How to set up the Feeds RSS reader on the Linux desktop

There are many good RSS feed readers on the Linux desktop. However, a lot of them are stuck in the past and don’t offer up modern features like “reader mode,” which makes things easier to read.

Introducing Feeds, it’s an excellent RSS feed reader for Linux. It is elegant, easy to use, and best of all, it can filter down your favorite articles into a more ebook-like experience. In this guide, we’ll show you how to set it up!

Install Feeds on Linux

The Feeds app, or “Gnome Feeds” (as it is sometimes called) is not available in many Linux distribution’s software repositories aside from Fedora, Arch Linux and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. The reason that Feeds is not available in the software repos for all modern distributions is the fact that the developers prefer users to install it via Flathub as a Flatpak.

To start the installation of Feeds on the Linux desktop, you will need access to the command-line. To gain access to the Linux command-line, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard.

Once you’ve got access to the Linux command-line, installation can begin. Follow the instructions outlined below that correspond with the Linux distribution you currently use.

Arch Linux

Arch Linux has a reputation for providing its users with a lot of third-party software apps via the Arch Linux AUR. If you’re using Arch Linux, you’ll be happy to know that Feeds is also on the AUR, and is incredibly easy to get going.

To start the installation of the Feeds app via the AUR, follow the step-by-step instructions below.

Step 1: Using the Pacman package management command, install the “Base-devel” and “Git” packages. They are necessary for interacting with the AUR.

sudo pacman -S base-devel git

Step 2: Using the git clone command, download the latest release of the Trizen AUR helper from the Arch Linux User Repository. Trizen will make installing Feeds very easy, as it will automatically install all required dependencies.

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/trizen.git

Step 3: Install the Trizen AUR helper to your system using the makepkg command. Keep in mind that if the installation fails, you can read the comments on this page here for help.

cd trizen

makepkg -sri

Step 4: Use the trizen command to install the latest version of the Feeds app on your Arch Linux PC.

trizen -S gfeeds-git

Fedora Linux

The Feeds app is available to all Fedora Linux. To install it, run the dnf command below.

sudo dnf install gnome-feeds

OpenSUSE

The Feeds app is available for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed users via the OBS. To install it, click this link here!

Flatpak

The primary way that the Feeds RSS app is distributed to Linux users is via the Flathub Flatpak store. To get it going on your system, do the following.

Step 1: Follow our guide to learn how to set up the Flatpak runtime on your Linux PC.

Step 2: Subscribe to the Flathub store with the flatpak command.

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Step 3: Install the Feeds app via flatpak install.

flatpak install flathub org.gabmus.gfeeds

Set up Feeds to read the news

Now that the Feeds app is installed on your Linux PC, we can go over how to set it up to read your favorite news articles. To start, launch Feeds on the desktop by searching for it in your app menu. Then, once the Feeds application is open on the Linux desktop, follow the step-by-step instructions below.

Step 1: Go to a news website that you like to read and find their RSS Feed. Sometimes, news websites hide their RSS. You can easily find them by going to one of the following URLs.

yourfavoritenewssite.com/rss

yourfavoritenewsside/feed

After discovering the feed URL, copy it to your Linux PC’s clipboard.

Step 2: Inside of Feeds, find the “+” button and click on it with the mouse. Upon clicking the “+” button, a box will appear that says, “Enter a feed address to add”.

Step 3: Press Ctrl + V to add the RSS feed to the URL box, and click “Add” to add your favorite news site to the Feeds app.

To subscribe to multiple news websites in the Feeds application, repeat the 3 steps listed above.

Reading articles

Feeds is excellent in how it allows users to read articles, and it even offers up different reading modes. Here’s how to use the various reading modes Feeds supports.

Reader mode

If you’ve ever used Mozilla Firefox or Safari on iOS, you’ll be familiar with the concept of “reader mode.” It filters out all of the junk on an article’s web page (ads, clunky UI, and the like) to show only the text you want to read.

In the Feeds app, you can experience this same feature by clicking the button to the left of the “Share” icon and setting it to “Reader mode.”

RSS content

Feeds is an RSS reader, so naturally, you’ll want to use the “RSS” feature. To read any post in Feeds as an RSS item, do the following.

Locate the “Share” button. To the left of this button, there is another button that is responsible for article viewing modes. Set it to “RSS content.”

Web view

Sometimes an article in Feeds does not allow you to view it very well in reader mode or via traditional RSS. If you’d like to read an article in “Web view” mode, do the following.