elfeed-web-ng

A modern web interface for Elfeed, the Emacs RSS/Atom feed reader.

Features

• Mobile-friendly PWA (installable on iOS/Android)
• Saved searches with quick-access buttons
• Tag management (read/unread, star, later, custom tags)
• Annotation support (requires elfeed-curate)
• Backward compatible with the original elfeed-web server (graceful degradation)
• Responsive desktop/mobile layout

Installation

Add elfeed-web-ng to your load-path and configure:

(use-package elfeed-web-ng
  :after elfeed
  :straight (:type git :host github :repo "aavanian/elfeed-web-ng" :files ("*.el" "web"))
  :init
  ;; you don't need this if you already install simple-httpd elsewhere
  (use-package simple-httpd
    :straight (simple-httpd :type git :host github :repo "skeeto/emacs-web-server"
                            :local-repo "skeeto-emacs-web-server")
    :config
    (setq httpd-host "127.0.0.1"
          httpd-port 8082))
  :custom
  (elfeed-web-ng-saved-searches
   '((:label "Unread"    :filter "+unread -later -to_source")
     (:label "Starred"   :filter "+★")
     (:label "Annotated" :filter "+⮐")
     (:label "Later"     :filter "+later +unread"))))

Notes

• there are (at least) two simple-httpd servers available through straight with conflicting name, hence the detailed recipe above.
• the example above listens to "127.0.0.1" which is restrictive. Obviously, listening to "0.0.0.0" would be dangerous. My pattern is to use tailscale:

(defvar 151e/my-tailscale-ip
  (let ((ip (string-trim (shell-command-to-string "tailscale ip -4"))))
    (if (string-match-p "^100\\." ip)
        ip
      "127.0.0.1")))

so and binding the server to that variable. Then I can access the interface safely from my mobile device with a home-screen bookmark to "http://machine-name.tailnet-name.ts.net:8082/elfeed"

Configuration

• elfeed-web-ng-saved-searches — list of saved searches displayed as quick-access buttons
• elfeed-web-ng-limit — maximum entries per search (default: 512)
• httpd-host / httpd-port — server binding (from simple-httpd)

Note: elfeed-web-ng-stop stops the underlying simple-httpd server, which is shared across all packages that use it (e.g., impatient-mode, skewer-mode). If you need to keep simple-httpd running for other packages, set elfeed-web-ng-enabled to nil instead.

Development

The frontend is built with Preact + Vite. Pre-built files are in web/ so users never need Node.js.

To develop the frontend:

pnpm install
pnpm run dev    # Vite dev server with HMR, proxying to Emacs backend
pnpm run build  # Production build to web/

Merging / Rebasing

Since the built files are under version control, most merge or rebase will lead to conflict on those. The .gitattributes file is set to ignore the conflict and take the newer files in any case. They will be stale and will need a rebuild which should then be committed (ideally squashing that build commit with the merge commit if any or one of the merged/rebased commits. You will need something like git config --global merge.ours.driver true in your config for the .gitattributes config to work.

Ideas

• Keyboard navigation — arrow keys to move between entries, enter to open, escape to go back
• Offline support — cache app shell and pre-load entry content so the page works without network, syncing tag changes when back online

Credits

This project is a fork of the web sub-package from elfeed-web by Christopher Wellons, originally released under the Unlicense (public domain). The original frontend files are preserved in the legacy/ directory for reference.

License

Copyright (C) 2024-2026.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

See LICENSE for the full text.