Ultra RSS Reader
Your feeds, on your machine. A keyboard-first desktop RSS reader with offline full-text search and FreshRSS sync — no account, no cloud, no subscription.
ultra-rss.jey3dayo.net • Download • Features • Keyboard Shortcuts • 日本語
Why Ultra RSS Reader?
- Local-first, no account required — All articles live in an embedded SQLite database on your machine. Full-text search (FTS5) works offline across everything you have ever fetched.
- First-class FreshRSS sync — Connect a FreshRSS server via the Google Reader API. Read status and stars sync bidirectionally, with pending local changes protected from being overwritten by stale remote state.
- Credentials in the OS keyring by default — FreshRSS passwords and tokens, plus optional Cloudflare Access Service Token credentials, go to Keychain / Credential Manager / Secret Service, never into the database. An optional local-file mode stores them unencrypted in the app data directory instead.
- Keyboard-driven —
j/k navigation, single-key actions, a ⌘K command palette that jumps straight to any feed, and fully customizable bindings.
- Read the real page without leaving — Web Preview embeds the publisher page inside the reading flow with dedicated browser controls.
How it compares
There are a lot of good RSS readers, and the right one depends on what you want to optimize for.
Ultra RSS Reader is built for people who want their archive to live on their own machine and their hands to stay on the keyboard. Everything you have ever fetched stays in a local SQLite database and is searchable offline, and sync is optional — point it at your own FreshRSS server or run it with no account at all. It is free and MIT-licensed.
If you want a polished native reader on Apple platforms, NetNewsWire and Reeder are excellent. If you want a hosted service with mobile apps and discovery features, Feedly or Inoreader will serve you better. Ultra RSS Reader deliberately does none of the hosted parts.
Install
Download the latest installer from GitHub Releases:
| Platform | Artifact |
|---|
| macOS (Apple Silicon) | .dmg |
| Windows | .exe / .msi |
macOS note: Releases are currently ad-hoc signed (no Apple Developer ID), so Gatekeeper will warn on first launch. Right-click the app → Open, or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Ultra RSS Reader.app".
To build from source instead, see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Features
- 📡 Multiple providers — Local RSS/Atom feeds and FreshRSS (Google Reader API)
- 🔍 Full-text search — SQLite FTS5 across all articles, instant and offline
- 🔄 Sync — Background periodic sync, sync-on-wake, manual trigger, and bidirectional pending mutations (read status, stars)
- 🔐 Cloudflare Access for FreshRSS — Optional Service Token authentication for HTTPS FreshRSS servers; enter the Client ID and Client Secret when adding or editing an account
- 🗂️ Folders & tags — Organize feeds into folders, tag articles, mute keywords
- 🧭 Command palette —
⌘K / Ctrl+K, type @ to jump to any subscription
- 🌐 Web Preview — Embedded publisher pages with dedicated browser controls
- 🧹 Subscription review — A subscriptions index workspace that flags stale feeds and helps you decide Keep / Later / Unsubscribe
- 📥 OPML — Import and export feed lists
- 🎨 Theming — Light/dark with system detection, OKLch color tokens
- 🇯🇵 Japanese localization — In-app copy carefully tuned, not machine-translated
- 🔐 Secure by default — HTML sanitized in Rust before rendering; credentials never touch SQLite
Keyboard Shortcuts
All bindings are customizable in Settings. Defaults:
| Key | Action | Key | Action |
|---|
j / k | Next / previous article | m | Toggle read |
h / l | Previous / next feed | s | Toggle star |
Space / Shift+Space | Scroll article | a | Mark all read |
v | Open in-app browser | b | Open external browser |
/ | Search | f | Cycle filter |
⌘1 / ⌘2 / ⌘3 | Unread / All / Starred | u | Focus sidebar |
⌘K | Command palette | ⌘\ | Toggle sidebar |
Esc | Close / clear | ⌘, | Settings |
Tech Stack
Tauri 2 (Rust) · React 19 · TypeScript · SQLite (rusqlite + FTS5) · Tailwind CSS v4 · Zustand + TanStack Query
See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full architecture, development modes, and verification commands.
Roadmap
Currently planned, roughly in order:
- Smoother installs — signed and notarized macOS builds, plus Homebrew cask and winget, so first launch stops needing a Gatekeeper workaround. This is gated on obtaining a Developer ID signing identity, not on packaging work.
- Microsoft Store distribution (#57)
Linux packaging is available as an opt-in build_linux input on the release workflow (off by default), which produces .deb / .AppImage on demand. There is no published Linux install path yet, so the install table above stays macOS and Windows. Feedly sync is not planned.
Contributing
Contributions are welcome. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md for setup (mise install && pnpm install && mise run app:dev), architecture, and quality gates. Operational docs live under docs/.
License
MIT
