zachattack323/lightrss

Light RSS is a community-built RSS reader designed specifically for the Light Phone III, a device known for its minimalist approach to mobile technology. It is an unofficial project, meaning it was created by a community developer rather than the phone's manufacturer, but it is built using the official Light software development kit. The app lets you subscribe to news feeds, read articles, and manage your reading list, all while fitting the visual style and navigation patterns of the phone's operating system, called LightOS. The app handles several common feed formats, including RSS 2.0, Atom, and older RDF feeds. You can add a subscription by pasting a direct feed link or a regular website address, and the app will attempt to find the feed on its own. It comes with three starter subscriptions, NASA, BBC World, and Hacker News, which you can keep or remove. Articles are stored on the phone in a local database, so once downloaded, their text is available even without an internet connection. You can view unread items, browse individual feeds, search locally, save articles, and archive or unfollow sources. A notable design choice is that Light RSS does not use a web browser view or open full article pages. Instead, it takes the text from the feed and presents it in a clean, focused reading view, skipping embedded images, scripts, and tracking pixels. The interface is built from official Light SDK components, using the phone's typography, color scheme, scrollbars, and keyboard. The developer chose to build with these official building blocks rather than imitate them. On privacy, the app does not require an account, include advertising, or run its own analytics. It only contacts the websites you subscribe to, sending a standard web request with your IP address and a Light RSS user agent. All your subscriptions and downloaded articles stay on the device, and unfollowing a feed or adjusting settings removes the corresponding data. Building the app requires Java, Android development tools, and a GitHub account with permission to download a specific keyboard component. The project includes instructions for running the app in an emulator for testing, and the code is organized into files handling the database, feed parsing, networking, and screen layouts.