Ask HN: Do you still use an RSS reader? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you still use an RSS reader?

51 pointsthinkingkong116 comments

If so, which one do you use? If not, how are you actually monitoring updates from all your favorite news sources?

Yes, Inoreader[0]. It's the one that was closest in functionality to Google Reader when it shut down. It's simple and cuts out the bullcrap. Though I've found I've been relying on RSS less these days, just because there are fewer sources I've cared to read from.

[0] https://www.inoreader.com/

I second inoreader. But I think their mobile site is a bit weak comparing to the olg GReader. It doesn't mark items read when I scroll down.

Inoreader as well. Hands down the best of the bunch which emerged after Google Reader was closed.

Yup, I used to use Google Reader, but switched to https://newsblur.com/ The app is fast and polished, and the dev is very responsive. https://twitter.com/NewsBlur (Hi conesus!)

NewsBlur is awesome, it's supported by a number of frontends (including Reeder) and has a very capable web app and a nice Android app. I've also used the iOS app from time to time, and new features on all of these are still rolling in from time to time.

The dev is responsive on Twitter (just today we debugged some issues) and the entire thing (including both iOS and Android apps!) is open source, so if they decide to discontinue it you could stand up your own local copy.

Hopefully all the premium members make it a little less likely that that'll happen.

I also use https://newsblur.com/ . Other good options was http://theoldreader.com/ but after a time I switched to newsblur.

I'm also a happy NewsBlur premium user, and RSS is the only way I could keep up with all the blogs I follow. In fact, I'm reading HN via its RSS feed right now...

Feedly. I find it has some obnoxious bugs, but I'm too lazy to investigate alternatives.

I get news from Twitter first, though. Feedly is something I check later in the day, or not even once a day.

Ditto.. feedly, it's not perfect, but it's good enough. Very similar keyboard shortcuts as google reader.

I use Reeder [1], backed by Feed Wrangler [2]. I have a few hundred feeds, many of which rarely update. I find it an invaluable way to keep up with interesting and important news; I use RSS the way many people use Twitter, apparently.

[1] http://reederapp.com

[2] https://feedwrangler.net/welcome.html

I use Reeder too, backed by Fever. With what happened to Google Reader, the fact that Fever is self-hosted and can never go away is a big advantage for me.

I have a license for Fever, but it lost its sparkle for me due to slower sync. I could fall back to it if needed, but I use FeedBin right now.

The period between when Reeder lost Google Reader and when it gained new sync options temporarily killed RSS for me, as every other app I tested just made me wish for Reeder. It's one of my favorite apps of all time.

I am hoping that the work that was put in to make Reeder backend agnostic would be sufficient to survive another RSS aggregation service extinction event.

Of the applications I pay for on my Mac, Reeder is my favorite, with 1Password close second.

Yeah, Tiny Tiny RSS self-hosted on Heroku.

Here's the link to how I did it: https://projectdelphai.github.io/blog/2013/03/15/replacing-g...

For about a year (I think, whenever Google Reader shut down), I just stopped using them. I relied on sites like Hacker News to get updates (along with Twitter).

I found recently, though, that it was not giving me all the things I thought were relevant to me (especially in the .NET world, where I work).

So, recently, I started using The Old Reader[0]. It's nice and clean, and unobtrusive. It's not slick, but that doesn't matter to me in this area. If there was a nice CLI reader (like Mutt) for RSS, I'd probably use that. I'm thinking that'd be a nice weekend project.

[0]https://theoldreader.com/

I'm not sure if you are joking around or not... but http://www.newsbeuter.org/

http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/i_want_the_mutt_of_feed_reader...

Feedly. Didn't look long for an alternative after Google Reader shut down and just took the most popular at the time. Aside from a stupid bug which almost always displays incorrect unread item count, I am satisfied with it.

I still swear by NetNewsWire http://netnewswireapp.com/

My protip is I only subscribe to personal blogs with infrequent update schedules. So no TechCrunch and no Engadget, etc

Yes, digg reader (web version even on iPhone and iPad). Pretty happy with it. My google usage was cut in half.

+1 for digg (even though it has some bugs here and there, but nothing major)

it has web, ios and android clients!

I've bounced between Newsblur & Feedly, but keep sticking with Feedly because of their Android app.

My biggest psychological point that I've learned of myself is I find myself skeptical & leery of long-term using Feedly because they won't take my money. My gut is telling me "I want a RSS Reader with a business model so I know its worth my time investment", although my brain knows that a subscription models ensures viability with the same guarantees as ad models.

Not sure what you mean by won't take your money. Feedly offers a pro subscription.

I've actually really gotten into keeping track of my youtube subscriptions and the only real reliable way I found was to use rss. Because of privacy concerns I've never really used an online rss reader but I have tried a few of the offline clients. I definitely recommend people check out http://quiterss.org/ if they're looking for a new offline rss reader.

I use Bazqux, which is absolutely superb:

* Rock-solid, I haven't seen an outage

* Impressively fast (Reeder updates from it much faster than it ever did with Google Reader: I can get all my feeds in one Tube stop's worth of wifi)

* Has good features like filtering (goodbye "latest podcast" spam) and highlighting (only see certain posts from high-volume feeds

* Great keyboard UI on the web.

Can't recommend it enough. I understand it also has an interesting tech stack behind it too.

I also use Bazqux, and endorse every point bonaldi made. It also works pretty smoothly on iOS with Feeddler.

Despite shifting a lot of article tracking to Twitter, I still find RSS to be a better way to track and consume long form content. Also, the signal to noise ratio of the average RSS feed is much better than that of the average Twitter feed for people whose article's I'd like to read.

I tried Bazqux (before settling on Digg), but right near the end of my free trial they removed the one feature I give a damn about.

I've never cared for reading entries in the reader, I just want it to show me a list of links that I can easily mark as read and click through to the original article.

What feature was removed? I'm a developer of BazQux Reader and can't remember that I removed any major feature.

Essentially when looking at the list of feed items there was no longer a direct link to the articles without expanding the entries.

In list view it's possible to click on the article time. There is also old list view mode (before I've changed it to Google Reader-like one). It's in settings => List view => Normal. It has clickable article subject.

A different answer: I don't use an RSS reader per se, but I use the rss-to-nntp gateway that gwene.org [0] is. It's hosted by the same guy behind the well-known gmane.org.

I then use the Thunderbird built-in NNTP reader to get all my feeds.

I think this is a good way to do it, because it means we could gather all RSS-retrieving capabilities for common sites and share the items much more efficiently than having everyone poll on all servers. When you think of it, a Network News Transfer Protocol seems to be a good solution for propagating sites updates.

It also means that I don't get to share my "seen/flagged" status across devices, which is good: I have taken this occasion to follow less and less sites, and live more outside of the feeds than inside them.

Note: the web reader of gwene.org (read.gwene.org) seems to be outdated; if you point your news reader at news.gwene.org you will get all the latest entries.

[0] http://gwene.org/

That sounds like an interesting approach.

I do something similar, I have a server sat around polling RSS feeds and when new entries are posted they're piped into a chatroom which I look at during the course of the day.

I tried a bunch of them and Inoreader came the closest to filling the gaping hole in my heart left by Google Reader.

My own invention, because I wanted to live in my browser tabs and not learn a new UI: http://github.com/akkartik/spew. Unfortunately I haven't found the fortitude to deal with mozilla's review process.

Yes. RSS is still primarily how I get my news.

As for how, I built my own reader: https://github.com/edavis/river

It generates a roughly reverse chronological "river of news" (http://rsshub.org/feeds/) via a config file I host on Dropbox (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19853263/Feeds/feeds.txt).

If I may brag, I'm pretty damn happy with how it turned out.

Yes, Bazqux.

https://bazqux.com

I've tried all the results of the diaspora of Google Reader and Bazqux is by far the best solution for pure RSS reading. It has a lightning fast super-clean web UI, updates very quickly, has a completely clean interface, and costs $9/year. Well worth it.

They offer a free trial if you want to try it out. I think it lasts 14 days.

Also it works with all the various RSS reader mobile apps; Press, Greader, Reeder, and Mr. Reader.

It does have a terrible name, though.

(Note: I don't get anything for this admittedly glowing endorsement. I'm just a satisfied customer.)

Yes. Tiny Tiny RSS (self-hosted): http://tt-rss.org

It's lightweight, has a GReader-like UI, a decent Android app, an API, keyboard shortcuts, etc.

Yes, Tiny Tiny RSS hosted (among other things) on VPS for $15/yr

I'll be watching these answers with interest. I used Vienna for a long time, then switched to Google Reader by way of Gruml. Hard to believe it's been over a year, but I pretty much stopped using RSS the day Reader died. (My Firefox session still has a HN tab with the "Google Reader is dead" story.) I've mainly been reading Ars Technica and Hacker News ever since, occasionally slumming it on Daring Fireball when I get bored.

I ended up writing my own using SimplePie. Here's a multifeed demo: http://simplepie.org/wiki/tutorial/how_to_replicate_popurls

With the demise of many of the Craigslist national search apps, I ended up taking SimplePie into that realm and produced a 418-CLfeed search engine for personal use as a collector/hobbyist ...OK, hoarder. Works!

I use http://flowreader.com/ as my main RSS reader (because I'm part of the team). There's also the option to connect your Facebook news feed and Twitter timeline.

Other great options: http://theoldreader.com/ and http://feedly.com/

Yes, I've been using Liferea [http://lzone.de/liferea/] since 2004. Seeing the rise and fall of Google Reader while meanwhile Liferea steadily progressed from 0.4 to 1.11 I think says a lot about the value of both desktop software and open source. I can still read interesting articles that I "flagged" 10 years ago!

I'm using TinyTinyRSS (ttrss) right now. After google reader was shut down, I was using both ttrss and theoldreader, but found that theoldreader was missing a significant number of entries. Then theoldreader set a cap of 100 feeds for free accounts and removed 30 of my feeds (taking me from 102 to 72...) so now I'm just using ttrss. Open source, has a decent user interface plus free ios apps.

Never got into RSS, so no.

Reddit and Hacker News. Aggregates everything together and crops out much of the nonsense (although both have a bias, so some points of view are inherently filtered).

Only big downside is no offline availability. However in my limited trials with RSS the promise of offline was rarely delivered up to a workable standard (e.g. pages would be so mangled it was painful to read them, key images missing, etc).

Yes. Newsblur (after GReader).

Newsblur FTW

Yes, rss2email (http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/).

Newsbeuter - 'Mutt for RSS' - fast, most-lightweight, self-hosted on Raspberry Pi. This is after trying TT-RSS and Miniflux (post-Reader). Both decent, but neither as appealing. Miniflux is very attractive, I just prefer the speed of Newsbeuter. Plus using the window/pane arrangement of Tmux with it is always fun. The less is more suckless movement very much appeals.

Well for me it's complicated. I use mainly Twitter, G+ or Facebook for news. I find them to suit my needs almost perfectly. Twitter while at work pause to quick check news, G+/Facebook later at home. The downsides is that i got distracted or sometimes i see posts from friends which i don't have a mood/will to see. Besides this Feedly, but Digg is also cool.

I've created my own https://github.com/johndel/freeze but this one isn't the last version (too lazy to push it as far as I am the only one using it. I have a private repo also). I feel more comfortable to host my own solution and add custom feature that I want.

Feedbin[0] for managing and viewing from laptop, Reeder for viewing on iOS[1]. There's 75+ feeds in my Feedbin account - a few need removed but I'm sure I have a few to add as well.

[0] http://feedbin.com/

[1] http://reederapp.com/ios/

I use https://github.com/rcarmo/rss2imap with a dedicated GMail account. I read my news on any desktop or mobile with a choice of clients (GMail on Android or web works great, although I usually end up reading most of it on iOS or Apple Mail).

Currently I use Digg.com´s reader (http://digg.com/reader) as it´s the closest I´ve found to Google Reader. I am a bit of an RSS addict and spend quite a bit of time daily reading through my RSS feeds. I have over a 100 feeds in my reader.

Been using https://www.clusterss.com since November -- I created it. Designed for chewing through a large number of feed entries (it groups by topic). It is only beta, but that means you can help shape it into what you want in a reader.

I don't. I put all of the blogs and websites I follow in categorized favorites folders, and click through them one by one.

I prefer this process to RSS feed readers because 1) it doesn't take much longer 2) you get the full experience that the web designer intended (ie: sidebar content, menus, comments, etc)

I didn't use a RSS reader before Google Reader shutdown, and it was actually cries over the event that made me feel like I was missing out on something. Now I'm a happy user of Newsblur and can indeed concur that I was missing out. One man's tragedy is another mans fortune I guess :)

Yes, I just came to this post via Feedly.

I used to use Google Reader but switched to Feedly. When it came to light that Feedly was hijacking social sharing buttons on their site and in their app, I switched to Digg. I mostly use the site on my desktop. I use the Android app as a supplement.

I use a combination of Google's Newsstand and Feedly. My must-read subscriptions go to Feedly. Basically blogs of people who I want to follow, some sources related to my local area etc. Others like The Verge, Techcrunch etc. go to Newsstand.

I'm really liking Feedly, and their iOS apps are really nice. I wish they had a cheaper paid version. I don't really need their pro features, but a $10-20/year subscription would be enticing instead of just coasting for free.

I use feedly and this self-hosted application to read all sections of Hacker News: http://gianlucaborello.github.io/rssify/

Yes, the Owncloud News Reader: http://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/News?content=15843...

I use goread.io -- I pay for it, but it's free for you to host yourself on AppEngine. It stays free if you stay under AppEngine free limits.

It's similar to Google Reader in UI and features.

Yes, digg.com/reader

Feedly. You need curation on the Internet, so HN is for the interesting stuff I haven't found yet, and Feedly is for sources with a high signal-to-noise ratio.

Yep. Feedly.

Absolutely. I have a Feedly Pro lifetime subscription and I use it several times a day. RSS is great, too bad major social networks refuse to use it.

I'm not sure I would want Twitter/FB/G+/et al updates via my RSS reader, and I certainly wouldn't want to have to sort through all the stuff on the social networks to get good longform content (or pictures of baby animals). Different platforms have different strengths, and I'd hate to see the utility of one diluted to chase another.

Yes, couldn't read news and follow blogs without RSS.

My setup is FeedWrangler as sync backend and ReadKit on Mac, Mr. Reader on iPad, and Reeder on iPhone.

Yes. I use Reeder (the old one which is no longer available on the App Store) on iOS with local RSS (it fetches ever time I launch it).

Yes, feedly since google reader died. I follow almost 100 different feeds with varying degrees of attention (categorized accordingly)

I've been happy with Digg Reader for a long time now. (well, since Google Reader shut. That feels like a long time.)

Yes, Feedly. Works great on web and Android, decently customizable. I don't pay for Pro, the free version has been enough.

Thunderbird - multi-account Mail and RSS. Following around 40 feeds. Does the job nicely and still upbeat on TB's future.

I'm using http://protopage.com, which is an iGoogle clone.

Yes, rss2imap.

https://github.com/rcarmo/rss2imap

http://krillapps.com/feedy/

Yep. I use Digg Reader - it's clean and simple, despite a few minor features missing from greader.

At the moment I use feedly, though I may consider newsblur at some point.

I could not live without my rss feeds. :)

Yes, Thunderbird. Offline access and having it together with my mail work for me.

Yes. Liferea. I've been using it pretty much since the Death of Usenet.

Yep, Liferea after I got irritated with some inconveniences with Thunderbird

Yes, Thunderbird through its builtin RSS and newsgroup support (via Gmane).

Yes, ReadKit on OS X and Reeder on iOS, syncing with Feed Wrangler.

Yep. Found this through the HN feed in my feedbin.com account.

Yes, Reeder with Feedly as the backend. It's quite good.

Reeder here too. I use Feed Wrangler for my backend.

The best combo I found.

Feedbin + ReadKit (OSX) + Press (Android) + Reeder (iOS)

Digg.com/reader

Yes, Feedly. All the other ones I tried are just ugh.

Absoloutely. Too many sites, not enough time. feedly

Feedly. Works great on multiple devices.

Seamonkey's integrated news reader.

i learned of hn through the shared posts on newblur, which means there's at least two of us using it.

Feedly + Reeder (iOS) + Reeder (OS X)

Gets the job done.

I use Feedly + Mr. Reader on the iPad

tt-rss. Works great on my PC but I never found a good solution for reading it on mobile.

Yes, Feedly.

Feedly

Yes. Feedly. Constantly...

Feedly after GR shutdown.

Feedly + ReadKit on osx

Feedly + Reeder on OSX

rss2email is pretty good, written by Aaron Swartz

Yes, rss2email.

Feedbin + Press

Feedly, daily.

Yes, feedly.

Feedwrangler

Yes. Feedly.

Yes, Liferea

Yes, Feedly

Feedly!

Feedly.

yes i do, of course!

newblur

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