How to set up FreshRSS
· Updated 31 July 2026 · SparkBox team
Follow your favorite sites in one place. This guide covers how to access it, log in for the first time, configure the basics, and where its data lives so you can back it up.
1. What is FreshRSS?
A free, self-hosted RSS feed aggregator. Subscribe to blogs, news sites, and podcasts and read everything in a clean, unified interface. Supports mobile apps and browser extensions.
2. How to access it
Once it's enabled, FreshRSS runs on your SparkBox at:
http://<your-NAS-IP>:8070Add feeds by clicking the + icon and pasting any website or RSS URL
3. First login
FreshRSS shows a setup wizard on first launch. Pick a username and password — that becomes your admin account.
If it instead asks for a password you didn't set, check Settings → Passwords in your SparkBox dashboard — every auto-generated credential is listed there.
4. Tips
- Add your favorite news sites and blogs by pasting their RSS feed URLs
- Use a mobile RSS app and connect it to your FreshRSS server for reading on the go
5. Where your data lives
FreshRSS's config and persistent data are stored on the SparkBox host under:
/opt/sparkbox/modules/freshrss/config/Backups via the SparkBox dashboard's Backup tile include this directory by default, so a single restore brings FreshRSS back to its current state on a fresh install.
Next steps
That's FreshRSS live on SparkBox.
If something doesn't match what you see, post in d/sparkbox or hit us up on YouTube. Every SparkBox bug gets patched; every UX-stumble in this guide gets rewritten.
Questions, or did this not match your box?
Every guide here came from a real problem someone hit. If yours behaves differently, say so — that is how these get corrected, and how the fix gets prioritised.
We answer there rather than in a comment box, because that is where the people who have already solved it are.