Miniflux bot

The Miniflux bot is a feed fetcher associated with Miniflux, an open-source feed reader application. Miniflux allows users to subscribe to RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds from websites. The bot's function is to regularly poll these feed URLs for new content on behalf of a user's self-hosted Miniflux instance. It identifies itself in logs with a user-agent string like Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Miniflux/2.x.x; +https://miniflux.app). Unlike general web crawlers, it only accesses the specific feed URLs that users have subscribed to.

The Miniflux bot is accessing your website because at least one user of a self-hosted Miniflux instance has subscribed to your RSS or Atom feed. The bot is simply fetching your content to display it to that subscriber. By default, it checks for updates every 60 minutes, but this interval can be customized by the user. The crawling is a legitimate and expected activity for any site offering public feeds, and it represents genuine user interest in your content.

The purpose of the Miniflux bot is to serve as a personal content aggregator for its users. It allows them to follow updates from multiple websites in a single, privacy-focused interface. For content publishers, Miniflux acts as a distribution channel that helps maintain a connection with your audience. Users who subscribe to your feed via Miniflux are often among your most engaged readers, and the service helps you reach them efficiently while respecting their privacy.

If you wish to prevent Miniflux instances from fetching your content feeds, you can add a rule to your robots.txt file. This will stop users who rely on this software from receiving your updates.

To block the Miniflux bot, add the following lines to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Miniflux
Disallow: /