Note: Akregator used to be available for Windows as well, but it seems there is no Windows developer working on the project currently, so it has had no Windows ports lately.
Summary: Akregator is a decent RSS client with many features, good polish and customizability, and good support for subscribing to text articles and reading them, and managing RSS feeds. It supports hierarchical folders for managing feeds, archiving articles, adding (a single) feed directly from a webpage's URL, searching articles by title, viewing snippets in its built-in web browser, three different layouts (including an scrollable feed-like layout), marking articles as important, displaying notifications, custom fonts and font sizes, and light/dark theme. It lacks supports for webpages with multiple feeds, embedding Youtube videos and podcast audio players, categories and tags, advanced search functionality, methods to automatically filter and organize articles. Personally, I wouldn't mind using it if I couldn't find something better.
Summarized Support by Considered Use Case
RSS completeness: okay: enclosures as links; no audio player for podcasts; no Youtube embedding.
Browsing articles: great: combined view; no keyword blacklisting.
Reading articles: excellent: light and dark theme; customizable font size; text search; can display webpage.
Notifier: great: notifications per feed; no notification per keyword; system tray icon.
Long-term management of a large number of articles: poor: no advanced search; no tagging; sorting; no saved searches; clear archival functionality.
Long-term management of a large number of feeds: adequate: hierarchical folders; no feed search; mutable URLs; annotations.
Programmability: nil: no executable or local file subscription; no filters or rules.
General usability: great: RSS autodiscovery; obvious workflows for basic operations; functionality explicit and well-organized.
Legend
✅ Positive remark.
⚠️ Caveat or issue.
❌ Missing functionality or critical issue.
Basic Functionality
Portability
Akregator is available in all major Linux distribution repositories, as tarballs, and soon a Flatpak version will also be available. Ancient versions were compatible with Windows, the Kontact team is looking for help to improve Windows support.
https://userbase.kde.org/Akregator (accessed 2024-09-26)
Adding Feeds
✅ Akregator only supports local RSS, so you don't need to create a "local RSS account" to use it.
✅ It takes a minimum of 3 clicks to add a feed to Akregator.
1: click on Add Feed... on the toolbar. A dialog to add a new source will appear. The contents of your clipboard will be pasted automatically, so you don't need to press Ctrl+V if you had already copied the URL.
2: click OK. The properties dialog of the newly added source will appear.
3: click OK. The feed will be added.
✅ The add feed action is also available on the menubar, through Feed -> Add Feed....
✅ There's a default keyboard shortcut for adding feeds, it's the Insert key without a modifier key.
Webpage URL Support
✅ Akregator supports adding RSS feeds from webpage URLs.
❌ Akregator doesn't support webpages that declare more than one RSS feed. It automatically adds the first feed it finds, without telling you that there are other feeds.
RSS Categories Support
❌ Akregator doesn't support making use of the categories declared in an RSS feed. It can't automatically tag articles with the categories of the website.
Default Feeds
Akregator comes with a few RSS feeds installed by default, and some ATOM feeds as well. They are:
- KDE Dot News [https://dot.kde.org/rss.xml]
- Linux.com [https://www.linux.com/feed/]
- Planet KDE [https://planet.kde.org/global/atom.xml]
- KDE Apps [https://store.kde.org/content.rdf]
- Planet KDE España [https://planet.kde-espana.org/atom.xml]
OPML Support
✅ Akregator supports importing and exporting OPML outlines, which can be used to transfer RSS feeds from one RSS client to another.
RSS Format Support
Akregator supports all RSS formats provided by WordPress:
| Format | Supported |
|---|---|
| RSS 2.0 | ✅ Yes. |
| RDF (RSS 1.0) | ✅ Yes. |
| RSS 0.92 | ✅ Yes. |
| ATOM 1.0 | ✅ Yes. |
Content Access Support
Web Support
✅ Akregator features a built-in web browser that can display the content of RSS articles.
✅ Akregator can display the linked webpage instead of the content of the article.
⚠️ This is only possible through a setting on the feed's properties: "Load full website when reading articles." It's not possible to switch between modes on a per article basis. Although, when the option is disabled, it's possible to open the linked webpage in a separate tab inside Akregator.
✅ Akregator provides a link to the webpage below the snippet in the RSS feed. It reads "Complete Story."
✅ It's possible to copy this link by right clicking on it.
Text Support
✅ It's possible to select and copy the title of articles.
✅ It's possible to select and copy the date of articles.
❌ RSS categories aren't displayed.
HTML Images Support
⚠️ Akregator can display images from HTML content, however their size is limited by the narrow width that Akregator uses to display the content of articles. This width isn't customizable.
❌ You can't view full-sized images by clicking on them. There is no option to open them in a separate tab, either.
RSS Video Support
❌ Akregator can't embed Peertube videos (<enclosure>).
✅ Akregator displays a link to the enclosure instead, so at least they are accessible.
❌ Akregator can't embed Youtube videos (proprietary extension).
❌ Akregator can't embed thumbnails from Youtube (Media RSS extension).
❌ Akregator can't embed Vimeo videos (Media RSS extension).
Podcast Support
❌ Akregator can't embed an audio player for podcasts (<enclosure>).
Raw Support
❌ Can't view the XML source code of an RSS article.
Feed Metadata Support
Metadata displayed when an RSS feed is selected:
| Field | Supported |
|---|---|
| Title | ✅ Yes. |
| Description | ✅ Yes. |
| Image | ✅ Yes. |
| Link | ✅ Yes. |
| Copyright | ✅ Yes. |
| Text input | ❌ No. |
| Generator | ❌ No. |
| Managing Editor | Untested. |
| Webmaster | Untested. |
| Category | Untested |
✅ Metadata can be selected and copied.
The linked URL is labelled "homepage."
Observation: the image of the RSS feed may appear stretched in some cases because Akregator complies with the RSS 2.0 specification.
Notification Functionality
Alerts
✅ Akregator displays an icon on the system tray with the number of unread articles.
❌ Doesn't display unread count on primary window's title.
✅ Can display a popup when new articles are fetched.
Observation: system notifications on Linux Mint appear on the top-right by default, which is rather annoying. Here's [How to Change the Location of Notifications on Cinnamon], in case you need it.
✅ Can disable popup per feed.
✅ Can play a custom sound when new articles are fetched.
⚠️ No default sound.
Note: there doesn't seem to be a way to disable the sound for me within Akregator because Mint seems to play a sound for every notification by default.
Counts
✅ Akregator displays the number of unread articles in the feeds pane for each feed.
✅ There's a number for each folder as well.
⚠️ By default this number is displayed between parentheses as part of the feed's name and, as such, if there isn't enough space in the pane to display the whole text, it becomes abbreviated and replaced by an ellipsis (...). It's possible to add a separate column for unread articles through the context menu of the columns of the feeds pane. When this column is added, the parenthetical number disappears. This column is titled "Unread" which is longer than a number in the 1000's, wasting space. It probably wastes more space when translated to other languages.
❌ Resizing the feeds pane hides the parenthetical number AND also hides the numeric column. The numeric column changes size first instead of keeping a constant width so that the name column gets resized instead. When there is not enough space, the column simply isn't visible in the viewport anymore.
Reader Functionality
Comfort
✅ It's possible to change the font size for the content.
✅ The font family is also customizable.
⚠️ Akregator doesn't provide a way to switch themes (e.g. light theme to dark theme), however, it abides by the system's GTK theme. When I switched to dark theme on Linux Mint, Akregator did switch to a dark theme with black background and white text. While in dark mode, some links in the content pane became grey while others blue. The grey links didn't seem to have enough contrast, which is a readability and accessibility issue.
✅ It's possible to search the text content of an article through the context menu of the built-in web browser pane when an article is selected and its content is shown inside the built-in web browser,
Layouts
✅ Akregator supports both horizontal and vertical pane layouts.
✅ Supports displaying the content of all articles as a single scrollable feed.
Its layout modes are:
- "Normal View:" the articles list is above the built-in browser pane. They're both wide.
- "Widescreen View:" the articles list is at the left of the built-in browser pane. They're both tall.
- "Combined View:" there is no articles list. All articles are displayed as a single tall feed in the browser pane, just like on most social media websites.
❌ Doesn't support card view, only tabular view.
❌ Akregator doesn't support thumbnails for articles that contain images.
✅ Window panes are resizable.
❌ It's not possible to hide the feeds pane.
Article Management Functionality
Status Management
✅ Akregator marks an article as read when you click on it.
✅ This behavior is customizable and can be disabled or delayed.
✅ Articles can be manually marked as "Read," "Unread," and "New." They arrive as "New" and become "Unread" when you view them on a list.
✅ Uses colors to indicate the status of an article. Red for "New," green for "Unread," and black for "Read."
❌ No icon status indicator.
⚠️ Although relying only on color to relay information isn't accessible, it's possible to customize the colors through Settings -> Configure Akregator... -> Appearance, which is nice.
✅ Can mark whole feed as read.
✅ Can configure a feed to mark articles as read the moment they're fetched.
Tagging Articles
✅ Articles can be marked as "Important."
❌ Doesn't support tagging articles as anything except "Important."
❌ Doesn't make use of the categories declared in an RSS feed.
Annotating Articles
❌ Doesn't support leaving a note (or private comment) on an article.
Filtering Articles
✅ Filters by selected feed.
✅ Combines articles when a folder is selected.
❌ Can't combine multiple selection (multiple selection of feeds isn't supported).
✅ Can display all articles combined by selecting All feeds.
✅ Has quick search text filter.
| Field | Support |
|---|---|
| Title | ✅ Yes. |
| Content | ✅ Yes. |
| Author | ✅ Yes. |
| Status | ✅ Yes. |
| Important | ✅ Yes. |
| Date | ❌ No. |
Searching Articles
❌ No advanced search.
❌ No regex support.
Sorting Articles
✅ Articles can be sorted by clicking on column headers.
Columns
✅ Column headers have context menus. You can hide columns using this context menu. The column "Feed" is hidden by default.
❌ Context menu disappears after you click on it.
❌ It's not possible to reorder columns.
Articles List
✅ Articles have context menus with related actions.
✅ It's possible to copy the URL of the linked webpage from the context menu.
⚠️ You can drag articles. Dragging an article over a feed displays a cursor indicating that the article can be copied into the feed, but that makes no sense and also doesn't work. Dragging an article into a file manager will pass the associated webpage to the file manager as a URL. Some file managers (e.g. Nemo) may download this URL when they receive it, which is often not going to be useful. That's because if you pass a webpage to Nemo, Nemo will download only the HTML file, and won't download the images and CSS required to display the webpage properly. It also won't even get the .html file extension, which may make it confusing what was even downloaded.
✅ Supports multiple selection of articles.
Archiving Articles
✅ Can store articles indefinitely.
✅ Can limit by number of articles.
✅ Can expire articles after a number of days.
✅ Can keep important articles permanently.
✅ Can delete specific articles.
❌ No recycle bin.
Feed Management Functionality
Folders
✅ Akregator supports placing feeds in folders.
✅ Folders can be nested.
⚠️ Folders can be created via the context menu by right clicking on folders, but the option isn't displayed when you right click on a feed, even though you could just add the folder as a sibling of the feed instead of as a child.
❌ Can't set a custom icon for a folder.
Structural Updates
✅ The URL of a feed can be changed.
✅ Folders can be renamed.
✅ Feeds can be reordered.
✅ Feeds can be moved by drag and drop.
✅ Folders can be moved.
Tagging Feeds
❌ Doesn't support tagging feeds.
Searching Feeds
❌ Doesn't support searching the feeds you added by name, description, or comment.
Custom Automatic Update Intervals
✅ It's possible to manually fetch a single feed or all feeds.
✅ Akregator can be configured to fetch all feeds on start up.
✅ It's possible to set a custom update intervals per feed. From 1 minute to 99 days.
✅ It's possible to make a feed never update automatically.
✅ It's possible to use a global update interval instead of having to specify one for every feed.
Feed Annotation
✅ Feeds can be renamed.
✅ It's possible to set a "comment" for an RSS feed in its properties dialog to describe it.
⚠️ The "comment" is a single line and is only visible by opening the properties dialog.
✅ Akregator displays the "description" of an RSS feed when it's selected. This "description" is set by website and is separate from the "comment" that you set yourself.
❌ Can't set a custom icon for a feed.
Feeds Panel
✅ Feeds have context menus with related actions.
⚠️ Akregator renames feeds by double clicking on them. Normally a double click should open a dialog window for the item double clicked, and a delayed second click should rename. It also starts renaming if you double click the icon instead of the label. Double clicking folders also renames them instead of expanding/collapsing them. The "All Feeds" root folder, which can't be renamed, properly expands/collapses when you double click it.
❌ Doesn't support multiple selection of feeds.
Automation Support
❌ Can't save search queries to feeds pane.
❌ Can't blacklist keywords or automatically delete articles.
❌ Can't tag articles automatically based on keywords or other criteria.
❌ Can't subscribe to a program's output instead of URL.
❌ Can't modify articles with a script when they're fetched before storage.
❌ Can't be notified when articles that match a filter arrive.
Other Observations
✅ Keyboard shortcuts for all common operations.
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