Ask HN: Do you still use an RSS reader?

51 points by thinkingkong ↗ HN
If so, which one do you use? If not, how are you actually monitoring updates from all your favorite news sources?

117 comments

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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

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'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...
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).

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.

I use Feedly + Mr. Reader on the iPad
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/

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.
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!
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!

Feedbin + ReadKit (OSX) + Press (Android) + Reeder (iOS)
I tried a bunch of them and Inoreader came the closest to filling the gaping hole in my heart left by Google Reader.
Yes. Liferea. I've been using it pretty much since the Death of Usenet.
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.
Yes. Newsblur (after GReader).
Newsblur FTW
Seamonkey's integrated news reader.
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 :)
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.