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.

[CodeIdeal]

Thanks so much, it saved me a lot of time!

[Simandre]

Hello, I'm +1ing the Note 2.

I'm still struggling at the auth step doing exactly as said and still having this Network Error I can't diagnose.

[seraphyn]

@Thoscellen My URL was https://FQDN/api/greader.php, without the rss in it, just the api in the URL this works flawlessy

[mprimi]

My URL was https://FQDN/api/greader.php, without the rss in it

Ah indeed. /rss/ is specific to my own setup (hosting multiple applications on the same server). Updated the original comment. Thank you @seraphyn

[broizter]

As an additional note you have to enable "Allow API access (required for mobile apps)" under "Authentication" in FreshRSS before "API management" shows up.

[Simandre]

Yes, I was able to make it work too. Apparently there is some sort of proxy on my computer that sometimes block my FreshRSS.

IMO we still need some way to diagnose the failure of the connexion — could be logs, modal, more explicit messages, a section in the settings…

[membranophonist]

Chiming in with what worked for me when setting up NetNewsWire (6.1.2 on macOS and iPadOS) with FreshRSS (1.21.0). This is the same as @mprimi's instructions, but there is an additional directory in the path to the API endpoint and I suspect some of the FreshRSS interface labels have changed.

1. In FreshRSS, go to settings menu (the cog icon) > Authentication
2. Check the Allow API access box
3. Click the Submit button
4. Go to Profile
5. In the API Management section, create an API password
6. Click the Submit button immediately below
7. In NetNewsWire, go to Settings > Accounts, then click the button to add an account
8. Select FreshRSS, then click the Continue button
9. Enter your FreshRSS username
10. Enter the user-specific API password
11. Enter your domain name with the format: https://domain.name/p/api/greader.php

Of course your path to FreshRSS will have to change if you have installed it in a subdirectory.

[misaligar]

@membranophonist For me the following format works :https://domain.name/api/greader.php If I add /p/, I am getting the The API URL wasn't found.

The sync appears to be working but when i check out the docker logs, I see the following warning message. Does anyone know why?

[warning] --- Invalid POST token: 5a3ba2f980c74187abdf02772c8a886485aff3efZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
[warning] --- GReaderAPI::unauthorized

[parkr]

HUGE thank you to you all! This was a massive help, especially the instructions in https://github.com/Ranchero-Software/NetNewsWire/issues/3731#issuecomment-1524015039.