bbcli – A TUI and CLI to browse BBC News like a hacker

2 weeks ago 1

Browse BBC News like a hacker.

A terminal-based BBC News reader built with Rust and ratatui, featuring a compact, numbered list interface with vim-like navigation.

Note: This is a complete rewrite of bbcli in Rust.

Download pre-built binaries:

Download pre-built binaries for your platform from GitHub Releases:

Available for:

Linux: x86_64 (gnu/musl), aarch64 (gnu/musl)
macOS: x86_64 (Intel), aarch64 (Apple Silicon)
Windows: x86_64
BSD: FreeBSD, NetBSD

Using cargo-binstall (Also Recommended)

Fast binary installation without compiling:

# Install cargo-binstall first if needed # See: https://github.com/cargo-bins/cargo-binstall cargo binstall bbc-news-cli

# Install from crates.io cargo install bbc-news-cli

git clone https://github.com/hako/bbcli cd bbcli cargo build --release cargo install --path .

bbcli works best in modern terminals with full Unicode and image protocol support:

Recommended terminals:

WezTerm - Excellent image support (Sixel, Kitty, iTerm2)
Ghostty - Fast, GPU-accelerated with Kitty protocol
Rio - Modern, hardware-accelerated
Alacritty - Fast, minimal (Halfblocks mode for images)
Kitty - Full Kitty graphics protocol support
iTerm2 (macOS) - Inline images protocol

Image protocols:

Press p to cycle through: Auto / Halfblocks / Sixel / Kitty
Auto mode detects your terminal's capabilities
Halfblocks works in all terminals (Unicode-based)

# Launch interactive TUI bbcli # Or use CLI mode (see below) bbcli list

bbcli includes a powerful CLI mode for quick access to headlines and articles without launching the full TUI.

# List top stories bbcli list # List from specific feed bbcli --feed world list bbcli --feed technology list bbcli --feed business list

# Open article #3 in browser bbcli open 3 # Open from specific feed bbcli --feed technology open 1

# Read article #2 in terminal (reader mode) bbcli show 2 # Show article from specific feed bbcli --feed world show 5

Use -f or --feed with any of these feeds:

top (default) - Top Stories
world - World News
uk - UK News
business / biz - Business
politics / pol - Politics
health - Health
education / edu - Education & Family
science / sci - Science & Environment
technology / tech - Technology
entertainment / ent - Entertainment & Arts
Regional: england, scotland, wales, northern ireland
International: africa, asia, europe, latin america, middle east, us & canada

Key Action

j / ↓	Scroll down
k / ↑	Scroll up
G	Scroll to bottom
l	Go to latest (top)

Key Action

o	Open article in browser
O	Open article in new tab
Space	Jump to current ticker article
r	Refresh news

Key Action

Tab	Toggle preview pane
a / Enter	Open full article view
f	Open feed selector
?	Toggle help menu

Key Action

s	Cycle sort order (Default / Newest First / Oldest First)
t	Toggle date format (humanized / absolute)
T	Cycle theme (light / dark)
p	Cycle image protocol (Auto / Halfblocks / Sixel / Kitty)

Press f to open the feed menu and switch between different BBC News feeds:

Top Stories (default)
World
UK
Business
Politics
Health
Education & Family
Science & Environment
Technology
Entertainment & Arts
Regional feeds (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales)
International regions (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, US & Canada)

Navigate with j/k or arrow keys, press Enter to select, f or Esc to close.

Press Tab to toggle the preview pane, which displays a 80/20 split showing:

Article image (with configurable image protocol support)
Title and description
Publication date and feed name

Press Enter or a to open the full article view with reader mode:

Clean, distraction-free article text
Scrollable with j/k or arrow keys
Press Tab, Enter, or Esc to return to list view

Press s to cycle through sort orders:

Default: RSS feed order (as received)
Newest First: Sort by publication date, newest at top
Oldest First: Sort by publication date, oldest at top

Sort order persists across manual and automatic refreshes.

The footer displays breaking news headlines from Top Stories feed, rotating every ~10 seconds. Press Space to instantly jump to the current ticker article in the feed.

The app automatically refreshes news every 5 minutes, keeping stories visible during refresh (no loading placeholder).

Press T to cycle between light and dark themes. The default theme can be set in your config file.

bbcli automatically caches feeds and articles to disk for offline reading:

To clear the cache:

Custom keybindings can be defined in either:

$HOME/.bbcli

Or:

$HOME/.config/bbcli

See example-config.toml for all available options:

# Theme: "light" or "dark" (default: "dark") theme = "dark" [keybindings] quit = 'q' open = 'o' open_new_tab = 'O' refresh = 'r' latest = 'l' scroll_up = 'k' scroll_down = 'j' scroll_bottom = 'G'

Copy the example config:

cp example-config.toml ~/.bbcli

Or create your own custom configuration with preferred keybindings and theme.

Inspired and extended by the original bbcli python version.

MIT

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