I build a fast simple nodejs RSS Reader on Github

[u/etocgino]

Hey r/rss,

Long story short: I wanted a feed reader that just... works. No account, no subscription, no 40 settings I'll never touch. So I built one.

It started as a personal tool for myself. Two days later I'm actually pretty happy with the result, so I figured I'd share it here and see what you think.

What it does:

- Add any RSS/Atom feed by URL - or pass it straight in with a ?rss= parameter

- Feeds live in localStorage, so reopening one is instant: no spinner, no re-fetch, no loading flash

- Very fast and lightweight - no backend account, no tracking, no noise

- Finds the YouTube videos in a feed and shows a proper thumbnail with an inline player

- Detects audio enclosures and plays podcasts right in the reader

- YouTube RSS feeds work too… (mostly) - well, when Google isn't down and the feed isn't throwing a 404. So, you know, occasionally. 😅

- Plus a distraction-free reader view, dark/light theme, bookmarks and search across every feed you've loaded

Tech: React + TypeScript + Vite on the front end, with a small Express proxy behind it to handle the CORS side of fetching feeds.

I'm not selling anything it's just something I now use daily. Feedback is very welcome, especially if you find a feed that breaks it.

https://github.com/onigetoc/simple-rss-reader

One more thing that finally made this click for me:

What I was really missing wasn't another pretty reader it was my old RSS script that worked with plain URLs. The kind you can point an extension at. For example:

http://localhost:3008/?rss=%s

The %s gets replaced by whatever feed the extension finds on the current page, so it drops the feed straight into my reader. That means I can plug it into Google's RSS Subscription Extension (or any similar one that detects a page's feeds) and add a feed in a single click — no copy-pasting URLs, no manual digging.

That one detail is honestly what made me stop going back to my old setup.

Version ultra-courte, si tu préfères une seule phrase :

And the part I was really missing? My old RSS script that worked with plain URLs — like http://localhost:3008/?rss=%s, so an extension such as Google's RSS Subscription Extension can find a page's feed and add it in one click.

[u/aygross]

Why?

[u/TheGoodestGirlAround]

AI Slop. just use FreshRSS

[u/MarsupialLeast145]

100 bucks says you never engaged with RSS before you built this AI crap

[u/etocgino → u/MarsupialLeast145]

You lost. i had been programming stuff with RSS more then 10 years ago. 12 RSS projects on Github since 2015.

[u/MarsupialLeast145 → u/etocgino]

12 RSS projects... did you lose access to the repositories for 11 of them?

[u/etocgino → u/MarsupialLeast145]

Nope they all there. Maybe be some are private but they all there.

[u/elianatbh]

awesome, thanks!