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samuelclay
NewsBlur
HTML2010–2026
samuelclay / NewsBlur

NewsBlur

NewsBlur is a personal news reader that brings people together to talk about the world. A new sound of an old instrument.

Data & DatabasesMobile & DesktopSearch & Information RetrievalCommunication & Social
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
51Distinct people
75Mentions
3Explicit recommenders
7.7KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

NewsBlur is a personal news reader that brings people together to talk about the world. A new sound of an old instrument.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

I don't know about "best", but I've tried many, Reeder, Feedly etc, for many years. These are not OSS though, but Reeder was my favorite of the bunch. I settled on running…

stasomatic used a recommendation phrase. 3 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year75 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2010-06-27 18:09:31 UTC to 2026-10-07 17:25:28 UTC.

051015202010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments20102011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 1 submissions, 9 comments2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 20 mentions; 1 submissions, 19 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 0 submissions, 9 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20102010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1019
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC20119
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC909
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 12, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
NewsBlur A personal news reader bringing people together to talk about the world. A new sound of an old instrument. www.newsblur.com About NewsBlur is a personal news reader with intelligence. It's an RSS feed reader and social news network that shows the original site while giving you powerful filtering tools. Train NewsBlur to learn what you like and dislike, and it will automatically highlight and hide stories. NewsBlur is free to use at newsblur.com (up to 64 sites) with premium plans available, or you can self-host your own instance using this repository. Features Real-time RSS - Stories are pushed directly to you, so you can read news as it comes in Original Site View - Read the content in context, the way it was meant to be seen Training - Hide the stories you don't like and highlight the stories you do Shared Stories - Reading news is better with friends. Share stories on your public blurblog Full Text Search - Quickly find stories across all of your subscriptions Story Tagging - Save stories with custom tags for fast references Blurblog Privacy - Share stories with the world or only with your friends Saved Searches - Regularly used searches are conveniently given their own feeds Read the Full Story - The original story from truncated RSS feeds is seamlessly expanded Track Changes - See how a story evolved since it was first published Email Newsletters - Read your email newsletters where they belong, in a news reader Multiple Layouts - Grid, List, Split, or Magazine view for each site Dark Mode - Easy on the eyes and built into the web, iOS, and Android YouTube Channels - Even sites that don't publish RSS feeds can be followed Third-party Apps - Supports Reeder, ReadKit, Unread, and many more IFTTT Integration - Hook NewsBlur up to nearly every service on the web MCP Server - Connect AI agents to your feeds, stories, and classifiers Native Mobile Apps - Free iOS, macOS, and Android apps jam-packed with features Technology NewsBlur is a Django application (Python 3.7+) with a Backbone.js frontend. It uses: PostgreSQL for relational data (feeds, subscriptions, accounts) MongoDB for stories and read states Redis for story assembly and caching Elasticsearch for search (optional) Celery for background tasks (feed fetching) Node.js services for text extraction and image processing Self-Hosted Installation This repository contains everything you need to run your own NewsBlur instance with complete control over your data. Prerequisites: Docker and Docker Compose git clone https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur.git cd NewsBlur make Visit https://localhost (type thisisunsafe to bypass the self-signed certificate warning). Common commands: make - Start/update and apply migrations (run after git pull) make log - View web and node logs make logall - View all container logs make shell - Django shell with auto-imported models make bash - Bash shell in web container make test - Run tests make lint - Format code (isort, black, flake8) make down - Stop containers Bootstrap discover feeds (without fetching): docker exec -t newsblur_web python manage.py bootstrap_popular_feeds --skip-fetch This creates PopularFeed records from the curated fixtures file without fetching any feed content. You can filter by type with --type youtube, --type reddit, --type podcast, --type newsletter, or --type rss. Database access: make mongo - MongoDB shell make redis - Redis CLI make postgres - PostgreSQL shell See AGENTS.md for detailed development guidelines. Configuration To customize your NewsBlur installation, create newsblur_web/local_settings.py to override settings from docker_local_settings.py. Settings for self-hosted installations: NEWSBLUR_URL - Your domain (default: https://localhost). Also used for Archive browser extension OAuth. SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN - Cookie domain for authentication AUTO_PREMIUM - Give new users premium features (default: True) AUTO_ENABLE_NEW_USERS - Auto-activate new accounts (default: True) ENFORCE_SIGNUP_CAPTCHA - Require captcha on signup (default: False) OPENAI_API_KEY - AI features and Discover for related stories DAYS_OF_UNREAD - Story retention for premium users in days (default: 30) DAYS_OF_UNREAD_FREE - Story retention for free users in days (default: 14) HOMEPAGE_USERNAME - Username shown on homepage to unauthenticated users (default: "popular") Uncommon settings (for running full newsblur.com): EMAIL_BACKEND - Email delivery method STRIPE_SECRET / STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE - Stripe payment processing PAYPAL_API_CLIENTID / PAYPAL_API_SECRET - PayPal payment processing S3_* settings - AWS S3 bucket configuration for backups, icons, avatars FACEBOOK_APP_ID / TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY / YOUTUBE_API_KEY - Social API keys See the full list in docker_local_settings.py and settings.py. Development with Worktrees NewsBlur supports Git worktrees for working on multiple features simultaneously, with each worktree running on its own set of ports. This is ideal when working with AI coding assistants like Claude Code. Create and start a worktree: git worktree add .worktree/feature-name cd .worktree/feature-name make worktree Each worktree automatically gets unique ports based on its directory name: Main repo: https://localhost (ports 80/443) Worktree: https://localhost:XXXX (unique ports) View your worktree's URLs: make worktree Follow the worktree logs: make worktree-log Close a worktree: make worktree-close # Stops containers and removes worktree if no uncommitted changes All worktrees share the same database services (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch), so you can test multiple features without duplicating data. MCP Server & CLI NewsBlur includes an MCP server that lets AI agents (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client) interact with your feeds, stories, and classifiers. Premium subscription required. Connect Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http newsblur https://newsblur.com/mcp/ Codex: Add to ~/.codex/config.toml: [mcp_serv
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

75 sources
conesus·Oct 7, 2026
Flow is gorgeous and fits this ascii art theme beautifully. I've installed it and have lots of changes I'd like to make. Are you open to PRs or should I maintain my own fork without expectation of upstreaming anything? Examples of changes I'd like to see: 1. I want a decay on the flame, so on every state change, the flame slowly works its way back down to a base rate, say at 2 minutes. That would imply that a strong fire is a recently changed state, while a decayed flame is a stale state that hasn't changed in a while. 2. Automatic choosing of a different animation on every open. I run half a dozen to a dozen agents on a single terminal window (full screened on a 27" monitor) and I already built a way to distinguish sessions from other other with my pre-plugin psuedoterminal crabigator and I'd like to do the same for these animati
Read the rest
ons. Basically a way to distinguish sessions from other other. 3. More so than just changing animations, I'd like to have a random palette chosen per-animation, so there's multiple flames, but there's the purple-esque flames, the blue-esque flames, the red ones, the orange ones, the yellow ones, and so on. 4. I'd like a way to integrate the plugin into crabigator so its takes a single section instead of being full width. Regardless, this is a beautiful mod, reminds me of the type of MUD hacking in the early-to-mid 90s that I used to love as a child, and I'm going to be stealing/integrating this into my workflows immediately. BTW, I used to have different ASCII art images on each of my servers. Here's a sampling: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/blob/main/ansible/rol... https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/blob/main/ansible/rol... https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/blob/main/ansible/rol...
In Animated ASCII Art for Web Pages
stasomatic·Jul 1, 2026Recommendation phrase
I don't know about "best", but I've tried many, Reeder, Feedly etc, for many years. These are not OSS though, but Reeder was my favorite of the bunch. I settled on running NewsBlur on an OVH instance, it's open source and so are the apps. https://github.com/samuelclay/newsblur On the desktop I use the default web interface, it runs and looks nice. A bit too many batteries included, but you can turn things off. It's Django, so you can vibe code to your heart's delight. I did.
In Show HN: HackerNows – Native iOS HN Client
conesus·Oct 17, 2024
I run NewsBlur[0] and I’ve been battling this issue of NewsBlur fetching 403s across the web for months now. My users are revolting and asking for refunds. I’ve tried emailing dozens of site owners and publishers and only two of them have done the work of whitelisting their RSS feed. It’s maddening and is having a real negative effect on NewsBlur. NewsBlur is an open-source RSS news reader (full source available at [1]), something we should all agree is necessary to support the open web! But Cloudflare blocking all of my feed fetchers is bizarre behavior. And we’re on the verified bots list for years, but it hasn’t made a difference. Let me know what I can do. NewsBlur publishes a list of IPs that it uses for feed fetching that I've shared with Cloudflare but it hasn't made a difference. I'm hoping Cloudflare uses the IP address list that
Read the rest
I publish and adds them to their allowlist so NewsBlur can keep fetching (and archiving) millions of feeds. [0]: https://newsblur.com [1]: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur
In Using Cloudflare on your website could be blocking RSS users
0-1·Jun 24, 2021
From a quick skim through https://github.com/samuelclay/newsblur for models extending mongo.Document, it looks like the following private customer data has been breached: - all story content from all private feeds - any uploaded OPML files, including URLs for any private RSS feeds - User’s twitter/facebook account info and access tokens, if the user had linked those services with their newsblur account - all data that would be used to create a user profile page, including email address, whether the user had a public profile or not However most personal data, such as password hashes and billing info, was stored in postgres.
In Hacker deleted all of NewsBlur’s Mongo data and is now holding the data hostage
conesus·Mar 23, 2020
NewsBlur (YC S12) | Remote Android Engineer | Remote | Part Time I'm looking for an Android developer to help build the next version of the NewsBlur Android app. NewsBlur is a popular RSS news reader with apps on the web, iOS, and Android as well as a thriving third-party developer scene and integration into over a dozen news readers. Are you or somebody you know looking for a part time Android development gig that gives you schedule and feature autonomy? The next version of the NewsBlur Android app is ready to be built and I'm looking for somebody excited to work on a popular news reader to join the team. My budget is $2-3k / month and there's plenty of great features to build. You can inspect the code base right now and see if you're a good fit: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur (check clients/Android for the Java source). Email me
Read the rest
at samuel@newsblur.com. We can start immediately!
In Ask HN: Who is hiring right now?

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