shinbun

shinbun (新聞) is a terminal-based RSS/Atom feed reader written in Rust, using ratatui and crossterm. It draws some inspiration from newsboat.

Features

• RSS and Atom feed support
• Local SQLite cache for offline reading and persistent read state
• Tag-based feed organization
• Query feeds that aggregate entries across multiple feeds by tag
• Read/unread tracking with per-entry and per-feed bulk marking
• Hide/show read entries
• Open entries in a configurable browser or media player
• Vim-style keybindings

Installation

Requires Rust (stable). Clone the repository and build with cargo:

cargo build --release

The binary will be at target/release/shinbun.

Configuration

Configuration files are stored in the platform config directory under shinbun/.

Linux / macOS

~/.config/shinbun/

Windows

%APPDATA%\shinbun\

Two files are used:

• feeds.toml (required) – defines the feeds to subscribe to
• config.toml (optional) – UI settings, general options, and query feeds

feeds.toml

Each feed is declared as a [[feeds]] entry. The link field is required. name and tags are optional.

[[feeds]]
link = "https://example.com/feed.xml"

[[feeds]]
link = "https://blog.example.org/rss"
name = "Example Blog"
tags = ["tech", "blog"]

If name is set, it overrides the title provided by the feed itself.

config.toml

[general]
browser = "firefox"           # optional, defaults to system default
media_player = "mpv"          # optional, defaults to system default

[ui]
show_borders = true           # default: true
show_read_entries = true      # default: true

[[queries]]
name = "Tech"
query = "tags:tech"

[[queries]]
name = "All"
query = "*"

Query feeds aggregate entries from all feeds whose tags match the query. Use tags:tag1,tag2 to match specific tags, or * to match everything.

Keybindings

Key	Action
j / Down	Move down
k / Up	Move up
l / Enter / Right	Open / Enter
h / Backspace / Left	Go back
g g / Home	Go to top
G / End	Go to bottom
r	Refresh selected feed
R	Refresh all feeds
m	Toggle read / unread
A	Mark feed as read
u	Toggle hide read entries
o	Open entry in browser
p	Play media attachment
e	Show feed errors
?	Toggle help
q	Quit

Press ? inside the application to see the full keybinding reference.

Data Storage

Feed data and read state are cached in a SQLite database at shinbun/cache.db inside the config directory. Entries that age out of a feed’s remote source are preserved locally so history and read state are not lost. Feeds removed from feeds.toml are pruned from the cache on the next launch.