Search for the right RSS client
RSS/Atom remains one of my favourite pieces of technology. A simple solution to a huge problem - how to follow news and articles without getting overloaded?
RSS certainly already hit its prime maybe 10 years ago and gradually fell out of the mainstream view after Google discontinued their Google Reader RSS feed application, and when Facebook and Twitter replaced news for most people. I admit, I too stopped using RSS for some time, seeing as I could just get all the stuff from algorithms which were presented to me at that time.
I came back. Algorithms are nice in theory and definitely useful in some cases, however in the hands of greedy capitalists they just turn into a money printing machine. By feeding the users whatever keeps them scrolling. Without any thought about the impact. RSS is the opposite of this approach. It requires the user to think. To think what to follow. I have to curate my RSS collection. I also treat it as a collection, a library of useful sites I enjoy reading.
This is why I need an RSS feed reader in my life. And to find a good one means work.
For the past few years I have been using FreshRSS. A self-hosted solution based on PHP that was both simple and complicated at the same time. But it worked for my needs. Until it didn't. I started to see more and more feed errors and I just simply couldn't look at them anymore. I didn't mind its kinda clunky user interface or general slowness, RSS is not a fast-paced world, its main advantage is that you have time, nothing gets lost in an never-ending stream of new content if you login an hour later. But the random errors started to get distracting. FreshRSS is still a solid product and I would recommend to anyone who is willing to put time into maintaining it for them. I just don't have that time.
I started my search for a new tool. And immediately asked myself - "Does it need to be self-hosted or is local just fine?".
Generally I check my feeds on two devices only - my Mac and my Pixel. Local client would mean a painful maintenance of the reader feeds library on two devices. Nothing terrible, but nothing great either. But since I am using a Pixel now, there simply isn't any "good enough" reader that wouldn't irk me in some way. Most of the FOSS RSS readers have questionable design choices. Either they look like they have been styled by the most anti-social backend engineer on the team or they just waste precious space.
I used to use NetNewsWire on both, the Mac and the iPhone (when I used it). It was good enough, synced over iCloud and the Mac version seemed to be very stable, but would suffer sometimes from random drags.
Self-hosted option was the clear answer so I started looking for another one. I immediately pre-selected three candidates and tried them out: Miniflux, CommaFeed and Fusion.
Fusion got eliminated right away. However I tried to import my existing feeds list, it just either didn't accept it, or it didn't create the categories for the feeds.
CommaFeed simply works. It is fast, looks great both on mobile and desktop, the list of articles (I always opt for the most compact list as possible) is nicely structured and easy to navigate through.
Miniflux worked like a charm from the beginning and its minimalistic UI is cute. It is sometimes a bit confusing and not easy to read, but once I got used to the UI, I started to appreciate it. I've setup an instance on Pikapods about a week ago and since then haven't seen any issues with my RSS consumption. Miniflux seems to just work, I don't have to dedicate any time to figuring out any issues or settings and Pikapods is actually a nice platform for such instances (btw they also offer all the other RSS readers I mentioned).