Frequently asked questions
Everything people usually ask before trying Shoebill Feed.
What is Shoebill Feed?
Shoebill Feed is a free, open-source news reader you run yourself — on your own computer, a home server, or a small cloud instance. It collects news only from the sources you choose and organizes it around what you actually read and like, instead of an algorithm tuned to keep you scrolling.
Is Shoebill Feed free to use?
Yes. Shoebill Feed is free and open source under the AGPLv3 license. There's no subscription, no paid tier, and no company behind it — just source code you run yourself.
Do I need to host Shoebill Feed myself?
Yes. Shoebill Feed is self-hosted only — there is no managed or hosted version run by the project. You install it with Docker Compose on your own server, a home server, or a small cloud instance.
What license does Shoebill Feed use?
The GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPLv3) — the same license Nextcloud uses. It was chosen deliberately so that anyone hosting a modified version keeps their changes open too.
Does Shoebill Feed show ads or track me?
No. Shoebill Feed has no ads, no tracking, and no analytics — there's no business model that needs them, since nobody but you ever runs your instance.
What news sources can I add?
RSS/Atom feeds, subreddits, email newsletters, Mastodon/Lemmy/Bluesky accounts, GitHub releases, Telegram channels, arXiv searches, or a generic scraper for sites without a feed. Nothing appears in your feed that you didn't deliberately add.
What LLM does Shoebill Feed use, and where does my data go?
You choose: a local model via Ollama (free, fully private, runs on your own hardware) or a cloud model via the Anthropic API (using your own API key). Nothing is sent anywhere beyond whichever provider you configure.
How does Shoebill Feed learn what I like?
A quick 👍 or 👎 on an article reshapes how your feed is ranked over time, using only your own feedback. Every learned weight is visible and adjustable in Settings — it's never a hidden black box.
Does Shoebill Feed replace the sites I read?
No. Shoebill Feed summarizes and sorts so you can quickly tell what's worth your time, but you always read the full article on the original site via an outbound link.
Can multiple people use one Shoebill Feed instance?
Yes. Shoebill Feed supports separate accounts, each with its own feed and learned preferences, all on one instance.
How do I install Shoebill Feed?
With Docker and Docker Compose: clone the repository, copy .env.example to .env and set a few required variables, then run docker compose up -d. Full installation steps are in the documentation.
Where can I get the source code or report a bug?
On GitHub — see the link in the header or footer of this site. Issues, feature requests, and pull requests are all welcome.