| NEWSRAFT(1) | General Commands Manual | NEWSRAFT(1) |
newsraft - feed reader for terminal
newsraft [-f FILE1] [-c FILE2] [-d FILE3] [-l FILE4] [-e ACTION] [-v] [-h]
Newsraft is a small text based program for reading syndication feeds. It obtains content from a given set of sources and lets you browse it all via one streamlined user interface.
| -f FILE | Force feeds file to FILE. |
| -c FILE | Force config file to FILE. |
| -d FILE | Force database file to FILE. |
| -l FILE | Write log information to FILE. |
| -e ACTION | Execute ACTION and exit (reload-all print-unread-items-count purge-abandoned). |
| -v | Print version information. |
| -h | Print usage information. |
To start using Newsraft you have to create a feeds file with the list of links to feeds you want to receive news from. Check out FEEDS FILE section for file syntax and valid paths.
When feeds file is ready, you can launch Newsraft. There are only 4 menus you will have to deal with: sections, feeds, items and pager. Default binds are listed in ACTIONS section.
Sections menu consists of section entries which are needed to organize feeds in groups to be able to process them in bulk. They are kind of directories for feeds. If you didn't specify any section declarations in your feeds file then you will get to the feeds menu straightaway.
Feeds menu consists of feed entries. Every feed entry contains news downloaded from one specific source which you have set in feeds file. To update a single feed you have to select it and press r or R if you want to update all feeds. From feeds menu you can get to the items menu by entering some feed.
Items menu consists of feed item entries (i. e. single pieces of news) which you get when you update feeds in the previous menu. Every feed item entry has two switchable properties - read state and importance state. Keys to change read state: d to mark read, D to mark unread, ^D to mark everything read. Keys to change importance state: f to flag important, F to flag unimportant. To view item's content you have to go to pager menu by entering selected item.
Pager menu will display some details about selected item and render its content if it was provided by feed. Usually feed item entries have a links section with one link pointing to a related web page and several links that were mentioned in the item's content. You can copy these links into your clipboard with y key and open them in your web browser with o key. To target a key action to link with a specific index you have to prefix your key with this index. For example, 5y will copy fifth link and 17o will open seventeenth link in the web browser. You can also setup custom command bindings to execute any commands with these links. Consider this config file:
With this you will be able to open any link in mpv(1) and feh(1) directly from your terminal! Isn't it awesome? It is freaking amazing!
For both sections menu and feeds menu there is a special explore mode. You can toggle it by pressing the tab key. It's truly miraculous: it reveals all the news in the current context (combines news from all feeds of the current menu into one list). This mode may come in handy when you want to quickly scroll through all the news without switching between sections and feeds back and forth.
And for dessert, I'll tell you about search functionality. You can type / to begin search input - enter the desired query here and press Enter. This will open an items menu with a search query applied. To make filtering go away just make an empty search (press / and Enter in series).
This file contains feed entries that Newsraft will display and process. There are 4 types of lines in feeds file.
Feed lines start with a URL. After at least one whitespace character, the name of the feed may be specified - it must be enclosed in double quotes. For example:
Generator lines start with a command enclosed in $(). These act just like feed lines but instead of fetching resources from a remote server they use the output of the specified command to obtain the content.
Section lines start with @ character. After any number of whitespace characters, the name of the section must be specified. For example:
Comment lines start with # character. These lines are completely ignored. For example:
Both feed and section lines allow you to set individual settings and binds for them. The syntax is as follows:
Settings set for feeds take precedence over the settings specified for sections. Not every setting supports individual assignment - only settings with asterisk (*) on them do (see SETTINGS section).
Search precedence:
This file is used to override default settings and bindings of Newsraft. Presence of config file is totally optional and Newsraft will work without it just fine. There are 3 types of lines in config file.
Setting lines start with a setting name and end with a setting value. Available settings are listed in the SETTINGS and COLOR SETTINGS sections. Here are a couple of examples:
Binding lines start with the bind word. They define actions that are performed when certain keys are pressed. Complete list of assigned actions can be found in the ACTIONS section. Format of these lines is as follows:
There is also a way to assign command bindings. When a key with assigned command binding is pressed, the specifiers in the command are replaced with values of the corresponding entry and the command is executed. You can find which specifiers are available in the description of the menu-item-entry-format setting. Format of these lines is as follows:
Binding lines support assigning multiple actions to one key. Assigned actions must be separated with semicolon symbols, for example:
In case you want to disable some binding which was set in Newsraft by default, you can use a line according to this format:
Comment lines start with # character. These lines are completely ignored. For example:
Search precedence:
This file stores everything you download from feeds in sqlite3(1) format. Although you now know the format in which the data is stored, it is highly recommended to avoid modifying the database manually - things will break and it will be very sad.
Search precedence:
Settings with asterisk (*) on them can be set for individual feeds and sections.
Default: 0. Feed auto reload period in minutes. If set to 0, no auto reloads will be run.
Default: 0. Maximum number of items stored in a feed. If set to 0, no limit will be set.
Default: true. If true, item-limit setting will also cap unread items.
Default: false. If true, item-limit setting will also cap important items.
Default: "". Item search condition when accessing database. This can be very useful in managing feeds with a heavy spam flow: you set a condition based on some parameters and only those entries that meet this condition will be shown in the feed. It's specified in SQL format. It probably only makes sense to set this setting for individual feeds, and not globally (see FEEDS FILE section to understand how). Available parameters: guid, title, link, content, attachments, persons, publication_date, update_date.
Here are some examples of correct setting values:
Default: 0. Minimal number of list menu entries to keep above and below the selected entry. If you set it to a very large value the selected entry will always be in the middle of the list menu (except for start and end of the list menu).
Default: 100. Pager width in characters. If set to 0, the pager will take up all available space.
Default: true. If true and pager-width is not 0, pager will center its content horizontally.
Default: none. Sorting order for the feeds menu. Available values: unread-desc, unread-asc, alphabet-desc, alphabet-asc.
Default: time-desc. Sorting order for the items menu. Available values: time-desc, time-asc, rowid-desc, rowid-asc, unread-desc, unread-asc, important-desc, important-asc, alphabet-desc, alphabet-asc.
Default: ${BROWSER:-xdg-open} "%l". Shell command for opening URL in a web browser. The URL to be opened is put in place where %l specifier is located.
Default: auto. Shell command for copying text to clipboard. All copied data is sent to the standard input of the command. If it is set to "auto", then Newsraft will set the setting value to "wl-copy" if environment variable WAYLAND_DISPLAY is set and to "xclip -selection clipboard" if environment variable DISPLAY is set. Systems on macOS will force setting value to "pbcopy". In other cases the setting value will be set to "false".
Default: auto. Shell command for invoking system notifications about new news received. If it is set to "auto", then Newsraft will set the setting value to "notify-send 'Newsraft brought %q news!'" for most Unix systems and to "osascript -e 'display notification "Newsraft brought %q news!"'" for macOS.
Default: "". Sets the proxy to use for the network requests. It must be either a hostname or dotted numerical IPv4 address. To specify IPv6 address you have to enclose it within square brackets. Port number can be set by appending :PORT to the end of setting value. By default proxy protocol is considered HTTP, but you can set a different one by prepending SCHEME:// to the setting value.
Default: "". User for authentication with the proxy server.
Default: "". Password for authentication with the proxy server.
Default: Global. Name of the section that contains all feeds.
Default: true. If true, print menu path in the status bar.
Default: r:reload R:reload-all tab:explore d:read D:unread f:important F:unimportant n:next-unread N:prev-unread p:next-important P:prev-important.
Placeholder which is put in the status bar if it's empty.
Default: <b>Feed</b>: %f<br>|<b>Title</b>: %t<br>|<b>Date</b>: %d<br>|<br>%c<br>|<br><hr>%L.
Sets the format according to which the item's content will be generated. The text in this format string is HTML formatted. Fields are separated by | character. If an item doesn't have a value corresponding to the specifier in the field, then the entire field will not be shown. Specifiers are as follows:
Default: %a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z. Date format in the item's content. Specifier values correspond to the strftime(3) format.
Default: <b>[%i]</b>: %l<br>. Link format in the links list of item's content. %i and %l will be replaced by link index and link address respectively.
Default: %b %d. Date format of the list entries. Specifier values correspond to the strftime(3) format.
Default: %5.0u @ %t. Format of the section list entries. Specifiers are as follows:
Default: %5.0u │ %t. Format of the feed list entries. Specifiers are as follows:
Default: " %u │ %d │ %o". Format of the item list entries. Specifiers are as follows:
Default: " %u │ %d │ %-28O │ %o". Format of the item list entries in explore mode. Specifiers are the same as in menu-item-entry-format.
Default: false. Enables explore mode in sections menu by default.
Default: false. Enables explore mode in feeds menu by default.
Default: false. Mark every item that changes on a feed update as unread.
Default: false. Mark every item that gets selected as read.
Default: true. Run "ANALYZE" SQLite command on the database every time you start Newsraft. It gathers statistics about database and uses it to optimize some queries making runtime faster.
Default: false. Run "VACUUM" SQLite command on the database every time you start Newsraft. It rebuilds the database file by packing it into a minimal amount of disk space. This can significantly increase startup time.
Default: 20. Maximum time in seconds that you allow Newsraft to download one feed. Setting to 0 disables the timeout.
Default: 0. Maximum download speed in kilobytes per second (kB/s). Setting to 0 disables the limit.
Default: 0. Maximum amount of simultaneously open connections Newsraft may hold a single host. If set to 0, there is no limit.
Default: 1000. Maximum number of status messages stored in memory. If set to 0, status messages history will not be stored in memory.
Default: auto. User-Agent header sent with download requests. If it is set to "auto", Newsraft will generate it according to the following format:
OS_NAME shouldn't be a matter of privacy concern, because on most systems it contains nothing more like "Linux" or "Darwin". If you want to be sure of this, check Newsraft log to see how user-agent is set at startup.
If set to "", User-Agent header will not be sent.
Default: true. Prevents too frequent updates for some feeds. The limit is set by the creators of the feeds in order to save traffic and resources for a very rarely updated feeds. Disabling it is strongly discouraged.
Default: true. Prevents feed updates until the expiration date of the previously downloaded information in order to save traffic and resources. Disabling it is strongly discouraged.
Default: true. Sends an entity tag corresponding to the previously downloaded information. If the server from which the feed is downloaded contains information with the same tag, then in order to save traffic and resources, it will reject the download request. Disabling it is strongly discouraged.
Default: true. Sends a date corresponding to the last modification of previously downloaded information. If the server from which the feed is downloaded contains information with the same modification date, then in order to save traffic and resources, it will reject the download request. Disabling it is strongly discouraged.
Color settings are the same settings as above, but they take two color words (foreground and background) and optional attribute words. Available colors are default, black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white and colorN (N can be a number from 0 to 255). Available attributes are bold, italic and underlined.
| Color setting | Default value |
| color-status | green default bold |
| color-status-info | cyan default bold |
| color-status-fail | red default bold |
| color-list-item | default default |
| color-list-item-unread | yellow default |
| color-list-item-important | magenta default |
| color-list-feed | default default |
| color-list-feed-unread | yellow default |
| color-list-section | default default |
| color-list-section-unread | yellow default |
| Actions | Keys |
| select-next | j, KEY_DOWN, ^E |
| select-prev | k, KEY_UP, ^Y |
| select-next-page | space, ^F, KEY_NPAGE |
| select-prev-page | ^B, KEY_PPAGE |
| select-first | g, KEY_HOME |
| select-last | G, KEY_END |
| jump-to-next | J |
| jump-to-prev | K |
| jump-to-next-unread | n |
| jump-to-prev-unread | N |
| jump-to-next-important | p |
| jump-to-prev-important | P |
| goto-feed | * |
| shift-west | , |
| shift-east | . |
| shift-reset | < |
| sort-by-time | t |
| sort-by-rowid | w |
| sort-by-unread | u |
| sort-by-important | i |
| sort-by-alphabet | a |
| enter | enter, l, KEY_ENTER, KEY_RIGHT |
| reload | r |
| reload-all | R, ^R |
| mark-read; jump-to-next | d |
| mark-unread; jump-to-next | D |
| mark-read-all | ^D |
| mark-unread-all | (not set) |
| mark-important | f |
| mark-unimportant | F |
| toggle-explore-mode | tab, e |
| status-history-menu | v |
| open-in-browser | o |
| copy-to-clipboard | y, c |
| start-search-input | / |
| clean-status | escape |
| navigate-back | h, backspace, KEY_LEFT, KEY_BACKSPACE |
| quit | q |
| quit-hard | Q |
Data formats of feeds which Newsraft recognizes. Not the whole functionality of these formats is implemented, but only the functionality that is most likely to carry the most essential information.
RSS 2.0, 1.1, 1.0, 0.94, 0.93,
0.92, 0.91, 0.9
Atom 1.0
RSS Content Module
Media RSS
DublinCore 1.1 Elements
JSON Feed
Newsraft's behavior depends on the environment variables set, however not all environment variables affect Newsraft directly - many environment variables affect libraries that Newsraft is built on. Thus, ncurses(3) and libcurl(3) recognize a large number of different environment variables which you can learn more about on ncurses(3) and libcurl-env(3) respectively.
However, there is one significant ncurses(3) environment variable that is worth mentioning here - ESCDELAY. It sets delay for reading Escape key. It may surprise you that its default value is 1000 ms, which is well explained in ncurses(3), but many may prefer a value much less than that or even 0.
| XDG_CONFIG_HOME | Directory in which user-specific configuration files are stored. |
| XDG_DATA_HOME | Directory in which user-specific data files are stored. |
| HOME | User home directory. |
| BROWSER | User web browser. |
| WAYLAND_DISPLAY | Identifier of the Wayland graphics display. |
| DISPLAY | Identifier of the X graphics display. |
| NO_COLOR | Makes the interface monochrome when present. |
mpv(1), feh(1), sqlite3(1), strftime(3), ncurses(3), libcurl(3), libcurl-env(3)
Don't be ridiculous...
Grigory Kirillov and contributors
| 2025-01-01 |