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish
https://miniflux.app/features.html
What do you think about news feeds? Feel free to leave a comment.
Update (Android) 25.01.2023
Unfortunately, the developer has removed Readably from the Play Store. You can continue using the app if it is installed. Unfortunately, there are no more updates. On new phones, you then have to get the APK from somewhere, which is not necessarily a safe solution.
So far, I have not been able to find a good free replacement and have now gone with the paid FocusReader app, where I now keep paying 7 euros for a subscription. So far, it is definitely worth it to me, because I use the app every day.
The app synchronizes very reliably with my Miniflux server through the Fever API.
Update (Mac) 23.12.2020
Unfortunately, the new Reeder 5 no longer supports fever. That means it can no longer synchronize with Miniflux either, which is a real shame. Presumably, too few users were using it.
As an alternative, I now use the ReaderKit app.
ReaderKit on the MacBook Pro 2019.
Update (Linux) 04.01.2019
The FeedReader project that I had been using on my Linux workstation was discontinued. Fortunately, though, the developer is contributing to a new project called News-Flash. The new program is a remake of FeedReader and is being reimplemented in Rust.
I compiled the source code, and lo and behold, the program already runs fairly smoothly and can use the Miniflux API directly (not the Fever API). There is also a connection to Feedbin. A Feedly integration seems to be in the works too.
