Posting here because the whole reason Compass exists lines up with why a lot of you are on Lemmy: no ads, no tracking, no account, no Big Tech middleman.
It’s a news aggregator that pulls public RSS/Atom feeds and opens articles in a built-in reader that strips out the scripts, ad slots and tracking pixels before rendering. Everything — your feeds, saved stories, settings — lives on your device. The app collects nothing.
Android, closed testing right now. If the ethos resonates and you’d like to test, DM me the email on your Play account and I’ll add you. Feedback from people who actually care about this stuff is worth more than a hundred casual installs.
Honest answer: It’s a different kind of tool, so “better” depends on what you’re after. Compass isn’t a sync client — it doesn’t speak the GReader API and doesn’t connect to FreshRSS or any other backend. There’s no server involved at all; it fetches public RSS/Atom feeds directly on the device. So if your workflow is built around FreshRSS as your source of truth with read-state syncing across devices, Compass won’t slot into that — a dedicated GReader client is what you want there. Where it might appeal even so:
No server to run. It’s fully self-contained — nothing to host, maintain or expose. The reader strips trackers. Articles are fetched and rebuilt as clean text with the scripts, ad slots and tracking pixels removed before render — so you’re not just getting a clean feed list, the article view itself is de-junked. Political-lean dial on every headline, so you can read across the spectrum at a glance. Curated NZ + international outlets out of the box, plus you can add your own feeds.
GReader/FreshRSS sync isn’t there and isn’t on the immediate roadmap — it’s a meaningful piece of work and I’d rather not half-build it. If there’s genuine interest from self-hosters, though, I’m listening. Honestly, it sounds like we might be solving slightly different problems, but if the standalone + tracker-stripping angle appeals, I’d love your feedback on it. 🧭