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Show HN: I've Implemented a RSS Reader
- wccrawford 3y agoNo data collection and no ads and no microtransactions? I'm a little surprised to see that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- StreamSphere 3y agoInitially I coded this RSS reader for my personal use and decided to put it on the store so that it wouldn't be just for me. I find it more motivating
- sphars 3y agoLooks great, and I like the simple, no-frills/IAPs model of this. Any chance you could integrate with RSS aggregators, like FreshRSS, miniflux, ttrss or any of the other self-hosted aggregators? I use FreshRSS and I like having my feeds synced no matter what device I view it on. The Android clients for FreshRSS[0] are a little lacking IMO or a bit out of date so it'd be great to see something new. [0]: https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS#apis--native-apps https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS#apis--native-apps
- StreamSphere 3y agoTo be honest, it's something I'm less familiar with and at the moment I've mostly given priority to something local. I'll take a closer look and see what the possibilities are.
- talhah 3y agoI'd recommend you to look at Fever API since alot of different aggregators support it and its well documented. Best way to reach as many people as possible as well.
- StreamSphere 3y agoThanks, I'll look into it
- hammyhavoc 3y agoIf you do anything with this, I'd love to hear about it. I'm another FreshRSS mega geek.
- 101008 3y agoHacking top comment: I remember FeedBurner was a wrapper around your feed that provided stats (the famous button with the counter was a lovely thing from the best times of internet). Is there something similar now?
- aaronax 3y agoAnyone could implement this. The User-Agent of the feed request should include a subscriber count for each service that is downloading your feed to provide to its users. Examples: https://www.jefftk.com/p/looking-at-rss-user-agents https://www.jefftk.com/p/looking-at-rss-user-agents
- PaulHoule 3y agoSee also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software) Unfortunately there don't seem to be many planets anymore. My YOShInOn RSS reader has a Tik-Tok like interface and trains a machine learning model to learn my preferences. The typical cycle I use it on is 2 days in which it might find 6000 feed items, it shows me 300, and I might skim another 100 on special screens that score high on certain models or that fill in gaps. It is subscribed to 110 feeds through SuperFeedr which costs about 10 cents a feed per month that's affordable at my scale. I'd like to be subscribed to 1500+ independent blogs that post once a month or once a week but I can't afford to do that with SuperFeedr so I think sometimes about retrofitting the front end but really overpolling those independent blogs 20-50x is for the birds. People could post their items to ActivityPub but barring that I really wish there were more Planets out there because it would be simple and cost effective to subscribe to 1 Planet that itself sucks in content from 50 blogs.
- kohbo 3y agoThis is exactly where I am with FreshRSS. Having it "installed" as a web app is OK but not quite what I want.
- smithza 3y agoOn iOS install ReadKit which can interact with a very nice interface to FreshRSS. I self-host FreshRSS and it works perfectly, syncing with the server so when I go to the computer, it is up-to-date with what I have opened. I do not know if ReadKit is on Android.
- wlesieutre 3y agoReeder is another nice (iOS) client with FreshRSS support https://www.reederapp.com/ https://www.reederapp.com/
- plutokras 3y agoReeder is the app I use the most. It does its job perfectly and nothing more. I love it.
- wlesieutre 3y agoAnd iCloud sync!
- Valuables1920 3y ago+1 FreshRSS integration would be awesome, I agree that Android lacks good apps for this. I am using FreshRSS as a webapp at the moment which is okayish but a nice looking app would be much better.
- nirav72 3y agoI recently discovered CommaFeed and I am self-hosting it. It's somewhat similar to Google Reader in look and feel. https://github.com/Athou/commafeed https://github.com/Athou/commafeed
- sphars 3y agoI've seen this one pop up recently as alternative to FreshRSS. While not as many features as FreshRSS, I like the direction CommaFeed is going. Have you tried FreshRSS and if so, how it compares?
- nirav72 3y agoI've been using FreshRSS for a couple years. While it was fine, I found CommaFeed's display view mode options a lot better. It's right there under the user menu dropdown and allows for easy toggling between Compact, Detailed or Expanded view modes without going into a configuration screen or switch pages. I know all of that is possible in FreshRSS using third-party community extensions. But I just find it easy to use and closely resembles from what I remember about Google Reader. Maybe because its new and a change to what I've been using.
- uneekname 3y agoI'm getting a 404 error at this URL
- StreamSphere 3y agoNormally this is the address : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.niviva.rssreader.streamsphere https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.niviva.rss... StreamSphere - RSS Reader is the app name on the play store
- verisimi 3y agoIt looks good.. and I'm looking for a simple rss feed. But I don't think it displays all the tags - eg I know some entries in my subs reference a file that should be downloadable.. but there's no reference or visibility of that.
- StreamSphere 3y agoThanks for the feedbacks what tags are they missing?
- verisimi 3y agoI think it's the enclosure tag
- StreamSphere 3y agoThe parser uses enclosures for images only. If you wish you can give me more details so I can see why (url ...)
- verisimi 3y agoFrom https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_enclosure https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_enclosure <enclosure url="http://example.com/file.mp3 http://example.com/file.mp3" length="123456789" type="audio/mpeg" />
- StreamSphere 3y agoThis is normal, at the moment only images (jpg, gifs...) are displayed in the feed. I've yet to add the ability to read other formats, like mp3 here in future update
- dvh 3y agoAdding URL is too difficult, I had to click 20x to add simple URL of RSS feed. It should be like this: click on hamburger menu, choose "add feed", paste url, done.
- StreamSphere 3y agoThanks for the feedback. In fact I hadn't worried about that because I thought that adding sources isn't something frequent even if it's a bit long at first and I thought that adding an "add source" button in the hamburger menu would be annoying since it wouldn't be used often.
- ssivark 3y agoIt's uncommon in "regular" usage, but has a much higher likelihood in the workflow of new users trying out your app :-)
- StreamSphere 3y agoI understand the problem, I'll think of a solution to facilitate this. I didn't notice as I know my application too well.
- SushiHippie 3y agoYou should add "Show HN:" in front of the title, if you are the creator
- StreamSphere 3y agoDone
- pauby 3y agoIs it open-source? I'm assuming not as I don't see a repository URL on the Play store or here, but thought I'd ask.
- StreamSphere 3y agoNot at the moment, but I'm hesitating. I've already started to Open sourced the suggested sources in the app : https://github.com/Martinviv/rss-sources https://github.com/Martinviv/rss-sources . You can also ask me for design details if you want ...
- wahnfrieden 3y agoBy country, not language?
- StreamSphere 3y agoYes, because later on, when I have topics in languages other than English, I plan to allow users to have a language filter that will display the topics and countries that correspond to the selected language. But at the moment, as I only have topics in English and news sources by country, I've kept this structure
- jp57 3y agoThoughts on pros and cons vs NetNewsWire?
- latexr 3y agoNetNewsWire is exclusive for iOS and macOS. This app is exclusive to Android. They don’t overlap.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- matznerd 3y agoIs anyone out there looking for an RSS style feed of their email? In a sort of non-disruptive scrolling mechanism... possibly with AI summary of the emails. This would not replace your inbox, but allow you you to not have to go into your inbox until you want to, but to be able to stay up to date with what is going on in your email...?
- reddalo 3y agoHey.com has a similar function called "The Feed", but it's a paid email service.
- matznerd 3y agoTheir "The Feed" is a feed of the newsletters which is interesting. I guess what I am thinking is more along the lines of if those were in a more condensed feed with a TL;DR type summary above it. I am also thinking of a UI that is more of a passive quiet updating feed that isn't distracting.
- remram 3y agoWhat's the difference between that and your inbox? What's the point of "no having to go in your inbox" if you still see your inbox?
- matznerd 3y agoThe point is more generally to allow you to go longer without having to go to your inbox and/or to be able to turn of notifications for email. The RSS comes in quietly and the body and preview is an AI summarized. Often times I'm CC'd on an email thread and can't always know what is going on just from previews, so an AI summary as the headlines would be very helpful to be able to know what is going on, without having to go into my inbox...
- remram 3y agoWhy is it easier/better to go to your RSS client than your "inbox" i.e. email client? What is the point of "going longer without having to go to your inbox" if you have to go to your RSS reader instead?
- grigio 3y agoI prefere a selfhosted webapp like YARR
- gumby 3y agoWhich clients still have filters? I use ReadKit but the upgraded version to modern Mac frameworks isn’t yet as good as version 2 (which is no longer signed, unfortunately). I don’t blame the author in the slightest for the upgrade — really, a rewrite it seems — which has some enhancements over v2, but it takes a while for something like that to reach parity with the previous version.
- graypegg 3y agoI would love to see some different concepts for RSS reader UI. The left pane with a big list of feeds, and a vertical list of articles does work but I think there's room to expand there. A more passive newspaper-grid layout would be cool. Selectively chosen headlines and images, tap to see full article. Each personal "newspaper page" is static, it won't change after it's been viewed, only new posts added to the bottom. Then you could scroll back thru pages per-day.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- moritonal 3y agoThis is a funny case where I want there to be a business modal. The app probably is great, but without some kind of financial backing part of me just expects this will atrophy, or be sold to an ad company in a couple years. I can't think of a successful open-source app that is free, given the amount of work required to sustain an app on Android.
- gnicholas 3y agoIt sure is burdensome to maintain an app that constantly needs updating. But isn't this an appt that could be updated infrequently, once the basic functionality is in place? That could be sustained by a low-cost subscription ($10/yr?), or possibly even a one-time charge of $20 or something.
- StreamSphere 3y agoIndeed, just maintaining it isn't very complicated, but finding features for which users would be willing to pay $10/month seems complicated to me, as the play store is very competitive.
- moritonal 3y agoI should expand. Let's take two worlds, one where you charge nothing, and one where you do. In the first, I get an app, but you get nothing but a pat on the back. I enjoy something, you don't, eventually you get resentful seeing thousands of people using what you built so you decide to make money off it. At this point, it doesn't really matter how you do it, either with ads, subscription, or secret dark-web stuff, you'll change the game and your users will not trust you as an author and just uninstall the app. In the other, you charge a one-off £4.99. This is really quite small, but I now know the author gets some value from me and we've entered into a understandable contract. You are in the same place as before, but now ~$4.99 richer, which is nice. In the future, you make a bit of money and want to make more money. So you can now raise the price which will affect only future users. You can now also produce other apps, which I'll also look at those and think, well, the first app was good, I'll try those because I trust the author.
- vivzkestrel 3y agoanyone knows a good RSS aggregator without a frontend, just need a backend preferably in python
- c6401 3y agoIt's not a 100% match for the requirements but I use miniflux for that. It does have a very basic interface that I never use. But it supports a number of API protocols, so probably most of the clients that supports some backend will work with it. Also it seem to be implemented in Golang.
- Anuttam 3y agoToday only I was thinking about something like this which enables reading new blogs on mobile instead of desktops with RSS feed. Will surely give it a try
- 0xEF 3y agoThoughts after 20 min of use: I like how simple the UX is, there's just a no-bells-and-whistles presentation, which is good. Thanks for not implementing accounts and data collection, as well. This is a big selling point for me on anything I use these days, although I admittedly see where account creation is useful, so I am a bit more forgiving on that. My complaints are that it seems cumbersome to add your own sources. Darkmode also seems to be missing? These days, this should be the default mode for any reader app, let the users who want to suffer a blinding white background turn it on if they wish. The "mark all as read" button is in an awkward spot, too easy to fat-thumb when scrolling right handed. Maybe next that in a hamburger menu along with other customization options. Great start, for sure, and so far it feels like a "cleaner" experience than other mobile RSS readers I've tried recently. I'm not necessarily interested in device syncing, but I can see where some users might want that, though that would require some kind of account or token implementation.
- StreamSphere 3y agoThanks for the feedback. I'm glad to see that ux is appreciated. I agree that adding sources could be simplified, it's my least favorite part to implement and I notice it shows. For the Darkmode there is one, you need to press the 3 dots at the top right, select settings and then press the first parameter "Night Mode". However, I don't think it's a good idea to make it the default, as some people find it harder to read text written in white, and there's a lot of debate on the subject on which is better. For the button, I was inspired by other popular applications that also put a button there, if the button is too distracting, it can be hidden from the settings, it's the setting below "Night Mode" which is "Display Read-All Button" but indeed the Hamburger menu could be better exploited. If there's synchronization, you'll need an account, but you'll still be able to access the application even if you don't have an account. Synchronization also requires servers, so it would have a cost. The application should be profitable enough, so it's hard to envisage this feature at the moment.
- chris-orgmenta 3y agoPolished, independent, no data collection, clean, feature rich, ostensibly ethical - lovely I wonder where would I even start, if I wanted to bring rss into my personal Supabase instance. Chron job periodically triggering a serverless function that asks a website for the requested feed (just async fetch), then using some js rss parser library, then insert to supabase table? I really have no knowledge about rss other than as a consumer.
- StreamSphere 3y agoThanks for the feedback. For whatever you want to do with supabase, I don't know. The application I made doesn't use instances, everything is local, even the parsing.
- gio 3y agoGreat job! Congrats!
- StreamSphere 3y agoThank you !