I’ve been browsing Emacs’s The Info Directory (C-h i) the other day and came across a menu item called Newsticker.

Turned out is a built-in RSS reader I never heard of. I know Emacs has Gnus which I tried to use as RSS reader before but didn’t succeed. Then, as probably most of Emacs users, I moved to Elfeed which is great.

Here is how Newsticker looks like:

isn’t it nice? You can open it with M-x newsticker-show-news.

It’s been a few weeks since I decided to use it.

Navigation

Navigation is very simple:

• f and F for switching feeds forward/backward
• n and p for switching posts
• <RET> to read full article

Configuration

Setting feeds is only slightly different from Elfeed:

(setq newsticker-url-list '(
  ("Planet Emacslife" "https://planet.emacslife.com/atom.xml")
  ("<name>" "<url>")))

Also when q is pressed the whole Newsticker is closed BUT its buffers are still there which I don’t really like.

So I came up with this elisp:

(defun my/close-newsticker ()
    "Kill all tree-view related buffers."
    (kill-buffer "*Newsticker List*")
    (kill-buffer "*Newsticker Item*")
    (kill-buffer "*Newsticker Tree*"))

(advice-add 'newsticker-treeview-quit :after 'my/close-newsticker)

Now when newsticker-treeview-quit function is called the Newsticker buffers getting killed too.

Why use built-in tools

I remember I’ve read, I think in Irreal’s blog about not understanding some people’s obsession to use built-in tools in Emacs.

I can’t quite explain it either but I do feel drawn towards built-in tools too haha.

Naturally I try to track/think about every extension I add to my config to make sure it’s up to date, not abandoned, supports my version of emacs, how much dependencies it has, etc. And even when everything is ok, I still feel like someone can take it from me if let’s say a maintainer will decide to archive the project or something.

It just sits in my brain on the background and slowly drains my energy. It’s maybe silly reason but I just feel more vulnerable with more dependencies.

Anyways, I suggest you to try Newsticker, it’s very interesting mode.