termnews

A terminal news aggregator written in Go. Browse RSS and Atom feeds in a beautiful TUI with tabbed windows and highly customizable themes.

Features

• 📰 Multi-source news aggregation — fetch multiple RSS/Atom feeds concurrently
• 🗂️ Tabbed windows — each tab shows a single news source
• ➕ Add/remove sources — manage news sources at runtime and persist them
• 📖 Article detail view — read the full article summary inline
• ⌨️ Keyboard-driven — fully navigable without a mouse
• 🔍 Search — search across all loaded articles
• 📚 Read tracking — track which articles you've already read
• ⭐ Bookmarks — bookmark important articles for later
• 🏷️ Categories — organize feeds by category
• 🔄 Auto-refresh — configurable automatic feed refresh
• 📊 Summary view — see top articles from all feeds at once
• 🌐 Open in browser — quickly open articles in your default browser
• 🎨 Highly customizable themes — BitchX-inspired ANSI styling with built-in presets
• ✨ Custom colors and markers — configure every visual element

Themes

termnews includes several built-in themes inspired by classic terminal applications:

Theme	Description
default	Modern, clean appearance with rounded borders
bitchx	Classic IRC client style with ASCII art banners and double borders
hacker	Matrix-style green-on-black with ASCII art
minimal	Clean, distraction-free interface with no borders
retro	BBS-style with bold colors and heavy borders

Setting a Theme

In your config.toml:

theme = "bitchx"

Custom Theme Configuration

You can customize any visual element by adding a [custom_theme] section:

theme = "default"  # Start with a base theme

[custom_theme.colors]
primary = "14"       # Bright cyan
secondary = "10"     # Bright green
text = "7"           # Silver
text_muted = "8"     # Dark gray
error = "9"          # Bright red
success = "10"       # Bright green
link = "12"          # Bright blue
unread = "10"        # Bright green
bookmark = "11"      # Bright yellow
category = "13"      # Bright magenta
border = "14"        # Bright cyan
header = "11"        # Bright yellow
status_bg = "4"      # Blue background
status_fg = "15"     # White text

[custom_theme.borders]
style = "double"     # Options: rounded, sharp, double, heavy, ascii, none, custom
separator = "═"

[custom_theme.markers]
unread = "[+]"
bookmark = "[*]"
loading = "[~]"
error = "[!]"
selected = "»»"
tab_separator = "│"
tab_active_left = "«"
tab_active_right = "»"

[custom_theme.header]
show = true
show_name = true
title = "TERMNEWS"
align = "center"     # Options: left, center, right
banner = """
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  ▀█▀ █▀▀ █▀█ █▀▄▀█ █▄░█ █▀▀ █░█░█ █▀                 ║
║  ░█░ ██▄ █▀▄ █░▀░█ █░▀█ ██▄ ▀▄▀▄▀ ▄█  v1.0          ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
"""

[custom_theme.status_bar]
show = true
position = "bottom"
show_keys = true
key_separator = " │ "

[custom_theme.article_list]
show_numbers = true
number_format = "%02d»"
show_separators = true
separator_char = "─"
show_meta = true
compact = false

[custom_theme.tab_bar]
position = "top"
show_unread_count = true
unread_format = "[%d]"
max_tab_width = 15
truncate_suffix = ".."

Keybindings

List View

Key	Action
Tab / →	Next source tab
Shift+Tab / ←	Previous source tab
↓ / j	Move selection down
↑ / k	Move selection up
Enter	Open selected article
r	Refresh current feed
R	Refresh all feeds
t	Toggle auto-refresh
s	Summary view
/	Search articles
a	Add a new news source
d	Delete the current news source
b	Toggle bookmark
m	Mark all as read
o	Open in browser
?	Show help
q	Quit

Detail View

Key	Action
↓ / j	Scroll down
↑ / k	Scroll up
b	Toggle bookmark
o	Open in browser
Esc / Backspace	Back to article list
q	Quit

Configuration

On first run, a configuration file is created at:

• Linux/macOS: ~/.config/termnews/config.toml
• Windows: %APPDATA%\termnews\config.toml

Example config.toml

refresh_interval_mins = 5
max_articles_per_feed = 50
theme = "bitchx"
show_read_status = true

[[sources]]
name = "Reuters Top News"
url = "http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/topNews"
feed_type = "rss"
category = "World News"

[[sources]]
name = "Hacker News"
url = "https://news.ycombinator.com/rss"
feed_type = "rss"
category = "Tech"

[[sources]]
name = "My Atom Feed"
url = "https://example.com/feed.atom"
feed_type = "atom"

Configuration Options

Option	Description	Default
refresh_interval_mins	Auto-refresh interval in minutes	5
max_articles_per_feed	Maximum articles shown per feed	50
theme	Built-in theme name	default
show_read_status	Track read/unread status	true

Available Themes

Theme	Style
default	Modern with rounded borders and subtle colors
bitchx	Classic IRC client with ASCII art and double borders
hacker	Matrix-style green terminal aesthetic
minimal	Clean, borderless, distraction-free
retro	BBS-style with bold colors and heavy borders

Feed Types

• rss — RSS feed
• atom — Atom feed
• auto — Auto-detect feed type (recommended)

Installation

Using Go

go install github.com/adamdb/termnews@latest

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/adamdb/termnews.git
cd termnews
go build -o termnews .
./termnews

Building a release binary

go build -ldflags="-s -w" -o termnews .

Requirements

• Go 1.21 or later

Updating

If you've already installed termnews and want to pull the latest changes:

# Pull the latest changes from the repository
git pull

# Rebuild
go build -o termnews .

Dependencies

• Bubble Tea — TUI framework
• Lip Gloss — Styling
• gofeed — RSS/Atom parsing
• BurntSushi/toml — TOML configuration