OldNews - A terminal-based client for TheOldReader

Introduction

OldNews is a terminal-based client for TheOldReader. It provides the ability to read news feeds while using TheOldReader as the server for your RSS/atom subscriptions.

OldNews is and generally always will be fairly opinionated about the "best" way to make use of TheOldReader (AKA how I like to use it); but where possible I want to keep it quite general so it will be useful to anyone.

Installing

pipx

The application can be installed using pipx:

$ pipx install oldnews

uv

The application can be installed using uv:

uv tool install oldnews

If you don't have uv installed you can use uvx.sh to perform the installation. For GNU/Linux or macOS or similar:

curl -LsSf uvx.sh/oldnews/install.sh | sh

or on Windows:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://uvx.sh/oldnews/install.ps1 | iex"

Once installed run the oldnews command.

Getting started

OldNews only works if you have an account on TheOldReader. When you first run up OldNews you will get a login screen:

Enter your TheOldReader login details to log in.

Important

OldNews doesn't store your user name or password locally. It passes the details to the API of TheOldReader and then gets and locally stores a token for working with the API.

Once logged in TheOldReader will start to download a history of articles form your subscriptions. From then on it will synchronise the read/unread status as you read articles, and will refresh with the server if you request a refresh, or when you next start the application (within a set time limit).

Using OldNews

At the moment the best way to get to know OldNews is to read the helps screen; once in the main application you can see this by pressing F1.

You can also discover commands and their keyboard shortcuts using the command palette:

File locations

OldNews stores files in an oldnews directory within both $XDG_DATA_HOME and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. If you wish to fully remove anything to do with OldNews you will need to remove those directories too.

Expanding for the common locations, the files normally created are:

• ~/.config/oldnews/configuration.json -- The configuration file.
• ~/.local/share/oldnews/* -- The locally-held data.

Getting help

If you need help, or have any ideas, please feel free to raise an issue or start a discussion.

TODO

See the TODO tag in issues to see what I'm planning.