Apple’s platform is a treasure trove of thoughtfully designed apps and utilities, and it’s not limited to official apps. Indie apps like GoodLinks will help you research better, and apps like Almighty will make you a Mac god.
However, my favorite is the RSS reader app. Yes, you can download apps that come with RSS services like Feedly or Inoreader, but you’ll be missing out on most of the fun with them. These apps are built to be cross-platform, are heavy, slow, and lack customization options.
If you’re using a Mac or iPhone, try a specialized RSS reader built by passionate indie developers instead. A whole new reading experience opens up. You can still get your content from Feedly (or sync your feed using iCloud) and enjoy features like a fast, native full-text feed. However, there are also options for custom typography, themes, keyboard shortcuts, sharing options, and even additional sources such as YouTube, Reddit, and Mastodon.
Reader (and Reader Classic)
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
For over a decade, Reeder has been a staple in the RSS app market for Apple devices. It provides a fast and elegant RSS reader that is actually fun to read. The minimalist app puts the reading experience first, and I really like that.
The app is currently split into two parts. The original Reeder app, called Reeder Classic, continues to offer the same classic RSS experience and allows you to connect to several RSS sync services to read all the latest articles. Reeder Classic is a one-time purchase from the App Store ($4.99 for iPhone and iPad, $9.99 for Mac).
The new Reeder app is now more of a social reader. Traditional RSS features, such as keeping an unread count and being able to connect to various RSS sync services, are removed. The Reeder app only syncs using iCloud, so you can create social media like timeline syncs and your reading positions will automatically sync across all your devices.
A social reader, the Reeder app allows you to add not just articles, but entire feeds for YouTube channels, podcasts, subreddits, Mastodon, Bluesky, or Micro.blog.
Once you’re all set up, Reeder is the only place you need to read, listen, and watch content online. Reeder also has a very interesting take on shared feeds. You can turn any tag into a shared news feed that you can use to curate and share articles with your friends and online followers.
The downside is that the new Reeder app isn’t fully finished yet. For example, at startup there is no way to create folders (a staple of RSS readers) or change the reader’s font size or style. Thankfully, both features will be added in future updates. The premium version of the Reeder app will be subscription-based and run for $1 per month or $10 per year (the free version is limited to 10 feeds and lacks features such as connecting to social media accounts and feeds ).
net news wire
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
If you want a free, incredibly simple and fast RSS reader designed natively for Apple devices, check out NetNewsWire. This is a free, open source project that is supported and actively developed by the community.
You can sync using popular services like Feedly, Feedbin, and Inoreader. You can customize the theme of your articles, and it has a dedicated reader view, dark mode, keyboard shortcuts, folders, and all the basic features you’d expect from an RSS reader app.
I would describe NetNewsWire as fast, simple, and no-frills.
lira
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Lire is an RSS app for iPhone ($9.99) and Mac ($9.99) that specializes in one thing: full-text feeds. Many sites only display a portion of the article you are trying to read in an RSS feed. This means you have to click to open the website or use the built-in reader mode to load the article’s content, which takes some time.
Instead, Lire downloads text from websites directly to your device and parses it. Before you start reading, the text of hundreds of articles will be downloaded at once, allowing you to read all content even offline. Lire is great for checking content and skimming news sites without waiting.
Other than that, Lire is a regular app. You can use it as a standalone RSS app or sync it using popular RSS services like Feedly, Inoreader, etc.
unread
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Unread is all about style. I remember using it on the original iPad mini almost 10 years ago. It looked so cool. The combination of beautiful typography and colorful theme was truly a sight to behold. But that’s not enough, at least these days. Although Unread has gone through many updates, it has maintained its signature style.
The downside is that there’s no way to change the app’s default font, Whitney. If you don’t like it, consider other apps on this list.
However, if you like the font, use Unread and enjoy. The app is native and loads very fast with dozens of feeds. If you choose to pay for Unread Premium ($4.99 per month or $49.99 per year), you get additional benefits such as automatic up-front text and image caching, custom Dock icons, widget customization, Safari sharing extensions, article actions, and more. Masu.
However, even if you don’t pay, Unread works as a great RSS reader. Like Lire, it can also automatically load full text from RSS feeds, but you have to enable it explicitly for each site, which is a bit cumbersome.
feed
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Feeeed is a social reader app built around an RSS framework. Feeeed is completely free and only works on iPhone, so there is no Mac version. It’s also a very unique app that pulls together relevant stories from all your feeds and defaults to an algorithmic feed (though you’re free to change it to a traditional timeline if you want).
Feeeed is a social reader, so you can add YouTube channels and Subreddits in addition to articles, but unlike Reeder, you can’t sync your entire Mastodon feed. This is unfortunate (you have to follow each Mastodon user individually). That aside, Feeed is a lightweight and fun reader for the iPhone. For more information, see our previous article on the Feeeeed app.
