Gnus (Emacs)
Hacker ApprovedNewsreader in Productivity & writing
Free Emacs package that puts mail, feeds and Usenet in one interface, customizable through elisp. Critics say it is slow and needs a lot of configuration.
Free Emacs package that puts mail, feeds and Usenet in one interface, customizable through elisp. Critics say it is slow and needs a lot of configuration.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 74%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Unified inbox for mail, feeds and news
“Gnus (Emacs) concentrate news, feeds and mail in a single UI because of this”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Why do RSS readers look like email clients?” “the unified inbox for email, feeds, and news”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Offpunk 3.0” Long-time favorite of Emacs users
“I used his software when it was still "ding" and remember sharing the documentation with anyone in my team that would read it.”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “What's up with all those equals signs anyway?” “Gnus was absolutely delightful back in the day.”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “What's up with all those equals signs anyway?” “we all used Emacs and Gnus, of course”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “What's up with all those equals signs anyway?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow fetching and caching
“Gnus's UX problems were architectural (synchronous network IO designed before async patterns matured)”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Emacs-libgterm: Terminal emulator for Emacs using libghostty-vt” “rewrite the fetching core so it gets performant enough to not crawl under 10000 headers”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “What's up with all those equals signs anyway?” “Gnus it's dog slow, be with email or with usenet”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Offpunk 3.0” - Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Offpunk 3.0”
- Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “Putting email in its place with Emacs and Mu4e”
What people said
23 of the 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“The amount of configuration required to rival what's available out of the box in Web clients is a bit too much”
“such a capable mail and Usenet reader”
“what makes them great is actually the integration between them”
“Gnus's UX problems were architectural (synchronous network IO designed before async patterns matured)”
“see also frustrations with Gnus”
“it's powerful if you have a keyboard, but with a touchscreen it's an exercise of patience”
“Gnus with scoring maybe better but create the scoring for today news it's challenging”
“GNUS' caching it's really slow compared to slrn.”
“I don't think Gnus is that bad once you spend some time setting it up”
“Gnus it's dog slow, be with email or with usenet”
“the unified inbox for email, feeds, and news”
“I used his software when it was still "ding" and remember sharing the documentation with anyone in my team that would read it.”
“rewrite the fetching core so it gets performant enough to not crawl under 10000 headers”
“Gnus was absolutely delightful back in the day.”
“we all used Emacs and Gnus, of course”
“It’s clever, funny, and wildly informative.”
“Gnus (Emacs) concentrate news, feeds and mail in a single UI because of this”
“with NNTP it's 100x slower than SLRN”
“It's easy to get extremely customized behavior by overriding defaults with elisp.”
“gnus had some massive IMAP performance improvements a few years ago”
“I enjoy a hassle-free search experience”
“there was no good reliable search”
“EXWM + Gnus + misc. other Emacs-based apps FTW.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.