Feeds

Kolahal has a small feed reader built in. No scripting needed.

Subscribe

feed add https://hnrss.org/frontpage
feed add lwn.net/headlines/rss       # https:// is assumed; feed:// links work too

Adding a feed fetches it right away. The address is normalised, so adding the same feed twice returns the existing subscription. feed:// links open as https://. A feed on your own network (a home server) works (new on Android 17 and newer, once you allow it with local-network); a public feed can’t redirect into your network. The newest 300 items of a feed are read.

Read

feed                 # list: #id, title, unread/total, interval, notify, last status (also: feed ls)
feed read            # all unread items, then mark them read
feed read 2          # unread items of feed #2
feed all 2           # every stored item of feed #2, read or not
feed open 2          # open up to 10 unread items of #2 in the browser, mark them read
feed fetch           # refresh every feed now (feed fetch 2 for one)

Item lines are tappable links; long-press to share or copy. When a fetch finds new items they appear in the log under a ── Feeds · 10:30 ── header, at most feeds.log-lines (default 10) per feed, with a “+N more” line (tapping it puts feed read <id> in the prompt).

Read and unread

Every item starts unread when it is first fetched. It becomes read when you:

• open it: tap its line in the log, use “Open link” from the long-press menu, or tap it on the Feeds screen;
• list it with feed read. Only the items that were printed count; anything beyond the 40 shown stays unread;
• open it with feed open;
• use “Mark all read” on the Feeds screen.

Seeing a line scroll by in the log does not mark it read, unless you turn on feeds.read-shown. feed all lists items without changing them. The unread count is simply the number of stored items still unread (up to 300 per feed are kept, unread ones first).

When you subscribe, everything the feed already contains is unread too. A busy feed can start at 20 or more unread items. Turn on feeds.backlog-read to count those as read, so only posts that appear after you subscribed are unread.

Feeds screen

new feeds opens a GUI screen for managing subscriptions: adding, removing and toggling feeds, intervals and notifications, without typing ids. Tap a feed for its items (tap one to open it and mark it read). The top bar refreshes everything and imports or exports OPML, so you can move subscriptions from or to another feed reader. The feed … subcommands keep working as before.

Feed behaviour is under Settings → Feeds: whether new items go to the log and how many, the read / unread options above, refreshing on Wi-Fi only (feeds.wifi), and the interval and notification setting new subscriptions start with (feeds.interval, feeds.notify). The page also leads to the Feeds screen.

Per-feed settings

feed every 2 2h          # check feed #2 every 2 hours (minimum 15m; default 1h)
feed notify 2 on         # one notification per fetch with new items (off to stop)
feed off 2               # pause a feed; feed on 2 resumes it
feed rm 2                # unsubscribe and delete its items

How fetching works

• One background job fetches the feeds that are due by their own interval. new It wakes only as often as your most frequent feed needs (every 15 minutes at most), and only when there is a network, or only on Wi-Fi with feeds.wifi on.
• Requests are conditional (ETag / Last-Modified), so an unchanged feed costs a 304 and no parsing.
• Up to 300 items are kept per feed (unread first, then newest).
• A failed scheduled fetch is only recorded in the feed’s status (shown by feed). A fetch you asked for (feed fetch) also logs the error.
• Feeds run in the launcher process, not the script sandbox. For a feed you only want to see once, rss <url> prints up to 15 items into the log without subscribing.

Feeds or a script?

Built-in feeds are the easy path. For filtering, merging several feeds into one line, scoring or a header status line, write a script with rss.fresh(url), like the bundled hn and feeds scripts.