Building an e-ink 'newspaper' from RSS feeds to escape phone reading

A developer frustrated with straining their eyes reading blogs on a phone repurposed a pocket-sized e-reader as a dedicated feed reader. The device is the X4 by Xteink, a 4.3-inch, backlight-free, touchscreen-free e-ink reader with no bundled store — hardware most people would dismiss as dated, but that has attracted a small community. That community maintains open-source firmware called Crosspoint (which also runs on other ESP32-C3 boards), and the author found it dramatically better than the stock software and trivial to flash, installing it in roughly three clicks and reading a DRM-free e-book without any of the fiddling they expected.

The real goal was reading blog posts, so the author wrote a tool called feedpaper that pulls unread items from the Feedbin RSS API, marks them read, and compiles them into an ePub to sideload onto the reader. It filters out feeds that don’t suit e-ink — YouTube channels, JavaScript-heavy sites, and link-only newsletters. The project was assembled quickly with AI assistance, is published on GitHub, and installs via Homebrew, though it only targets macOS.

The piece is less a technical deep-dive than a small proof of how cheap, hackable hardware plus open firmware and a lightweight script can reshape a daily habit. The takeaway for a technical reader: a personal ‘newspaper’ that keeps distracting devices at home is achievable in an afternoon, and the enthusiast ecosystem around unlocked e-readers is mature enough to make it painless.