Rethinking my RSS use

Background

Over the past month, I’ve been cleaning up and organizing my personal digital music library to bring it back to life after years of streaming era neglect. Oddly enough, that task has pushed me back into searching for and using TUI applications, as I now use mpd and rmpc to listen to my local library. I set up neomutt for email and continue looking for more TUI opportunities.

When it comes to read-it-later and RSS clients, I have been using Readwise Reader for almost a year now. It’s an expensive, but amazing system, and one I’ve configured to automatically import all my highlights into obsidian.

However… I haven’t been reading much with it lately. On top of that, I’ve been reconsidering how I take notes on what I read. I rarely use or refer back to all my blind highlighting, and the self-imposed pressure to import everything to my system has become a deterrent. It’s discouraged me from reading physical books, or even digital ones with limited Readwise import support.

Without the need to be using Readwise Reader, and the desire to have some TUI options, I started experimenting.

Trialing Apps

I started with Newsboat, a classic TUI feed reader, but I didn’t love its default configuration. So, I tried Newsraft and really enjoyed it. But it didn’t support back-ends for feeds, which I needed to sync across my devices.

Combining what I learned, I decided to set up a FreshRSS server and attempted to configure Newsboat to work more like Newsraft. I got the server up and running, but was unable to configure Newsboat to my liking.

I tried more TUI applications, including nom. Nom’s defaults and simplicity were wonderful, but it didn’t list the feed source next to each article, which made it a bit more chaotic.

I apparently couldn’t get a system that matched what I wanted… But what did I actually want?

Rethinking my needs

Reframing the problem, I thought “What am I trying to get out of RSS… Do I even NEED to worry about sync?”

After some consideration I realized I mostly want RSS to be somewhere I can go to read and have articles come to me. I don’t care about having highlights for every little thing I read anymore. If I want to note something, I’ll spin up a note for it, but I don’t need them by default. Similarly, I don’t intend to read everything in my feed, as that just adds unneeded stress to my life.

Given my new awareness, I reasoned that I didn’t actually need my feeds to sync. Having consistent read history across devices, while nice, was no longer a necessity. I now see RSS feeds as a place to get curated articles to read, from my favorite sources.

The solution

With the requirements redefined, I was able to come to a new solution:

• I use Newsraft when on my MacBook.
• As for iPhone/iPad Mini, I started using Reeder (classic) again

I used the switch as an opportunity to clean out my feed list, and break it down into different categories for both applications. So far, things have been going well. I’ve found myself actually reading my feeds again, and am much less pressured while doing so. I am very happy with this setup for what it is.

~Update~

It’s taken me so long to finish editing and publishing this draft, that I’ve moved beyond playing with terminal apps… and have been happily consumed by Emacs once again after a multi-year hiatus. Consequently, I’m now using Elfeed for RSS on the mac, and continue to use Reeder Classic on my mobile devices.

Elfeed was a little weird to get used to at first, but I love it now. I am able to define my feed list in an org file, which has built-in support to then export that file as an opml one which I use to easily import an updated feed list into Reeder. Amazing.