Changing Preferences

Program Preferences

The preferences dialog can be opened by the toolbar or through the "Program" menu. The dialog is divided into seven tabs described in the following text.

Feed Preferences

Feed Cache Handling: Here you can set the default number of items to be saved for each subscription. Note that this setting can be overwritten for each subscription by setting the item cache size in the subscriptions properties.
Feed Update Settings: Here you can set the default refresh interval for all subscriptions. Note that this setting can be overwritten for each subscription by setting the refresh interval in the subscriptions properties.

The "Update all subscription at startup" check box allows you to control the update behaviour right after startup.

Folder Preferences

Folder Display Settings: With these check boxes you can control what Liferea loads into the item list when you click a folder. The default behaviour is to load all unread items and to hide all items you've already read.

Usually you will want to enable both options as this allows to quickly read through all unread items of a set of feeds.
Feed Icons (Favicons): This button allows you to trigger an update of all favicons of all subscriptions.

Headline Preferences

Reading Headlines: Here you can set the hotkey for skimming through all unread headlines.
Default View Mode Select your favourite viewing mode here.
Defer removing read items from folders and search folders When reading items from a folder or search folder, like 'Unread', defer removing the items from the UI until you leave the folder. This allows re-reading read items or marking them unread. Read items appear in light-weight font.
Web Integration: Here you can configure your favourite social bookmarking website. This setting is used when you invoke "Post Bookmark" from the item context menu or the HTML view.

Browser Preferences

Internal Browser Settings: Here you can configure three things. First you can specify whether or not Liferea should open clicked links in the configured external browser or in the internal browser. The second option allows you to switch off Javascript. The third option allows you to enable browser plugins.
External Browser Settings: When you click links in a article you read Liferea launches a browser command you can define with this preferences. The first option button is to select your favourite browser or "Manual" for a user defined browser command. With the second option button you specify how the link is opened inside the previously selected browser.

Only when selecting "Manual" as browser you can enter a browser command in the command entry. When entering a command don't forget to include a "%s" within the command which will be replaced with the URL that was clicked. Please keep in mind to double quote the place holder to avoid shell problems with the hash character (#) when launching the browser.

Desktop Preferences

Toolbar Settings: Here you can select whether you want to display both menu bar and tool bar or only one of them. Additionally can influence the toolbar button detail.
Other: Here you can choose wether you want to have a safety confirmation when marking all items read.

Proxy Preferences

HTTP Proxy Server: Here you can specify how Liferea should determine the proxy configuration. The suggested default configuration is to figure it out automatically from the environment variables and the GNOME configuration.

If Liferea incorrectly detects the proxy or you want to configure a different proxy then you should use the "No Proxy" or "Manual Setting" option.

There is currently no direct SOCKS support. For a SOCKS proxy use "Auto Detect" and configure your global desktop (GNOME, KDE...) to use SOCKS!

Enclosures Preferences

This tab allows you to configure how Liferea should handle enclosures. If you are still unsure what enclosures are about please read the Enclosures/Podcasting section first.

Downloading Enclosures: Here you specify which download tool Liferea should use.

When you have problems downloading enclosures please ensure you have installed the configured download tool and that it is working correctly when you run it on the command line.
Opening Enclosures: Using the "Properties" and "Delete" button you can edit the list of known enclosures types. Typically you only want to do this if you want to remove or change program associations. You don't need to create this definitions manually because Liferea will create a new one and ask you which program to use when you open or save a type of enclosures.