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Self-Hosting FreshRSS: Take Back Control of Your News

FreshRSS is a self-hosted RSS reader. Follow websites, blogs, and news without algorithmic feeds controlling what you see.

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Why RSS?


Social media algorithms decide what you see. RSS lets you decide. Subscribe to websites and blogs directly — every new post appears in your reader, in chronological order.


What Is FreshRSS?


FreshRSS is a self-hosted RSS aggregator. It fetches feeds from websites and presents them in a clean, fast interface.


Features


Feed Management

  • Subscribe to any website with an RSS/Atom feed
  • Organize feeds into categories
  • OPML import/export
  • Feed discovery from URLs

    • Reading Experience

  • Clean, distraction-free reading
  • Full article view (fetches full content even from truncated feeds)
  • Keyboard shortcuts for fast navigation
  • Mark as read/unread/favorite

    • API Support

    FreshRSS implements the Google Reader API and Fever API. Use with mobile apps:

  • Reeder (iOS)
  • Read You (Android)
  • NetNewsWire (Mac/iOS)
  • FeedMe (Android)

    • Extensions

  • YouTube subscription management
  • Reddit feed integration
  • Custom CSS per feed
  • Full-text RSS fetching

    • What to Follow


    Tech

  • Company engineering blogs
  • Personal developer blogs
  • Hacker News (RSS feed available)
  • GitHub release feeds

    • News

  • News websites (most have RSS)
  • Specific journalists or columnists

    • Entertainment

  • YouTube channels (via RSS)
  • Podcast feeds
  • Webcomics

    • Self-Hosting

  • r/selfhosted (RSS from Reddit)
  • Self-hosting blogs and communities

    • Deployment


    1. Deploy FreshRSS on TinyPod

    2. Create your account

    3. Import OPML from your current reader (or start fresh)

    4. Install a mobile client and connect via API

    5. Start reading without algorithms


    Resources: 1 CPU, 256 MB RAM. Very lightweight.


    Tips


  • Don't subscribe to too many feeds at first — start with 20-30
  • Use categories to organize by topic
  • Check once or twice a day, not constantly
  • Use the "full content" feature for feeds that only provide summaries
    • Self-Host FreshRSS: RSS Reader | TinyPod | TinyPod