FreshRSS

8.4k 748

01 May, 2024

PHP

What is FreshRSS ?

FreshRSS is a self-hosted RSS feed aggregator. It is lightweight, easy to work with, powerful, and customizable.

It is a multi-user application with an anonymous reading mode. It supports custom tags. There is an API for (mobile) clients, and a Command-Line Interface.

FreshRSS Features

FreshRSS natively supports basic Web scraping, based on XPath, for Web sites not providing any RSS / Atom feed.

Different login methods are supported: Web form (including an anonymous option), HTTP Authentication (compatible with proxy delegation), OpenID Connect.

Finally, FreshRSS supports extensions for further tuning.

FreshRSS Demo

FreshRSS screenshot

https://demo.freshrss.org

Install FreshRSS

Requirements

A recent browser like Firefox / IceCat, Edge, Chromium / Chrome, Opera, Safari.
- Works on mobile (except a few features)
Light server running Linux or Windows
- It even works on Raspberry Pi 1 with response time under a second (tested with 150 feeds, 22k articles)
A web server: Apache2.4+ (recommended), nginx, lighttpd (not tested on others)
PHP 7.4+
- Required extensions: cURL, DOM, JSON, XML, session, ctype
- Recommended extensions: PDO_SQLite (for export/import), GMP (for API access on 32-bit platforms), IDN (for Internationalized Domain Names), mbstring (for Unicode strings), iconv (for charset conversion), ZIP (for import/export), zlib (for compressed feeds)
- Extension for database: PDO_PGSQL or PDO_SQLite or PDO_MySQL
PostgreSQL 9.5+ or SQLite or MySQL 5.5.3+ or MariaDB 5.5+

Installation

The latest stable release can be found here. New versions are released every two to three months.

If you want a rolling release with the newest features, or want to help testing or developing the next stable version, you can use the edge branch.

Automated install

Manual install

Get FreshRSS with git or by downloading the archive
Put the application somewhere on your server (expose only the ./p/ folder to the Web)
Add write access to the ./data/ folder for the webserver user
Access FreshRSS with your browser and follow the installation process
- or use the Command-Line Interface
Everything should be working :) If you encounter any problems, feel free to contact us.
Advanced configuration settings can be found in config.default.php and modified in data/config.php.
When using Apache, enable AllowEncodedSlashes for better compatibility with mobile clients.

More detailed information about installation and server configuration can be found in our documentation.

Advice

For better security, expose only the ./p/ folder to the Web.
- Be aware that the ./data/ folder contains all personal data, so it is a bad idea to expose it.
The ./constants.php file defines access to the application folder. If you want to customize your installation, look here first.
If you encounter any problem, logs are accessible from the interface or manually in ./data/users/*/log*.txt files.
- The special folder ./data/users/_/ contains the part of the logs that are shared by all users.

FAQ

The date and time in the right-hand column is the date declared by the feed, not the time at which the article was received by FreshRSS, and it is not used for sorting.
- In particular, when importing a new feed, all of its articles will appear at the top of the feed list regardless of their declared date.

Extensions

FreshRSS supports further customizations by adding extensions on top of its core functionality. See the repository dedicated to those extensions.

APIs & native apps

FreshRSS supports access from mobile / native apps for Linux, Android, iOS, Windows and macOS, via two distinct APIs: Google Reader API (best), and Fever API (limited features and less efficient).

App	Platform	Free Software	Maintained & Developed	API	Works offline	Fast sync	Fetch more in individual views	Fetch read articles	Favourites	Labels	Podcasts	Manage feeds
News+ with Google Reader extension	Android	Partially	2015	GReader	✔️	⭐⭐⭐	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
FeedMe*	Android	➖	✔️✔️	GReader	✔️	⭐⭐	➖	➖	✔️	✓	✔️	✔️
EasyRSS	Android	✔️	✔️	GReader	Bug	⭐⭐	➖	➖	✔️	➖	➖	➖
Readrops	Android	✔️	✔️✔️	GReader	✔️	⭐⭐⭐	➖	➖	➖	➖	➖	✔️
Fluent Reader Lite	Android, iOS	✔️	✔️✔️	GReader, Fever	✔️	⭐⭐⭐	➖	➖	✓	➖	➖	➖
FocusReader	Android	➖	✔️✔️	GReader	✔️	⭐⭐⭐	➖	➖	✔️	➖	✓	✔️
Read You	Android	✔️	Work in progress	GReader, Fever	➖	⭐⭐	➖	✔️	✔️	➖	➖	✔️
ChristopheHenry	Android	✔️	Work in progress	GReader	✔️	⭐⭐	➖	✔️	✔️	➖	➖	➖
Fluent Reader	Windows, Linux, macOS	✔️	✔️✔️	GReader, Fever	✔️	⭐	➖	✔️	✓	➖	➖	➖
RSS Guard	Windows, GNU/Linux, macOS, OS/2	✔️	✔️✔️	GReader	✔️	⭐⭐	➖	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️	✔️
NewsFlash	GNU/Linux	✔️	✔️✔️	GReader, Fever	➖	⭐⭐	➖	✔️	✔️	✔️	➖	➖
Newsboat 2.24+	GNU/Linux, macOS, FreeBSD	✔️	✔️✔️	GReader	➖	⭐	➖	✔️	✔️	➖	✔️	➖
Vienna RSS	macOS	✔️	✔️✔️	GReader	❔	❔	❔	❔	❔	❔	❔	❔
Readkit	iOS, macOS	➖	✔️✔️	GReader	✔️	⭐⭐⭐	➖	✔️	✔️	➖	✓	💲
Reeder*	iOS, macOS	➖	✔️✔️	GReader, Fever	✔️	⭐⭐⭐	➖	✔️	✔️	➖	➖	✔️
lire	iOS, macOS	➖	✔️✔️	GReader	❔	❔	❔	❔	❔	❔	❔	❔
Unread	iOS	➖	✔️✔️	Fever	✔️	❔	❔	❔	✔️	➖	➖	➖
Fiery Feeds	iOS	➖	✔️✔️	Fever	❔	❔	❔	❔	❔	➖	➖	➖
Netnewswire	iOS, macOS	✔️	Work in progress	GReader	✔️	❔	❔	❔	✔️	➖	❔	✔️

* Install and enable the GReader Redate extension to have the correct publication date for feed articles if you are using Reeder 4 or FeedMe. (No longer required for Reeder 5)