A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Yeah, it's better if you can have the computer on all the time, but it only needs to be running when you access it.
I'm not that familiar with FreshRSS, but in general apps will only update at opening (not in the background) for most syncing operations. You may have to do more manual syncing than you would like.
FreshRSS has an API that can be called by different apps in the app store.
I use FreshRSS web interface on my computer, and then use the Readrops app on my phone.
Depends on the client actually. If your phone app’s client stores state and syncs whenever the server is available, then this setup works. If the client does not, and tries to sync live state, then it will only work if the freshrss server is also up and running.
On iOS, I know Fiery Feeds saves state and syncs when the server is available.
I’ve been running FreshRSS for several years now without any problems, but mine is running on a dedicated home server running other services too.
Your experience will depend on your RSS client. As others already mentioned, you will want to configure your client to only pull manually (usually on open only), otherwise it will keep throwing errors at you.
I am going to second the recommendation to get your hands on a cheap Raspberry Pi (you can easily run it on a Zero 2 W) with an 8GB microSD. You can then get a cheap US$2/year domain and use Cloudflare Tunnel to access it from anywhere without having to open ports or expose your whole network to the internet.
The full setup should be around $50 including the Pi, case, microSD, cable, power adapter, and cheap domain in NameCheap or similar.
I'm not familiar with FreshRSS, but assuming that there's something in the protocol that lets a reader push up a "read" bit on an per article basis
this page references a "GReader" API
I'd assume that that'd depend on the client, not the server.
If the client attempts an update and fails and that causes it to not retry again later, then I imagine that it wouldn't work. If it does retry until it sets the bit, I'd imagine that it does work. The FreshRSS server can't really be a factor, because it won't know whether the client has tried to talk to it when it's off.
EDIT: Some of the clients in the table on the page I linked to say that they "work offline", so I assume that the developers at least have some level of disconnected operation in mind.
The RSS readers I've always used are strictly pull. They don't set bits on the server, and any "read" flag lives only on the client.
You're 100% right, OP could sync their mobile apps when the PC is up and get everything to work when it's off.
Agree here too. FreshRSS is an RSS aggregator, basically a self-hosted GReader, which means it fetches the item contents and syncs the read status across clients. That is the HUGE advantage of using it instead of just adding the feeds directly to your client in your device.
Other FreshRSS features I love are the option to load full content of item that only share excerpts, and the option to use CSS selectors to remove content you don’t want (like embedded ads).
I self host on a 5 year old Dell Optiplex Small Form Factor desktop.
I also have a Raspberry Pi, which has about 1/16 the performance of the desktop - Pi can be used for all sorts of stuff.
You could run FreshRSS on a RPi: https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-freshrss/
Then interface that with your network. Heck, you could probably go down to your local Goodwill or Computer Resell shop and pick up something.
If you read it on another device and your PC isn't on, it has no way to register that.
Why not just set up a proper server?