RSS Feed Tracker

Manage your RSS Feeds from the extension popup.

Features

• Manage RSS feeds locally. No account required. Your data stays on your device.
• Back up and restore all the extension data (feeds, folders, posts, bookmarks and settings). Details of the backup format can be found below.
• Export and import feeds as OPML.
• Organize feeds into folders with drag and drop support.
• Search for posts already fetched by the extension.
• Support for RSS, Atom and JSON feeds.
• Support for keyboard navigation. The list of shortcuts is below.
• Light and dark themes.

Nice Extras

• Pick up where you left off if the popup closes accidentally.
• Mark posts as read by clicking them (with a setting to allow clicks to open the post instead).
• Middle and right-click to open a post.
• The back/forward mouse buttons work just like in the browser tabs. Or, use the keyboard shortcuts instead ctrl+alt+left/ctrl+alt+right.
• ctrl+f to filter recent posts and ctrl+shift+f to search all posts.
• Hover over a link to view the URL at the bottom of the extension popup (Chrome does not do this for links in the extension popup).
• An icon with a link to the comments URL is added to the bottom of the post when a comments link is available. This is pretty handy for feeds like 'Hacker News'.
• Posts are grouped by feed when viewing all posts under a folder (with a setting to disable posts grouping).
• Automatically check for feeds in the current tab when adding a feed.
• Turn off auto-updates for specific feeds.
• Bookmark posts.

Limitations

• No Sync with other devices. Make sure to create extension backups regularly from the "Preferences" tab.
• Cannot view the full post in the extension. I think it's best to view posts on the author's website and the extension popup isn't the place for reading articles anyway.
• No notifications. I don't like notifications.

Why create this extension

I used Feeder's Chrome extension for years. I was mostly happy with it, especially that it didn't require a login. But, there were some small issues that kept nagging at me and minor improvements that I wanted to add. So, I thought: why not create my own extension. And, this is the extension I'm using instead.

Backup format

The backup is a zip file containing the following JSON files:

• manifest.json contains the backup metadata:

  • backupVersion set to 1. Will be incremented only when there is a breaking change.
  • extensionName
  • extensionVersion the extension version when the backup was generated.
  • createdAt when was the backup generated.
  • preferences the user preferences
    • uiTheme "light" or "dark" or null (i.e. follow system theme).
    • defaultFeedUpdateFrequency the default value in milliseconds for the 'Update Frequency' field when creating a new feed.
    • clickPostToToggleUnread when set to true, clicking a post marks it as unread. When set to false, clicking a post opens the post in a new tab.
    • orderPostsBy posts in a feed, under a folder, under bookmarks or in search, can be ordered by publishedAt or fetchedAt. publishedAt is the time when the post was published according to the feed. fetchedAt is when the post was fetched by the extension from the feed.
    • groupFolderPosts can be true or false. If true and when displaying posts inside a folder, posts for feed X will be shown first, then posts for feed Y, ... This grouping will be done for each page of posts.
  • backupFiles
    • feeds_folders the filename containing the feeds and folders data. Usually set to nodes.json.
    • posts an array of filenames (0 or more) containing the feed posts. Each file contains at most 20K posts. Usually named posts_xxxx.json.

• nodes.json contains an array of feeds and folders. Each object has the following properties

  • id auto-incremented integer.
  • type can be "feed" or "folder".
  • name name of the feed or folder.
  • unreadCount the number of unread posts inside the feed or folder.
  • parentId ID of the parent folder containing this feed or folder. Can be null only for the root folder.
  • sortOrder a number that allows sorting feeds and folders within the same parent folder
  • createdAt when was the feed or folder created.
  • feed set to null for folders. Contains the following properties when type="feed"
    • url feed URL
    • favicon URL of the feed icon. can be null.
    • updateFrequencyfrequency of feed updates in milliseconds. Can be null meaning that the feed will not be updated automatically (user can still do that manually).
    • lastRunAt last time the feed has run. Represented as an integer (milliseconds since epoch). Can be null.
    • nextRunAt next time the feed will run. Equal to lastRunAt + updateFrequency. Represented as an integer (milliseconds since epoch). Equals to null when updateFrequency is null.

• posts_xxxx.json contains an array of feed posts. Each post has the following properties

  • feedId feed ID
  • guid string representing the unique identifier for the post. Provided by the feed.
  • title title of the post
  • url URL of the post
  • commentsURL URL pointing to the comments of the post. Only RSS feeds can provide a comments URL (Atom and JSON feeds do not).
  • unread can be 1 (unread) or 0 (read)
  • bookmarked can be 1 (bookmarked) or 0 (not bookmarked)
  • publishedAt time the post was published according to the feed. Represented as an integer (milliseconds since epoch).
  • fetchedAt time the post was fetched by the extension. Represented as an integer (milliseconds since epoch).

Keyboard Navigation

Tabbing through the UI elements and using arrows allow you to do almost everything. Still, some of the following shortcuts might prove useful:

• ctrl+shift+s to open/close the extension popup (can be configured from chrome://extensions/shortcuts)
• Top-header shortcuts
  • ctrl+l go to the "Library" page
  • ctrl+b go to the "Bookmarks" page
  • ctrl+p go to the "Preferences" page
• Filter/Search posts
  • ctrl+f go to the filter posts page. Enabled in feed/folder/bookmarks/search pages
  • ctrl+shift+f go to the search posts page. Enabled in feed/folder/bookmarks/filter pages
  • escape exit from filter/search page and go back to the previous page
• Back/forward navigation (the same as the browser back/forward buttons)
  • ctrl+alt+left go back
  • ctrl+alt+right go forward
• Page Header Navigation (under "Library")
  • ctrl+t toggle the feed/folder title dropdown
  • ctrl+m mark all posts in the current feed/folder as read
  • ctrl+u go to the unread posts page of the current feed/folder
  • ctrl+a go to all posts page of the current feed/folder
  • backspace go to the previous page (same as clicking the back button that is rendered in the extension UI)
• Navigating the folders/feeds hierarchy
  • up/down move up/down in the folder/feed list
  • right/enter when a folder/feed is focused, go to that folder/feed page
  • left go to the parent folder page
  • t toggle the three-dot menu of the focused feed/folder
  • m mark as read all posts of the focused feed/folder.
  • u go to the unread posts page of the focused feed/folder
  • a go to the all posts page of the focused feed/folder
• Posts page
  • up/down move up/down in the posts list
  • left go to the parent folder page
  • l load more posts
  • enter opens the link in a new tab or toggles the unread status of the post depending on the user preferences
  • ctrl+enter opens the link in a new tab
  • shift+enter opens the link in a new window
  • ctrl+shift+enter open the focused post in a new incognito window and move to that window
  • ctrl+c copy the link of the focused post
  • k open the comments link (if any) of the focused post in a new tab and move to that tab
  • ctrl+k open the comments link (if any) of the focused post in a new tab but keep the focus on the extension popup
  • shift+k open the comments link (if any) of the focused post in a new window and move to that window
  • ctrl+shift+k open the comments link (if any) of the focused post in a new incognito window and move to that window
  • b bookmark or remove the bookmark of the focused post
  • m mark the focused post as read or unread

Running the project locally

1. Install dependencies:

npm install

2. Start development server:

npm run dev

3. Open Chrome and navigate to chrome://extensions/, enable "Developer mode" and load the unpacked extension from the dist directory.

Project Structure

• src/popup/index.html - Extension popup UI.
• src/background/index.ts - Extension service worker. Includes message handlers for managing extension data (stored in indexedDB), feed polling for new posts, caching,
• src/offscreen/index.html - Handles feeds export, backup/restore and search.
• manifest.config.js - Chrome extension manifest configuration.

Release Process

• [optional] Set env variable GITHUB_TOKEN (generate token)
• Run npm run release which includes:
  • Pull the latest changes git pull.
  • Check for linting issues npm run lint.
  • Set the new version in package.json
  • Add the version and date to the changelog ## [<version>] - <yyyy-mm-dd> and keep ## [Unreleased] at the top.
  • Commit the changes and create a git tag v<version>.
  • Push the local commit and tag to GitHub.
  • Create the GitHub release, done automatically if the GITHUB_TOKEN env variable is set. Otherwise, a new release page is opened in the browser with fields prepopulated. The release notes are copied from the changelog.
• Package the extension with npm run build.
• Upload the packaged extension to the Chrome web store.

License

This project is GPLv3 licensed.