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.