Using annota
annota is a keyboard-driven RSS reader and knowledge tool. This guide covers everything from signing in to advanced sync features.
Sign in & accounts
annota.info is invite-only by default. You need an invite token from an existing user or admin to create an account. Self-hosted instances can configure open registration.
After signing up you land directly in the app. The news modal shows recent feature announcements — dismiss it with Esc or click outside it.
Adding feeds
Press n or click ＋ Add feed to open the feed discovery modal. You can:
- Paste any RSS or Atom feed URL directly
- Search the curated feed list by keyword
Feeds appear in the left sidebar. New feeds are fetched immediately; subsequent fetches run every 30 minutes.
To remove a feed, hover over it in the sidebar and click ✕.
Reading articles
The UI has three panes: feeds (left), items (middle), article (right). On mobile, swipe or press h/l to move between panes.
Select a feed to load its items. Select an item to read it. By default articles are shown in reader mode — server-side readability extraction removes ads and navigation. Press t to toggle between reader and native (original) view per feed.
Press o to open the article in a new browser tab.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| h / l | Move left / right between panes |
| j / k | Move down / up in current pane |
| g / G | Jump to first / last item |
| f | Toggle favourite |
| s | Save article for later |
| r | Mark read / unread |
| t | Toggle reader / native view |
| o | Open in browser |
| y | Copy article link |
| a | Open write modal for this item |
| R | Refresh all feeds |
| n | Add new feed |
| Ctrl+K or / | Global search |
| ? | Keyboard shortcut help |
| Esc | Close panels / modals |
Categories & labels
Hover over a feed in the sidebar and click ⊞ to assign it to a category. Categories group feeds into collapsible sections. Click an existing category chip to reuse a name — this avoids accidental duplicates from typos.
Click ⬡ to assign coloured labels to a feed. Labels can be used to filter any view.
Drag category headers to reorder them in the sidebar.
Saving & favourites
Press f to toggle favourite on the selected item. Favourited items appear in the Favourites view in the sidebar.
Press s to save an article as a Markdown file. Saved articles are accessible via Settings → Sync and can be exported to WebDAV or Git.
Community
Press r to recommend an article to everyone on the instance. Recommended items appear in the ▲ Community view in the sidebar so other users can discover them.
A recommendation is visible instance-wide. You can un-recommend by pressing r again.
Notes & articles
The Articles section (sidebar) lets you save any webpage by URL. Click Add article, paste a URL, and annota fetches the content in reader mode.
Press a on any selected RSS item or article to open the write modal — a full-screen split view with the article on the left and a Markdown editor on the right. Notes are saved per-article and searchable.
The Notes section stores free-standing Markdown notes, optionally with a highlighted quote field.
Sync
Go to Settings → Sync to configure automatic sync of your saved articles and notes to:
- WebDAV — Nextcloud, Owncloud, or any WebDAV server
- Git — any HTTPS+token or SSH Git repository
Two separate destinations can be configured. Credentials are stored per-user and never returned to the browser after saving.
Personal RSS feed
Every user gets a personal aggregated RSS feed at /rss?token=…. Find your token under Settings → RSS token. Share it with any RSS reader to get all your subscribed items in one feed.
OPML import & export
Go to Settings to export your subscriptions as an OPML file or import from an OPML file. This is the standard feed list format — use it to move between readers without starting from scratch.