The sad state of RSS on the Mac

[bad_user]

I use https://newsblur.com — it’s a web interface and service with apps available for iOS and Android.

The code is open source and actively developed, which gives me peace of mind when I pay my yearly subscription.

On my Mac I tried liking Reeder 3, but TBH NewsBlur’s web interface is better. Reeder can use NewsBlur’s API and the syncing between mobile and desktop is nice to have.

NewsBlur’s author has been very responsive to issues and has been actively improving the service.

I also tried self-hosting various web solutions but it’s too much of a hassle, a constant security risk and paying for a VPS ends up being more expensive.

[ghaff]

For me, it's that I use a variety of systems and operating systems depending upon the circumstances. Unless it's relatively specialized tools (development environment, heavy-duty photo editing), I'd much rather have a web interface I can get to from anywhere rather than having a native app I can only use on one system. The native app has to be a lot better at some task.

[somada141]

I've been using the free version of NewsBluer and the paid versions of Reeder3 on OSX and iOS for over a year now and I'm really with it (no affiliation with either). For an one-off payment of 18$ (for the Reeder apps) I think its pretty great.

The free NewsBlur does remove unread items older than 7 days or so I believe but the paid version raises that up to a month or so.

Through the combination I get a very good sync of my read, and starred items and Reeder 3 offers some nifty integrations with services like Pinboard and a decent built-in browser and a 'text only' version of the website which makes it easier to read in a small screen.

[sashk]

Brent Simmons working on new open-source[1] rss reader for macOS — Evergreen[2]. Brent is original author of NetNewsWire. He recently posted screenshot[3] of current Evergreen state.

    [1]: https://github.com/brentsimmons/Evergreen
    [2]: https://ranchero.com/evergreen/
    [3]: https://twitter.com/brentsimmons/status/1020079742869884928

[jasonmp85]

I hate to say it because people seem to have some weird affinity for Pasco in the Mac community, but Black Pixel is where good apps go to die. They bought up Kaleidoscope and have effectively stopped all development on it (a paid diff viewer that still has no syntax highlighting).

[dewey]

That's exactly the kind of information I'm looking for. Thank you. I'll follow that development closely!

[archagon]

I'm pretty sure this is going to eventually become the platform standard. Really excited about the project.

(Other than that, it seems completely natural for a feed reader to be a web app. Not sure what the fuss is about.)

[afloatboat]

I use Reeder for Mac (and iOS) with Feedly and while I understand the author's reluctance to buy, I haven't had any real problems with the apps in all my years of usage. Although I must say I recently contacted the author with a tiny feature request and didn't hear back from them either.

RSS is just a niche product, bring it up with your average user and they probably won't know what you're talking about. I'm just glad these apps are still around. Maybe we'll once get a resurgence like Podcasts.

[abalone]

I too am very happy with Reeder. It actually is kept up to date. Came out with iPhone X support promptly, for example.

I think we’re just conditioned to expect super frequent updates for everything every few weeks. Reeder is old school that way.

Having said that I only use it on iOS. On the Mac I use Feedly in a browser.

[geerlingguy]

Another Reeder user here. It’s been excellent for years.

[jasonmp85]

Reeder works well enough; just because an app hasn't been updated in a year doesn't mean it's not worth paying for and using. The author's "hey I used this for a long time and stopped when it became paid can you promise me updates" letter is obnoxious.

The one thing I wish it had was a webview that would honor my content blockers; I think it's still using an outdated webview API on macOS.

[Aelius]

> inbox got a bit out of hand by having too many unread items piled up. I slowly stopped looking at them before abandoning the idea completely

And this is precisely why it's insane and counterproductive to have unread counts on an RSS feed.

Don't obsess over reading every last article. It's a feed. Read what looks interesting. Let other things go. Don't track what you've read or what you've missed. There's nothing down that path but frustration and stress.

And yet, almost no RSS developers see the wisdom in this, and they prefer to embrace the dumb idea with open arms.

[dewey]

I think that also wouldn't solve the issue, what needs to be handled better is the difference between high volume feeds and low volume feeds.

I absolutely want to see every post of my friend's blog that has a post every few months. What I don't care about is to get every single MacRumors post with the latest gossip because that would make up about 15 items / day. I've seen some of the hosted solutions going into that direction but there doesn't seem to be a self-hosted or app doing that yet.

[Aelius]

I'll through in a cross platform RSS solution: http://offog.org/code/rawdog/

I found a project similar to this, but unfortunately I can't find it again. Rawdog is a little rough around the edges, but worth a try.

[majewsky]

Or, better yet, let me turn the unread counter on or off for specific feeds.

[tschellenbach]

Yeah, Winds doesn't show any unread counts https://github.com/GetStream/Winds Less stress

[ymolodtsov]

I’m using Reeder 3 and it’s actually quite good. The author updates it when it’s necessary but yeah, no new features are in the pipeline apparently.

[jd20]

Same here. It seems to check all the authors needs, other than being constantly updated.... But then, if it's not broke, not sure what need there is to keep pushing updates?

[sashk]

Reeder is the best right now, but author disappears for a long stretch of time without updates, then large release, few bug-fix releases and then again quiet time. Despite the fact he promised more frequent updates recently — he's been silent for a long time to think Reeder is dead. It's been crashing a lot lately, so not sure what to expect.

[cprecioso]

It's crashing a lot for me lately, to the tune of every 100 articles, or sometimes when you go in/out the web view too fast. Mind you, I'm not a power user at all, just a regular feed consumer.

This happened a lot on High Sierra, and the Mojave beta has made it much worse (although that is to be expected).

[dombili]

I use Reeder syncing with Feedbin. I couldn't be happier. Yes, Reeder rarely gets an update but it works well and I believe it gets updated whenever is necessary — which is enough for me.

Feedbin, however, is just fantastic. Easily the best service I've been using for years, along with Pinboard.

[thirdsun]

I'm using the same combination. Daily and with zero issues.

Of course I'd wish Reeder was more actively developed, but thinking about it there simply isn't anything missing. And if OP is dissatisfied with the available RSS clients there's always Feedbin's web interface.

[tschellenbach]

Here's a free alternative: https://github.com/GetStream/Winds

[matt4077]

I wonder what exactly the author misses in Reeder. I've been using it for years, and did not even notice that it wasn't being updated.

I have feeds. They have posts. I read (some). The end.

There's nothing I'm missing, nothing that's broken. Complaining just about missing updates probably explains why the author never got to read anything: he was too busy fiddling with the reading experience.

[dewey]

I don't miss anything from Reeder, I use it on iOS already and it's all great. I also don't really have a problem with spending the money for Reeder. I'm just worried that in a few months when Mojave comes out all kinds of things are going to break and I have to look for a new solution.

[outworlder]

I don't get this obsession with the "last update date". Are there major bugs open? Did the underlying platform change and the app got left behind? Are there any major features missing?

Software applications are never "complete", but at some point we can stop fiddling all the time.

[BuckRogers]

If I had a popular piece of software out there, once I reached the point of feature completeness (yes, I believe it is possible if you're a reasonable person), and stability I would do meaningless updates once every 3 months just to keep people that you're referring to happy and using my product. People aren't smart enough to just "be happy" and content, so you have to trick them into product satisfaction.

[kitsunesoba]

I’ve been using News Explorer for a while now and it’s been pretty good. Dev is active, app is stable, syncing works, it’s not Electron.

[bsagdiyev]

Not commenting on the app itself, but isn't kind of a sad thing when discussing an app and stating "not Electron" is probably a major selling point?

[joejoebob]

This. News Explorer is great.

[tpush]

I personally use News Explorer, both on macOS and iOS. It syncs via iCloud; I don't need or want some third party subscription service.

I only use it for Youtube subscriptions though, so that I don't need a Google account to follow channels I like.

[dewey]

This looks pretty great, thanks! I'll look into it even if it doesn't have Fever integration. iCloud sync sounds neat.

[ericsoderstrom]

I use the inoreader web app, which works quite well. I don't think RSS is the type of thing that really needs its own native app anyway.

[Philipp__]

Emacs and elfeed combined with swiper were the revelation for me personally. I am finally satisfied with offline RSS Mac experience.

[imglorp]

Came here to plug this.

I'm working with the author to make a feed summary page like some other readers have, if you prefer to see things collapsed that way.

[gkya]

I don't use swiper, but Emacs + Elfeed is indeed a great experience; especially so if you tag all your RSS feeds when adding them. Also, if you have EMMS, you can play podcasts right away pressing P in the * elfeed-show * buffer.

[bdz]

It's web based not a desktop app but after Google Reader went down I somehow ended up with Newsblur and it's actually pretty good. The iOS and Android app is also nice.

[meroje]

I just recently started using Cappucino[1] from the makers of Airmail[2], gotta say it feels like the spiritual successor to Reeder

  [1] https://rink.hockeyapp.net/apps/902c8f3a570242808ebb00495f5fa04d  
  [2] http://airmailapp.com

[hs86]

As someone who next to a Mac also uses Windows I just gave up on native RSS apps. Somehow RSS (or Twitter) apps never got traction on Windows.

There are some nice self-hosted RSS aggregators but in the end I just 'solved' this problem by subscribing to Inoreader. Its web app is convenient, resource-friendly and has more features than I will ever need. Their Android app also looks very polished. It is reliable to fetch article contents for header only feeds and because most RSS feeds are just pointers to web content I am just fine with not having a native app on my Mac/PC.

[pjmlp]

I use RSS in Outlook and Thunderbird.

[newscracker]

Tangentially, I'm looking for a good RSS reader for iOS (preferably free and well designed, but paid ones are ok too).

I used to use Pulse, but it was bought by LinkedIn and completely messed up after that. Then I switched to using Apple News to follow some sites. But News is not a proper RSS reader as such, and Apple has done little to improve it since it was released with iOS 9 — still supported and available only in a few countries, cannot add RSS feeds, cannot find certain sites through a search, and very weird bugs if one switches the region setting. It's basically abandonware, as far as feature richness and expansion are concerned. Three years on, I still don't understand why the app cannot be available worldwide and work as a feed reader too.

I've tried Flipboard, but I don't like the fancy magazine-like layout and navigation (which I find unintuitive).

[mercutio2]

I like Newsify. iCloud sync, no nonsense, free with minor paid upgrade I didn’t need but paid to support the developer.

[guybedo]

I you don't like fancy magazine-like layouts, you can try https://aktu.io, it's a rss reader+news aggregator i built. Would love some feedback!

[fernly]

Just a vote for the oft-ignored RSS Owl. Don't know about the maintenance status, I see the web page is only copyright to 2015. But it works well.

http://www.rssowl.org/

[superkuh]

Yeah, it's getting pretty old and there are a lot of unfixed exploitable vulnerabilities. Plus I was starting to have trouble using it with sites that had bleeding edge https/ssl configs.

I ended up switching to the slightly more modern Liferea a couple months ago. https://lzone.de/liferea/ I don't like the interface quite as much but it's workable.

[zeitg3ist]

For me it’s the Newsblur web interface on desktop, and the wonderful Unread on iOS. I paid for it years ago and it’s still getting updated monthly with new features and bug fixes, even though it has changed hands twice in the meantime.

[tarentel]

I've been using ReadKit with very few issues for 4-5 years now. Maybe it's just that specific integration but it works fine with Feedly.

[NickBusey]

This is a bit off topic, but with so many people recommending what they use in this thread I thought it would be a good place to ask.

Can anyone recommend a good online newsreader that has a solid docker deployment? NewsBlur looked promising, but their app requires four setup steps to be executed in the terminal. I'd like something that gets pretty close to Twelve-Factor deployment.

[dewey]

Yes, I’d also recommend Miniflux. It’s great!

[leemailll]

miniflux offers docker image