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 with a dedicated tags pane
• 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
• Fuzzy search across feeds and entries
• Configurable color theme via config.toml
• Article link extraction popup
• 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, query feeds, and theme

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
show_scrollbar = 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.

Theme

All colors in the UI can be customized under the [ui.theme] key. Every field is optional; omitted values fall back to built-in defaults so the app looks identical without any theme configuration.

Color values support:

• Named colors: red, blue, dark_gray, light_cyan, etc.
• Hex RGB: #rrggbb (e.g. #cb4b16)
• RGB tuple: rgb(r,g,b) (e.g. rgb(203,75,22))
• ANSI 256 index: 0 – 255

[ui.theme]
# Chrome
border = "blue"
title = "yellow"

# Feed / entry list
count = "blue"
read = "dark_gray"
header = "white"              # optional, bold-only when unset
highlight_bg = "dark_gray"
highlight_fg = "yellow"

# Entry list columns
date = "cyan"
source = "yellow"

# Search bar
search_prompt = "yellow"
search_cursor = "gray"
search_info = "dark_gray"
search_no_match = "red"
search_match_read = "gray"
search_dim = "dark_gray"

# Entry view metadata
meta_title = "magenta"
meta_feed = "cyan"
meta_published = "yellow"
meta_link = "blue"
line_info = "yellow"
entry_title_bordered = "yellow"
entry_title_plain = "green"

# Markdown rendering
h1 = "cyan"
h2 = "magenta"
h3 = "blue"
h4 = "red"
h5 = "light_cyan"
code = "yellow"               # optional, bold-only when unset
link = "blue"
metadata_block = "light_yellow"

# Popups
error_border = "red"
error_title = "yellow"
loading_border = "cyan"
loading_done_border = "green"
confirm = "yellow"
confirm_message = "white"

# Help popup
help_section = "cyan"
help_key = "yellow"
help_border = "blue"

# Links popup
link_index = "yellow"
link_url = "blue"
links_border = "blue"

A complete example Solarized Dark theme is available in ./examples/solarized_dark.toml.

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
/	Fuzzy search
Tab / Ctrl+n	Next search match
Shift+Tab / Ctrl+p	Previous search match
t	Toggle feeds / tags pane
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
L	Show article links
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.