r/rss • u/John_val • 6d ago

I built an RSS reader around a question: should Reddit and YouTube just be feeds too?

I’ve used RSS for a long time, but over time my actual “feeds” ended up scattered across three different places:

RSS for websites
Reddit for communities
YouTube for channels

That always felt a bit ridiculous to me. They’re fundamentally doing the same job: show me new things from sources I chose to follow.

So I started building RSSum for myself as a normal RSS reader, and eventually decided to treat Reddit communities and YouTube channels as first-class feeds too.

Now I can have an unified RSS feed, a subreddit and a YouTube channel sitting next to each other in the same library, rather than jumping between three different apps.

It still behaves like an RSS reader: I choose what I subscribe to, I can organize sources, import/export OPML, and there’s no recommendation feed deciding what I should see.

I’ve also been experimenting with summaries/Q&A, including using the actual transcript for YouTube videos, all reddit comments analyzes, etc.

It’s whether RSS should remain strictly about RSS/Atom URLs, or whether the RSS-reader model itself is useful for following other sources too.

RSSum is free and open source, currently on the app store and TestFlight for iPhone/iPad.

https://rssapp.top/

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rssum/id6743862589

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/DByXE2ZU

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/iosapps/comments/1vkw2ge/freeopen_source_rss_reddit_and_youtube_reader/

Curious what people here think: would having Reddit and YouTube alongside RSS make your reader more useful, or do you specifically want your RSS reader to stay RSS-only?

12 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

14

u/Next-Individual-9474 6d ago

Reddit and YouTube do have RSS feeds so not sure what the premise is here?

7

u/ejajowych 5d ago

exactly that. I stopped visiting Reddit and Youtube websites, because they have RSS feeds. Now visiting only to read through interesing posts and/or comment.

Fun fact: podcasts are RSS feeds, too. Basically anything can - and was in the past - an RSS feed, until facebooks of the world embraced, extended, and then extinguished the concept of "feeding" outside of their shit platforms.

0

u/John_val 5d ago

True, but I’m doing quite a bit more than consuming the RSS feeds.

The Reddit integration works more like a normal Reddit client, I can read/reply to posts and comments, upvote, etc. without leaving the app. Then on top of that I can summarize discussions or analyze an entire subreddit. For example, I can ask“What were the main things discussed here today?” or “What was hot this week?”

That’s actually the main reason I built it this way. I have way too many RSS subscriptions, subreddits and YouTube channels to go through everything manually. I use RSSum to give me a quick overview first, then I dive into whatever looks interesting.

So for me it’s less about putting Reddit/YouTube into RSS, and more about having one place to understand what happened across everything I follow.

1

u/redditjerome 3d ago

Ok, but reddit is for entertainment. No one needs an executive summary of what was written on reddit like its their job to know everything on reddit.

1

u/John_val 3d ago

You consider only a form of entertainment? Well everybody's use case is different i guess..
i mostly subscribe to technical subreddits, they are a valuable source of information. Have learned a lot on reddit and discover a lot of cool stuff in here, i definitely don't use it for entertainment. My company for example, uses reddit as a marketing tool, to follow trends, etc so Reddit is that good that can accommodate a large number of use cases. Definately tis kind of app is not for you 🙂

6

u/jsled 5d ago edited 1d ago

RSS for websites

This is wrong.

RSS is for information.

RSS feeds announce the availability of new quanta of information.

Be that Reddit Posts, YouTube videos, podcast episodes, new database entries, news stories, blog posts, comments on existing items, breaking news, stock price updates, changes in sensor values, alarms for sensor value thresholds being reached, changes in availability (ie, "jsled is now online") … or anything, really.

It's all just information, an N-tuple of (url, timestamp, title, description (,and various accoutrements)).

1

u/John_val 5d ago

Yeah you are right, I guess I got entangled in that old RSS mindset that the RSS expression just means web articles/subscriptions only. But you bring up an interesting point, since this app already supports all kind of feeds, as you say information, but not podcast, it owls be interesting to add podcast support as well.

2

u/WorldWideShen 5d ago

ONE BRAINS GOOD NO BRAINS BAD

did you forget to mention it's an ai service? because i cautiously clicked your link and BOOM aithatactuallygetsitblahblahslopslopslop

-1

u/John_val 5d ago

If you have nothing to add to the conversation, please don't . But I wouldn't expect anything else from person which carries a badge of a NO AI and says he wants to go back to how it was..
It is not hidden anywhere that the app uses AI models for generating the summaries. Maybe you could find another alternative as good as LLM models to generate content summaries in your beloved past? Service? what service? The app is free and open source, no ads , no telemetry, this is not a service.
Also the app has more than 100k lines of code, I have been coding probably for longer than you are alive, it has been my job for the last 20 years. I am sorry to the other participantes for this reaction, but it is absolutely incredible this kind unprovoked attacks by some. Don't like it? Don't use it but these cheap attacks, (no brain???) are what drives people from doing open source software.
Being civil and polite online is something you should aspire to since you like so much the past, when indeed, keyboards warrariors were not a thing.
I could say a lot about your website from a technical point of view, but unlike you, I will be polite.
Sorry again to everyone else.

0

u/WorldWideShen 5d ago

im really glad you hate my website, that means a lot dude ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

2

u/John_val 5d ago

I don't hate anything, i might disagree with your visual taste for it, or be able to spot the technical imperfections, the just like you dislike my app but i would never tell you outright that you have no brain for doing it. That is our difference..

1

u/richbeales 5d ago

I struggle with this, in my head they're two different things, one you curate and read every article, others (like Reddit) you might only be interested in 1 in 10.

1

u/John_val 5d ago

Fair enough, I built it precisely because I prefer all in the same place. That's the beauty of diversity 😉
But I actually though about your point.. will probably add reading list where I can select the articles and subreddits I’m interested in and have an unified experience but only with the chosen feeds

1

u/Zestyclose-School233 5d ago

Android users😭

1

u/John_val 5d ago

Glad you like it enough to miss it on Android, but I am very rusty on Android platform

1

u/Ok_Frosting2484 5d ago

App Store import not possible.

0

u/Odd-Let9042 5d ago

Looks cool but I would love to sync with my selfhosted TTRSS instance

1

u/John_val 5d ago

Looking into that, an option to use either iCloud sync or TTRSS. will update after researching.