RSS is still a popular way of keeping up with the latest news. Most sites offer a feed of their articles, which work well in the terminal if you have the right tools. This command-line app is tiny, easy to use, and gets the job done where you need it most.

What Is cleed?

cleed is an open-source RSS feeder for the command line, written in Go. It’s a straightforward app that does the absolute minimum it needs to. If you’re a big user of the command line, you’ll probably find it the most convenient way of keeping up with the news you’re interested in.

How to Install cleed

Theproject’s release pagehosts binaries for Linux and macOS. You can also build and run the program from source using:

Alternatively,if you’re using Homebrew, just run:

If you start by running cleed as soon as you’ve installed it, you’ll see an error message—“Error: no feeds to display”—along with some usage info. Instead, start by adding a feed with this command:

Where “url” is the URL of a feed you wish to follow, e.g.

The cleed command line app showing nine stories from three feeds.

Now, when you run cleed, you should see the contents of the feeds you’ve followed:

The app shows each story’s headline, the date and time it was published, and a URL. If your terminal supports URLs, you’re able to click each URL to open it and read the corresponding story.

Output from cleed showing several stories from a single feed.

cleed sorts stories chronologically, so the newest ones appear at the bottom of the output.

You can customize cleed’s output with several flags that control which stories it shows. To limit the number of items, use the –limit flag like this:

Cleed output showing feeds filtered by time and number.

Alternatively, you can limit the period you’ll see items for with the –since flag:

Organize Your Feeds Into Lists

By default, your feeds are grouped in a single list named default. However, you can organize custom lists and group related feeds together. To add a feed to a specific list, use:

For example:

You can then display all the feeds in a list with:

And you’re able to show the feed stories in a list using the –list flag:

cleed output showing the contents of a list of feeds.

Overall, cleed is a basic utility with just a few core functions. However, it does an excellent job as a feed reader and may be the best and fastest way of keeping up with the news in your terminal.

The cleed tool showing stories from a list of feeds.