About & Support PlainWire
PlainWire is a minimal, privacy-first news aggregator. Every page is under 50KB, uses minimal JavaScript (theme persistence only), and sets no cookies or tracking pixels.
How It Works
- Curate — We aggregate headlines from vetted, reputable sources like Reuters, AP, BBC, CBC, DW, and Wikipedia Current Events.
- Categorize — Stories are automatically sorted into categories: World, Politics, Business, Health, Entertainment, Style, Travel, Sports, Science, Climate, Weather.
- Serve — Pure HTML is generated and served from a lightweight C server. No frameworks, no build tools, no bloat.
What's Included (Free)
- ✔ Daily curated headlines from 60+ countries
- ✔ 12 news categories with SVG icons
- ✔ RSS & Atom feed output
- ✔ JSON API access (
/api/news) - ✔ Full article text extraction
- ✔ Read-aloud with voice selection
- ✔ Dark/light mode with system detection
- ✔ Weekly digest & archive
- ✔ Search across all headlines
- ✔ Custom font family & size
- ✔ OPML export of all sources
- ✔ PWA support (installable)
Technical Details
- 🔒 No PII collected — zero tracking
- ⚡ Pages <50KB, loads on 2G networks
- 💻 Single-file C server (fully auditable)
- 🌐 Vanilla HTML + minimal inline CSS
- 🛡 No external JavaScript libraries
- 🔍 Multi-threaded with connection pooling
- 📡 RSS/Atom feed parsing via libcurl
- 🌍 IP-based country detection
- 🔒 Rate limiting per IP
- ⚙ Gzip compression built-in
- 📊 Real-time stats dashboard
- ♻ Open-source architecture
Sources
We rely on established, editorially independent news outlets:
- Wikipedia Current Events Portal
- Reuters, Associated Press (AP), BBC News
- CNN, NPR, Deutsche Welle (DW), Al Jazeera, France 24
- Country-specific: CBC, Globe & Mail, Guardian, NHK, and more
☕ Support PlainWire
PlainWire is free and always will be. If you find it useful,
consider buying us a coffee to help cover server costs.
Patreon page coming soon. Your support directly funds development and hosting.