1. I get errors like "`color01' is not a valid color"

Numbers that start with zero are treated as octal; starting with Newsboat 2.10, these are not allowed since they only add confusion.

Convert octal numbers to decimal, and drop the leading zero. For example, color01 should be replaced with color1, color016 with color14 etc.

2. I want to have a feed that contains all unread articles of all feeds

This is supported since Newsbeuter 0.7. All you need to do is add the following line to your urls file:

"query:Unread Articles:unread = \"yes\""

For details, refer to the documentation on query feeds.

3. After I open a link in the browser, Newsboat stays unresponsive until the browser is closed

Newsboat has to behave like that in order to accommodate users of text-based browsers like lynx and w3m. It has to relinquish the terminal and stay out of the way, otherwise people won’t be able to see their browsers.

If you’re using a GUI browser like Firefox, you can do one of two things:

  1. Start your browser beforehand. This way, Newsboat will only wait a fraction of a second (while a new tab is being opened).

  2. Wrap your browser in a script and use the script as Newsboat’s browser.

    Put this in ~/bin/newsboat-browser.sh:

    #/bin/sh
/usr/bin/firefox "$@" &

    Make it executable:

    $ chmod +x ~/bin/newsboat-browser.sh

    Then add the following line to your Newsboat’s config:

    browser "~/bin/newsboat-browser.sh"

4. I can’t connect to TT-RSS, Newsboat says: "Loading URLs from Tiny Tiny RSS…​Authentication failed."

There are multiple reasons for this:

  1. wrong URL in ttrss-url setting, or wrong credentials. Typos happen. Copy-and-paste the URL into the browser, then copy-and-paste the login and the password, and verify that they work;

  2. ttrss-url redirects somewhere. Please use a URL that points directly at your TT-RSS instance, without any kind of HTTP redirects;

  3. double quotes not escaped in login and/or password. Use \" instead of ";

  4. external API is disabled in TT-RSS. You can enable it in user preferences;

  5. self-signed (or otherwise un-verifiable) SSL certificate. If your TT-RSS instance is accessible from the Internet, consider Let’s Encrypt. It’s a free and completely automated way to get a valid SSL certificate.

    If you want to be your own CA, put your root certificate into a bundle understood by cURL, save it somewhere, and set the CURL_CA_BUNDLE environment variable with the path to the bundle.

    Finally, if you understand what a "MITM attack" is, and are certain that it can’t happen in your setup, check out a list of Newsboat’s configuration options for ways to entirely disable SSL verification.

5. Newsboat 2.18 complains that "Browser returned error code <some number>"

That Newsboat version misinterprets the browser’s exit code. Please upgrade to Newsboat 2.19 or newer.

If upgrading is not an option, wrap the browser in a script to hide its exit code from Newsboat:

  1. Put this in ~/bin/newsboat-browser.sh:

    #/bin/sh
/usr/bin/firefox "$@"
exit 0

    Replace /usr/bin/firefox with the path to your browser. The last line is the important bit.

  2. Make it executable:

    $ chmod +x ~/bin/newsboat-browser.sh

  3. Add the following to your Newsboat’s config:

    browser "~/bin/newsboat-browser.sh"

6. Can’t start browser (I’m using Newsboat’s Snap package)

Newsboat’s Snap uses strict confinement, so the only allowed browser is xdg-open. Add the following to your Newsboat’s config so that it can open your default browser:

browser "xdg-open %u"

7. How can I fetch all items of the feed, not just the 10/15/100 latest ones?

You can’t. Feeds only contain a few latest items, e.g. YouTube posts 15.

And no, max-items setting has nothing to do with this.

(Technically, this answer is a lie: RFC 5005 describes a solution, but Newsboat doesn’t implement it, and neither do most publishers. Get in touch if you’d like to add support to Newsboat.)

8. How can I include tags when exporting to OPML?

You can export an OPML 2.0 file with tags using --export-to-opml2.

Not all feed readers support OPML 2.0 files with flat tags. In this case, there is not a good way; OPML is primarily designed as a hierarchy, i.e. each "category" is either nested under some other category, or is at the root of the hierarchy. On the other hand, Newsboat’s tags are just labels, with no explicit relationships between them. Since each feed can have multiple tags, it’s not always possible to represent the urls file as a hierarchy.

However, if your feeds have one tag each, you can use contrib/exportOPMLWithTags.py script which will export in a hierarchy your feed reader should understand.