A terminal-based RSS/Atom reader for people who take notes while they read.
tuxwire pulls articles from any feeds you choose — Linux news, security advisories, your own blog, or anything else with an RSS feed — into a single fast, themeable terminal interface. Save the articles that matter, write a note explaining why they mattered, and find them again later — without ever leaving the terminal.
Most RSS readers are either a GUI app or a terminal reader with no memory of why you saved something. tuxwire exists for the gap in between: a fast, keyboard-driven reader that also lets you jot down a thought next to an article — "try this on mangrove," "reference this for the blog post" — and actually find that note again days or weeks later.
Pull from as many RSS/Atom feeds as you want, grouped into topics you
define yourself — not a fixed category list. Add a source by pressing a
inside the app (paste a feed URL, tuxwire validates it, pick or type a
topic), or edit ~/.config/tuxwire/sources.toml directly in a text
editor. Either way, the file is yours to read and change at any time.
The sidebar isn't a flat list — each topic can be expanded to show the individual sources feeding it. Select a topic to see everything in that category, or drill into one specific source to see just its articles.
Press s to save an article permanently (it also marks it read). Press
n to attach a note — a short reminder of why it mattered. Notes are
edited in a simple popup, pre-filled if one already exists. tuxwire
tracks both when you saved an article and when you last wrote or
edited its note as separate dates, since those are often different
moments.
No need to memorize what a key does or what a color means. The sidebar permanently displays the active keybinds and a color swatch next to each article state (unread, read, saved, skipped) — pulled live from your actual theme, so it never drifts out of sync with what you're seeing.
S— every saved article across all topics, with source, save date, and a note preview.y— every article tuxwire has ever fetched, regardless of state — useful for finding something you read but forgot to save./— live substring search across titles and notes, filtering whichever view is currently open.
If w3m is installed, pressing Enter
opens the article right inside your terminal — no context switch to a
browser. If w3m isn't installed, tuxwire automatically falls back to
your regular default browser instead. Nothing breaks either way.
Press E from the Saved view to export everything you've saved — title,
source link, save/note dates, and your note — into a single Markdown
file. Configurable output location, useful for feeding notes straight
into a blog post or personal wiki.
Dark, low-saturation, easy on the eyes by default — and every color is a
line in ~/.config/tuxwire/theme.toml, not hardcoded. Don't like a
shade? Change the hex value and restart.
Runs anywhere Rust runs — tested on desktop Linux and on Android via Termux. Same codebase, same database format, same features.
tuxwire isn't published to any package manager yet — for now, build it from source. This is more approachable than it sounds; the steps below assume no prior experience.
If you don't already have Rust installed:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | shFollow the prompts (the defaults are fine), then restart your terminal or run:
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"Confirm it worked:
cargo --versionNeeded because some dependencies compile C code as part of the build.
| Distro | Command |
|---|---|
| Debian / Ubuntu | sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config |
| Arch / CachyOS / Manjaro | sudo pacman -S base-devel pkg-config |
| Fedora | sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools" |
| macOS | xcode-select --install |
For the best experience — in-terminal article reading instead of switching to a browser:
| Distro | Command |
|---|---|
| Debian / Ubuntu | sudo apt install w3m |
| Arch / CachyOS / Manjaro | sudo pacman -S w3m |
| Fedora | sudo dnf install w3m |
| macOS (Homebrew) | brew install w3m |
Not required. tuxwire works completely fine without it — articles just open in your regular browser instead.
git clone https://github.com/shanecuster/tuxwire.git
cd tuxwire
cargo build --releaseThe first build compiles every dependency from scratch and may take a
few minutes. The compiled binary lands at target/release/tuxwire.
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
ln -s "$(pwd)/target/release/tuxwire" ~/.local/bin/tuxwireMake sure ~/.local/bin is on your $PATH (most modern distros include
it by default). Check with:
echo $PATHIf it's missing, add this to your shell config (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc,
or ~/.config/fish/config.fish):
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"After that, restart your terminal and just run:
tuxwiretuxwire runs natively inside Termux — a real Linux environment on Android, not a special Android app.
pkg update && pkg upgrade
pkg install git rust sqlite pkg-config opensslClone and build the same way as desktop:
git clone https://github.com/shanecuster/tuxwire.git
cd tuxwire
cargo build --release
cargo runTo open articles in your phone's browser, install the Termux:API companion app (from the same source — F-Droid or Play Store — as Termux itself), then:
pkg install termux-api
echo 'export BROWSER=termux-open-url' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrcw3m isn't recommended on a phone screen — the fallback to your regular
browser is the better fit for Android.
Launch it:
tuxwire
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
j / k |
Navigate the article list |
Up / Down / Tab |
Navigate the topic sidebar |
Right / l |
Expand the selected topic (show its sources) |
Left / h |
Collapse the selected topic |
Enter |
Open the selected article (w3m, or your browser as fallback) |
s |
Save the current article (also marks it read) |
n |
Add or edit a note on a saved article |
x |
Mark an article as skipped |
r |
Refresh the current topic's sources |
S |
View saved articles |
y |
View history (every article ever fetched) |
/ |
Search titles and notes in the current view |
a |
Add a new source |
E |
Export all saved articles to Markdown |
q |
Quit |
tuxwire reads three config files from ~/.config/tuxwire/, generating
sensible defaults on first run if they don't exist yet.
[[source]]
name = "Arch Linux News"
type = "rss"
url = "https://archlinux.org/feeds/news/"
topic = "linux"topicis required on every source, and each source belongs to exactly one topic — keeps the sidebar unambiguous.- Add sources by editing this file directly, or press
ain-app to add one interactively (it validates the feed URL before saving).
[theme]
background = "#24273a"
accent_unread = "#f5a97f"
accent_read = "#8bd5ca"
accent_saved = "#eed49f"
accent_skipped = "#c6a0f6"Ships with Catppuccin Macchiato by default. Change any value and restart — nothing is hardcoded.
[export]
path = "~/tuxwire-notes/"Change path to wherever you'd like your exported Markdown notes to
land — a synced folder, a notes vault, anywhere you have write access.
rm ~/.local/bin/tuxwire
rm -rf ~/.config/tuxwire ~/.local/share/tuxwire
rm -rf /path/to/cloned/tuxwireThe middle command removes your config and saved-article database — skip it if you want to keep your data around.
tuxwire is under active development. See
docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the full design
history, what's built, what's planned, and what was deliberately left
out (and why).
This project is under active development and personal use. Issues and pull requests are welcome, but expect things to be in flux.
Licensed under the MIT License.