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Show HN: DitchTheBell – Linux-based desktop notifier for RSS/Atom feeds (github.com)
50 points by Escher21 996 days ago
Ditch The Bell is a desktop notifier for RSS/Atom feeds that lets you closely configure features of the freedesktop notification specification to unlock the most customizable feed notification experience possible on Linux.

I developed this program because I wanted a single, centralized location to easily manage my desktop notifications for all of the various websites I want to get updates from. Before creating this application, I found existing solutions unsatisfactory due to the following reasons:

- Built-In Notification Services: Some websites offer built-in desktop notification services, but these often require an account, staying signed in, and running a browser service worker continuously on your PC.

- RSS Readers: While existing RSS readers with notification support provide a simple solution, these project balance numerous aspects of reader development. Notifications and their configurations are usually not the priority in these projects.

- Custom Scripting: Implementing custom scripts using general-purpose notification tools like notify-send or GObject-Introspection is viable but becomes a maintenance headache as more granular control is introduced.

These alternatives are sufficient for basic notifications but lack the lightweight nature and advanced configurability that power users desire. Ditch The Bell fills this gap, offering granular control over your RSS feed notifications without the limitations of the approaches mentioned above.

Check it out!: https://github.com/EscherMoore/DitchTheBell

2 comments

I like the look of this for automation of some of my GitHub notifications. We have a small engineering team and we are all drowning under the number of notifications. This could really help with managing the load.
Nice! I have plans to add filtering to better manage larger feeds when you’re looking for specific things, so maybe that will help further.
Hey, this looks promising. I think I might try it out. I'm using mako, which itself works well enough that I rarely think about it, so I might as well poke it with a stick and muck around with an alternative option becuz whyyyy not?

Thanks for posting, I'll return with some feedback should I get around to testing it out soon enough.

It seems there may be some confusion. This project is an RSS/Atom feed notifier; it is not a notification server. It can be used with any notification server implementing the FreeDesktop Notifications Specification such as Mako, not act as an alternative. Please share your thoughts if you try it out!