FreshRSS is a nice hosted RSS reader

I have used TT-RSS for a while now, but can no longer recommend it for reasons I don’t want to get into right now. Luckily, a good alternative seems to exist in FreshRSS.

Similar to TT, FreshRSS is a self-hosted website that you can add your RSS feeds to in order to auto-refresh and view them. It keeps track of the ones you’ve already read and acts as a standalone RSS reader in the browser, like the good old Google Reader of yore.

I found it exceedingly easy to set up with Docker, which is always nice. The instructions were clearer than they are for TT, as well. IT seems to be less bloated as well.

Extensions

I immediately installed some good extensions. CustomCSS and ThreePanesView are must-haves for me in order to get something usable and good looking (of course, this is extremely subjective).

Custom CSS

The Custom CSS extension is useful for me because I find the default themes (there are many, but they share a common base) have fonts that are too large, and an immense header that wastes precious screen real estate for my non-4K monitor. So I’ve created some simple custom CSS that I find works well:

.header {
  height: 30px;
}

.header > .item {
  padding: 0px;
}

html, body {
  font-size: 90%;
}

.flux .item {
  padding: .05em 0 !important;
}

.btn {
  padding: 0 10px;
  min-height: 25px;
}

This simply tidies up the header size, padding of buttons, and default font size to be more inline with what I prefer.

ThreePanesView

This simply adds a third pane to the right that displays the content. I prefer this to inline content as I like to see the list while I read. Also, I usually browse fullscreen, so it feels better to have less empty space.

Mobile

I have yet to try out the mobile experience. I suspect I may be able to find a native Android app that works well, as there are several. But the interface is adaptive to mobile, so it may be good enough to use the browser. Depends on how it ‘feels’ to use!