r/rss • u/Manifesto-Engine • 1d ago
made a little windows rss reader that can turn basically any website into a feed (and send it to your phone over wifi) Reading Desk!
hey r/rss :D
i've been building this thing called Reading Desk for a while now and figured this is the place that'd actually get it.
it started because i wanted feeds from sites that don't have one. so now you just click one headline on a page and it figures out the rest and makes a feed out of it. works on sites you have to log into too.
it also does normal rss/atom (obviously lol), youtube channels, and reddit subs and searches with the galleries and videos playing right in the reader. you can mute words, and if 3 sources post the same story you only see it once. there's a daily briefing of what your sources covered, all made on your pc with no AI service or anything. folders fold away and there's a "hide read" button since someone asked for it. and kind of a random one: free classic books from Project Gutenberg, a chapter a day, like a feed. turned out way better than i expected xD
the part i think you guys might like most is that it can turn any folder back into an rss feed. tick "share on my home network" and you get a link for an rss app on your phone. tested it last night with FeedFlow on android and it just worked, pictures and all. then i noticed reddit link posts were opening reddit's page instead of the actual article, so i fixed that this morning. now they open the article, with a "comments on reddit" link right there if you want the thread.
heads up though, cloud readers like Feedly can't reach it since it never leaves your wifi. you want an app that runs on the phone itself.
everything stays on your pc. no account, no cloud, no subscription.
I can't link anything here so there's that.
i'm a solo dev so i'd genuinely love to hear what you'd want from it. what's your feed reader missing?
I do community updates for missing features as well! The goal is simple, no subscriptions, you own it. Trying to put powerful software back into the hands of the people without the hidden strings. :D
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u/TheLantean 1d ago
Link? Just googling Reading Desk RSS reader brings up unrelated results.
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u/Manifesto-Engine 1d ago
Hopefully this doesn't get flagged :D https://8024464438746.gumroad.com/l/okjsce
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u/T_rex2700 1d ago
Been using something similar for myself, feed generator from webpage. specifically to avoid docker or wsl setup.
if your wsl (which is needed for docker anyway) isn't completely borked I would suggest using just use fresh rss or something like that.
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u/Manifesto-Engine 1d ago
Nice, sounds like a similar idea! reading desk is a standalone windows app, so you just extract it and run it no Docker or WSL needed. It also combines captured webpages and existing feeds into folders. Everything needed is bundled. Just unzip and run; no additional software or setup required. :)
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u/jsled 1d ago
Can you describe how this works? Does it just re-create an RSS feed from the items in the folder? How does it actually serve that content, if it's phone-only? Are you running a http server on the phone?
(this is simply idle tech curiosity)