Micro guide: NetNewsWire ❤️ FreshRSS setup

[mprimi]

Thank you for NetNewsWire, I've been a user for many years. Today, I came here to throw some moneys at you, and found out you do this out of love. Amazing. I don't know you but I love you.

I just setup NewsNetWire + FreshRSS. I think I've tried before, but couldn't figure it out, and gave up. But a comment on HN made me confident it does indeed exist and it works great.

I had to fiddle around a little. I'm reporting some feedback from the experience. Also, I'm writing down the steps I wish I had found somewhere else documented.

Here's the 30-second version:

0. Assuming you have set up FreshRSS and you can login in the web UI

1. Open NetNewsWire > Preferences > Accounts > Add > FreshRSS

2. To sign in use:

• Login: username same as the FreshRSS web UI
• Password: API token created in: FreshRSS web UI > Profile > API Management
• API URL: https://example.com/api/greader.php (try opening this in a browser, it should show something)

Done.

--

This took some fiddling. Initially I tried all combinations of (myuser | myuser@mydomain ) x (password) x (/api/, /rss/, /rss/api/greader.php). None worked. Creating a new user, retried all combinations. Still not working. 😅

Some extra notes for NNW

🌈 Note 1: It took me a while to find how to add a FreshRSS account to NNW. Finally found it in settings>accounts>add

🌈 Note 2: Sign-in spits out a generic error message: Network Error. It seems to me like it's the same message for every kind of error:

• hostname not resolving
• server not reachable/listening
• bad certificates
• wrong URL path
• wrong credentials
• probably more

This can be a red herring. A little more details in the error message would be helpful.

🌈 Note 3: FreshRSS API Token. The FreshRSS user's password won't work for the API. One has to go into FreshRSS Settings > Profile > API Access and create a new token. It would be great to point users there, in some way. Even just renaming the Password field to API token field would maybe point people the right direction.