July 17, 2025

HPR4424: How I use Newsboat for Podcasts and Reddit

7 minutes

This show has been flagged as Clean by the host.

Hello, this is your host, Archer72 for another episode of Hacker

Public Radio

In this episode, I talk about how I use Newsboat and Podboat for a

couple of tasks.

I don’t always use Podboat for podcasts, but it is useful when

listening from my laptop

For my other podcast listening, I used Antennapod

Newsboat source of feeds is from a url list in

~/.config/newsboat/urls

Newsboat url list

# (Bible)

https://feeds.feedburner.com/hl-int-tv-en-kjv "Bible" (Bible)

# (Reddit)

https://www.reddit.com/r/commandline.rss "Commandline" (Reddit)

https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi.rss "~Raspberry Pi" (Reddit)

# (Lemmy)

https://lemmy.sdf.org/feeds/local.xml?sort=New "Lemmy SDF" (Lemmy)

# (Podcasts)

http://gnuworldorder.info/ogg.xml "Gnu_World_Order"

# Tuxjam.Otherside.Network

https://tuxjam.otherside.network/feed "TuxJam"

https://tuxjam.otherside.network/feed/uncut "TuxJam Uncut"

https://thebugcast.org/category/podcast/feed "The Bugcast"

# Hacker Public Radio

http://hackerpublicradio.org/rss-future.php HackerPublicRadio_future_feed "~Hacker Public Radio ~ Future feed" (HPR)

http://hackerpublicradio.org/hpr_ogg_rss.php "HPR_two_week_feed" (HPR)

http://hackerpublicradio.org/comments_rss.php HPR_comment_feed "HPR_Comments" (HPR)

https://archive.org/services/collection-rss.php?collection=dlarc-hackerpublicradio "~HPR Amateur Radio - Archive.org" (HPR)

# Other Tech podcasts

https://feeds.fireside.fm/asknoah/rss "The Ask Noah Show"

https://feeds.feedburner.com/urandom-podcast/ogg "Urandom Podcast"

https://ubuntu.social/@linuxmatters

# (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA "Luke Smith" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCH6ttJZ3T5gA-r_7PYkHk9g "SGOTI" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCVls1GmFKf6WlTraIb_IaJg "DistroTube" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC9x0AN7BWHpCDHSm9NiJFJQ "Network Chuck" (Youtube)

# Import from Newpipe

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC_SLthyNX_ivd-dmsFgmJVg "Jeremy Fielding" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCJ0-OtVpF0wOKEqT2Z1HEtA "ElectroBOOM" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCv1Kcz-CuGM6mxzL3B1_Eiw "Gardiner Bryant" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC3s0BtrBJpwNDaflRSoiieQ "Hak5" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCR-DXc1voovS8nhAvccRZhg "Jeff Geerling" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCzgA9CBrIXPtkB2yNTTiy1w "Level 2 Jeff" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCLx053rWZxCiYWsBETgdKrQ "LGR" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw "Linus Tech Tips" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ "LockPickingLawyer" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCjFaPUcJU1vwk193mnW_w1w "Modern Vintage Gamer" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCP8QhVVoM7IKD0YwnvnPPbg "Pater Practicus" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCjr2bPAyPV7t35MvcgT3W8Q "The Hated One" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCo71RUe6DX4w-Vd47rFLXPg "typecraft" (Youtube)

## From Mrs. Archer

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCld68syR8Wi-GY_n4CaoJGA "Brodie Robertson" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCg6gPGh8HU2U01vaFCAsvmQ "Chris Titus Tech" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCoryWpk4QVYKFCJul9KBdyw "Switched To Linux" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCJf7AT2BzFT-31z0d-bc8Rg "Windows, computers and Technology" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC5UAwBUum7CPN5buc-_N1Fw "The Linux Experiment" (Youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCmyGZ0689ODyReHw3rsKLtQ "Michael Tunnell" (Youtube)

# (News)

https://olfconference.org/feed/ "OLF Conference" (News)

To organize the url list, tags can be used, along with a description

of the feed. This only give an internal description, as the Main title

is determined by the RSS feed itself. This can be manually set, for

example, in the HPR Future feed. The default feed title is the same as

the feed for two weeks. To set manually, us a tilde ~

before the Feed Title shown in this example. Tags follow the Feed Title,

typed in parentheses and with no spaces. Multiple tags can be used

here.

http://hackerpublicradio.org/rss-future.php HackerPublicRadio_future_feed "~Hacker Public Radio ~ Future feed" (HPR)

Not all feeds in the url list are podcasts. Some are Reddit feeds,

while others are youtube channels.

The first item I go to in the morning is my Bible daily verse. I

heard one new host mention that he reads some, and thought it might be

interesting to include this.

The next 2 entries are from Reddit, and can be modified to contain

the rss feed in this way:

Replace the /r/commandline with /r/commandline.rss

add "Title" and "(Tag)"

https://www.reddit.com/r/commandline.rss "Commandline" (Reddit)

The next entry, which I only include one, is the Lemmy instance for

lemmy.sdf.org

Lemmy is part of the Fediverse, and became popular after the June

2023 controversy involving charging excessive money for Reddit’s

API.

This in turn, caused third party Reddit apps to be no longer viable.

Alternativeto.net - API

Charging Policy

Wikipedia -

Lemmy_(social_network)

Next, we’ll start on the ~/.config/newsboat/config

file

Newsboat config file

# Podboat

download-path "~/Downloads/podcasts/%h/%n"

# %h - Hostname

# %n - Podcast name

# Example: hub.hackerpublicradio.org

# gnuworldorder.info

# media.blubrry.com/The Bugcast

# archive.org/TuxJam

download-filename-format "%n - %t.%u"

# %n - Name of the podcast feed

# %t - Title of the podcast episode

# %u - Indicates the file extension

podlist-format "%4i [%6dMB/%6tMB] [%5p %%] %-10S %b"

# Table 7. Available Identifiers for podlist-format

# %i - Download index, 4 indicating number of digits

# %6dMB/%6tMB - Downloaded (in MB) / Total file size (in MB)

# [%5p %%] - Percent downloaded

# %-10S - Status - {queued, downloading, ready, played, deleted}

# 4.18. Format Strings

# %b - Boolean string

# load URLS on launch

auto-reload yes

# vim binds

bind-key j down

bind-key k up

bind-key j next articlelist

bind-key k prev articlelist

bind-key J next-feed articlelist

bind-key K prev-feed articlelist

bind-key G end

bind-key g home

# bind-key d pagedown - default

bind-key D pagedown

bind-key u pageup

bind-key l open

bind-key h quit

bind-key a toggle-article-read

bind-key n next-unread

bind-key N prev-unread

# bind-key D pb-download - default

bind-key d pb-download

bind-key U show-urls

bind-key x pb-delete

# Colors

highlight article "^Feed:.*" color5 color0

highlight article "^Title:.*" color3 color0 bold

highlight article "^Author:.*" color2 color0

highlight article "^Date:.*" color223 color0

highlight article "^Link:.*" color4 color0

highlight article "^Flags:.*" color9 color0

highlight article "\\[[0-9][0-9]*\\]" color66 default bold

highlight article "\\[image [0-9][0-9]*\\]" color109 default bold

color listnormal cyan default

color listfocus black yellow standout bold

color listnormal_unread cyan default

color listfocus_unread yellow default bold

color info red black bold

color article cyan default

# macro setup

browser linkhandler

macro , open-in-browser

# download-path ~/.newsboat/queue

player "mpv --vid=no"

macro 1 set browser "mpv --vid=no"; one; set browser lynx

# launch video player

macro v set browser "setsid -f mpv" ; open-in-browser ; set browser linkhandler

# download video

macro d set browser "yt-dlp"; open-in-browser ; set browser linkhandler

# download audio only

macro a set browser "yt-dlp --embed-metadata -xic -f bestaudio/best" ; open-in-browser ; set browser linkhandler

When enqueing a podcast for Podboat, I changed the default

download path to ~/Downloads/podcasts/ using

download-path "~/Downloads/podcasts/%h/%n"

Where %h is the Hostname, and %n is the Podcast name

The file name is formatted in the following way

%n - %t.%u

Where %n is the podcast name, %t is the podcast title and %u

indicates the file extension

Finally, there is a custom line for podlist-format which

for podcast purposes I won’t list out.

This includes a Download index to 4 places, percentage of each

podcast downloaded, and Podcast status

When I use Podboat, after the set of podcasts are enqued I found a

way to monitor the bluetooth connection,

in order to pause a show with the bluetooth button on an earbud.

The first part of this puzzle is to have mpris-proxy,

which is included in the bluez-utils

Archwiki - MPRIS

Then enable the service with

systemctl --user enable mpris-proxy.service and

systemctl --user start mpris-proxy.service

After that,

git clone https://github.com/hoyon/mpv-mpris.git from Github - hoyon/mpv-mpris

cd mpv-mpris and make, with the resulting

mpris.so copied to ~/.config/mpv/scripts/

Newsboat documentation

Newsboat Documentation page

Format strings

Newsboat

Documentation page - Format Strings

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