Fetch full article via rss from subsciption sites?

question
1

I run self hosted.

I pay for several news sites etc and using their rss feeds only show small amount of text. I would like to avoid clicking trough to their website since this defeats the purpose of using RSS.

2

ChatGPT codex solved it for me. it wrote an extension that replaces (i minimized it/ not using it) the right pane with a browser where the full article loads.

However this is an chrome desktop solution only.

update: This plugin is far superior to anything build in. It render just the text and relevant images, like reader mode but more consistent and since it uses chrome it uses ublock and is consistently signed in to websites.
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Vibe coded plugin so here is a AI written explanation of what and why.

Chrome extension prototype for a better authenticated Story/Text view

I previously asked about reading full articles inside NewsBlur, especially articles from subscription-based newspapers. Since then, I have built a small local Chrome extension that solves most of the problem for me.

NewsBlur remains the main interface for feeds, folders, unread counts and article selection. When I click an article title, the extension:

  1. Opens the article temporarily in a background Chrome tab.

  2. Uses my existing browser session and newspaper login.

  3. Waits for the JavaScript-rendered page to load.

  4. Extracts the headline, introduction, article text and relevant images.

  5. Displays a cleaned version in a Chrome side panel next to NewsBlur.

  6. Closes the temporary tab automatically.

This does not bypass paywalls. It only reads content that the user can already access in their own logged-in browser session.

This works better for me than NewsBlur’s Feed, Text, Story and Original views on several sites. Server-side extraction cannot use the user’s browser session, while Original view is often blocked by X-Frame-Options or CSP. The extension works on the fully rendered page that Chrome has already loaded successfully.

The prototype also supports some site-specific cases:

  • Times of India places article text in unusual loose text nodes rather than standard paragraphs.

  • Expressen Direkt publishes many short news items on one page, identified by a post query parameter.

  • Small author portraits, avatars and logos are filtered by their real image dimensions so they are not enlarged in the reading panel.

The implementation currently targets my self-hosted NewsBlur instance, but the general approach could become a companion extension for NewsBlur. A more complete version could use Mozilla Readability as its general extractor, allow per-site settings and share site-specific extraction recipes.

Would this be useful to other NewsBlur users? Is there any interest in developing it as a reusable extension—or potentially integrating this workflow with NewsBlur’s existing browser-extension and Story/Text functionality?

1 Like
3

I do not have the same problem yet, as one of the reasons I was avoiding subscribing to some websites was the fear that I would not be able to read them in Newsblur.

I like the idea of having a solution like this built-in, or with Newsblur’s extension