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Help me build the best desktop RSS client!

I really would like your feedback on what features are essential for a desktop RSS reader to have in 2025! I am not a designer, so UX suggestions are very much valued. I want this project to be built for making the open web a first-class contender with other media systems. The more feedback I get early on, the better this can be in the long run.

Open video if player isn’t working

I’m not special. I wholeheartedly that any experienced programmer could build what I’m hoping to deliver in much less time. This project is primarily for my own learning, but I want to deliver something game-changing. If you appreciate the vision I’m outlining here, I hope you would consider sharing your thoughts.

I’m programming again

I wanted to actually get good at programming. Over the years what little I’ve done had gotten quite rusty, and I wanted to change that. As a challenge, I’ve been forcing myself to learn a GUI toolkit. Last year I started this project, but as my weight loss journey became demanding it fell by the wayside. Recently I’ve returned to it and have been making great progress. It has been going very well and it is very gratifying to work on. Iced is becoming more familiar to mes. It is great to finally be at the point where there is a lot less guesswork in getting things to actually run.

Ideally, I would be building small silly things for fun to learn, but I’m too stubborn for that. I want to build something that actually matters, and has a chance of making a difference. On the other hand, it has to actually be something I can create, because no program means no impact at all. So I had to come up with something that felt important but achievable.

The plan is to build myself a desktop RSS reader. I’ve written before that more software needs to be written for RSS and I think there’s a lot of opportunity here. Currently I use FreshRSS for keeping up with feeds, but I want something on the desktop that supports more features and especially multimedia like AntennaPod. Kasts is also a great podcast client on the desktop that works pretty well with written content. With these in mind, the goal is to truly highlight the multimedia experience that the open web can be. Instead of being primarily focused on podcasts or articles, the plan is to make the best of both.

Motivation

Despite the potential behind Ladybird, I’m turbo bearish on browsers. AI chatbots replacing search engines, and short-form video dominating the information landscape are terrible things for the cultivation of a valuable independent web. My goal is to build an RSS tool so powerful that I’ll hardly need a browser. Not only that, but I believe that it’s important to solve the demand side of the attention economy as well as the supply side. As such, I want to build a tool that can bring real eyeballs and attention to independent web sites. This means that the application has to be as user-friendly as possible. Discovery features are essential to connecting people with the open web. I’m excited about the fact that this can be purely meritocratic, feeds can be discovered from feeds you already follow. Purely individual, no opinionated or manipulative algorithms needed.

I have many ideas for what I consider to be a truly modern refinement of what a desktop RSS reader should be. I think by actually building a desktop client, so much of the massive privacy attack-surface of browsers can be eliminated. It’s become clear to me that browsers are (at least for now) in a particularly terrible state and I don’t want the open web to die with them. The fact of the matter is, big tech systems always raise the bar for what people expect out of their tools. It is crucial that a modern RSS reader has many features that provide competitive value without sacrificing privacy or autonomy. This requires some genuinely creative thinking if I say so myself. By broadening the scope of what such a tool can be used for, many exciting options open up.

For example, I’ve essentially used FreshRSS as my own mini search engine. With full-text search capabilities and other features, an RSS reader can be a powerful information management tool. Just as I fear for the future of web browsers, I am also concerned about the future of search engines as a whole. If we allow AI agents to be the new gatekeepers of the web, the idea of directly searching the web comes under fire. I definitely want to build a tool that opposes this force head-on. One advantage of building this in 2025 is that expecting users to store archives of their RSS feeds is a relatively trivial demand for most systems. As such, I think search and information management features are a serious game-changer for a modern RSS reader. I already use Logseq and I’ll be thinking about what integrations would be desirable. My hope is that this would create a real avenue for valuable resources to be discovered and engaged with.

It has been pointed out that an advantage of ‘darknet’ sites is that anyone can set one up without having to pay for a domain, or having to expose a public IP to the Internet. Treating Tor & I2P (and hopefully other networks as well) as first-class resources allows users to leverage these powerful censorship resistance technologies. The dream of this is that instead of valuable hidden services being siloed away, they can be full participants in the greater open web. I believe this alone-makes this project a valuable pursuit. A great deal of (actual human) web traffic to my (relatively small) web presence is from both Tor & I2P, this is one way I hope to ‘give back’.

Overview

Current state

Planned features

Information Management

Decentralization

Ease of use

Suggestions needed

I’d really like any and all thoughts you may have about what’s worth including or how to get particular features right. If you have any thoughts or suggestions I would really appreciate it if you’d contact me.

Darknet support

Given that I fully intend to support clearnet & darknets, I’d love to feedback on how they should be handled. The easiest would be to simply load content from it’s respective network, but maybe some people would want to use Tor for clearnet connections as well. I think there are many people much more knowledgeable than me who would have very useful thoughts on how best to handle this.

Discovery

An obvious low-hanging fruit would be to suggest feeds linked from the open article/podcast. I’m curious what other useful avenues are worth considering when it comes to offering suggestions. I was thinking that some form of ranked suggestions based off similar feeds is an interesting idea. I would definitely be open to specific suggestions on this front.

Design & usability

Getting the application to look acceptable will be a significant achievement on my part. Any and all suggestions are going to be vital in the long run.

Support appreciated

If you’re excited by the prospect of a new RSS client with fancy features, any help you can offer would go a long way to making my life a lot easier. I can accept donations through Liberapay or via Monero. I am hoping that once this project beings to show promise, that I can work on this and other similarly inspired projects full-time. I want to spend my time building things that frustrate tyrants.

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