A news aggregator is software which collect news, weblog posts, and other information from the web so that they can be read in a single location for easy viewing. With the range of news sources available on the internet, news aggregators play an essential role in helping users to quickly locate breaking news.
For individuals that read lots of weblogs, a news aggregator makes keeping track of them effortless, and particularly useful if the weblogs are only updated occasionally.
Communique is a feed reader that supports a wide range of RSS services and local RSS feeds. Subscribe to and read RSS/Atom feeds with cross-platform synchronization. This is free and open source software.
Installation
While Communique is designed for elementary OS we evaluated the software using the Manjaro and Ubuntu 24.10 distributions.
The project provides a Flatpak. We can install the flatpak from the command-line or with Pamac, Manjaro’s front-end installation tool.
Installation proceeds with no issues.
In Operation
There’s a good range of services available or we can use local RSS feeds. If you change account, all local data is deleted.
In the image below, we’ve subscribed to some feeds. The UI is rather attractive.
Features include:
- Sort feeds into groups.
- Choose a custom font and font size.
- Options to only show feeds, and/or only show unread articles.
- Supports read-it later services: Instapaper, Pocket, and wallabag.
- Keyboard shortcuts.
Summary
Communique is a competent news aggregator with good support for RSS services and read-it-later services.
We experienced a few crashes in testing. Maybe the program is more stable with elementary OS?
The software’s last release was back in 2022, but it’s now back under development. That’s one reason why we love open source software. An open source project is never really dead, and a developer’s hard work is not lost.
Communique faces stiff competition from the likes of FeedReader, Akregator, and Liferea. Read our roundup of the finest open source graphical news aggregators.
Website: github.com/ellie-commons/communique
Support:
Developer:
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Communique is written in Vala and C. Learn Vala with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.