FAQ

General Questions

What is Glean?

Glean is a smart RSS reader that helps you gather inspiration from the information flood. It supports smart recommendations, bookmark organization, and fully self-hosted data control.

Is Glean free?

Yes, Glean is open-source software and completely free. You can self-host it and have full control over your data.

Which platforms are supported?

Web Version: Supports all modern browsers
Self-Hosted: Uses Docker Compose, supports Linux, macOS, Windows
Desktop App: Built with Electron, supports major desktop platforms

Feature Questions

Which feed formats are supported?

Glean supports standard RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0, and Atom formats.

Can I import subscriptions from other RSS readers?

Yes, Glean supports standard OPML format import and export. You can migrate from any RSS reader that supports OPML.

How does smart recommendation work?

Glean uses vector embedding technology to learn your reading preferences:

When you like or bookmark an article, the system learns your positive preferences
When you mark dislike, the system learns your negative preferences
Based on these preferences, the system calculates a preference score for each article

See the Smart Recommendations documentation for details.

What’s the difference between full and lite versions?

Feature	Full	Lite
RSS subscription management	✅	✅
Article reading	✅	✅
Bookmarks and tags	✅	✅
Smart recommendations	✅	❌
Preference learning	✅	❌
Memory requirement	~4GB	~2GB

Use the lite version if you don’t need smart recommendation features or have limited server resources.

Deployment Questions

Is self-hosting difficult?

If you’re familiar with Docker, deployment takes just a few minutes:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LeslieLeung/glean/main/docker-compose.yml -o docker-compose.yml
docker compose up -d

See the Quick Start documentation for details.

What hardware configuration is needed?

Lite Version (without Milvus):

2 CPU cores
2GB RAM
10GB storage

Full Version (with Milvus):

4 CPU cores
8GB RAM
40GB storage

How to update to a new version?

docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

Database migrations run automatically. See the Update Guide for details.

How to backup data?

The PostgreSQL database is the most important data, use:

docker exec glean-postgres pg_dump -U glean glean | gzip > backup.sql.gz

See the Backup & Restore documentation for details.

Privacy and Security

Where is my data stored?

Self-hosted version data is stored entirely on your own server. You have complete control over all data.

Is the Embedding API Key secure?

Yes, the API Key is configured via environment variables, stored on the server side, and only used to call the Embedding API to generate vectors.

What Embedding provider is used by default?

The default is sentence-transformers (runs locally), no API key required. For better results, you can configure OpenAI or other providers.

Technical Support

What if I encounter problems?

Check the Troubleshooting documentation
Search for similar issues on GitHub Issues
Join the Discord Community for help
If no solution found, submit a new Issue

How to submit feature suggestions?

Feel free to submit feature suggestions on GitHub Issues. We carefully consider every suggestion.

Can I contribute code?

Absolutely! Glean is an open-source project, and Pull Requests are welcome.