Introduction

Many years ago (over a decade) I wrote an article about RSS Feed reader alternatives after Google announced they were killing Reader in March 2013. That article attracted a fair amount of attention, including a request from RedHat to republish the article on their blog. On the ten-year anniversary of the death of Google Reader, the Verge published Who killed Google Reader?(pay-walled article), indicating (to me) that even a decade on there was still interest in the product. Today, with the rising profile of the FediVerse and the IndieWeb, it seems RSS readers and feed aggregation are seeing a bit of a renaissance with the likes of Bubbles. I've also noted several feed reader sites showing up as referrers on my sites.

And, just to make things more interest, as I was working on the first draft of this piece, Rishabh P. Sharma posted an article on his site called: FreshRSS vs My Own Feed Reader: A fierce competition. I took this as yet another indicator that there is still quite a bit of interest in RSS/Atom Feed Readers.

This started me wondering what is the status of RSS feed readers and other news aggregators these? Are they the technology of a bygone era as once predicted by Google? Or are they still around and thriving as I'm starting to believe from seeing several readers in my websites referrers? Are there any new ones that might be worth looking at? And, most importantly, have they changed?

This Isn't a Roundup Article

The original article I wrote back in 2013 was focused on a simple, and single question: what to do now that Google Reader is going away? Back then, everything was an opportunity for open source alternatives to shine. So, that's how I wrote the article (and why RedHat was interested in it). I provided a roundup of what were the best alternatives that I could find at the time.

Obviously we aren't in 2013 anymore, so it doesn't seem like a roundup article is what is needed. Instead, what I would like to do is examine a few questions:

• Are Feed Readers bygone tech?
• What is RSS, and why is it so heavily used?
• Why would you want to use a feed reader today?
• What are your options for setting up some type of feed reader?
• Are there any interesting, and lesser known options?
• Are there any significant changes since 2013?

These might be more of interest to you today if you don't use, or don't understand why RSS/Atom feed readers are useful.

Tech of a Bygone Era?

From looking around for a bit, I was able to answer Google's prediction: no, RSS/Atom readers and aggregators are definitely not the technology of a bygone era. First, not only do many websites still have RSS/Atom feeds available, but I was able to identify a number of different ways in which they are being used now:

• Websites like Memeorandom, Mediagazer, Techmeme and WeSmirch actually use RSS/Atom feeds in several ways: First, they use feeds from other media outlets to gather current stories. The stories are then aggregated to produce their single-page quick view website. Second, they make RSS feeds available for viewing in a feed reader. Third, they use RSS/Atom feeds to export their content to social media, like the Fediverse. (Aside: they almost make a list of all the feeds they scrape available on the leaderboards, which are part of each site. This is a great way to find a list of feeds if you need one.) Basically, that's a lot of RSS/Atom based tech to produce what is, essentially, a single page website.

• Of course, we have the recent site Bubbles. Bubbles is a website that presents a ranked list of posts from IndieSites that sign up for the service. The use RSS/Atom feeds to populate their lists of articles to Pretty cool stuff, reaching back to the old days of the internet.

• As hinted above, there is a lot of RSS feeds being bridged to the Fediverse. Possibly the biggest / most common are the weather and weather camera feeds. Of course, there is also the ever popular Elon Musk Jet tracker. Fedi Directory has an extensive list of bots on the Fediverse, including many RSS bridging bots.

• Platforms like Mastodon and GotoSocial make public user posts available via RSS. For example, my feed is: Unattributed's GTS Feed. Of course, this can be disabled by users if they don't want their posts published use RSS/Atom. But why use it? It's a good way to archive your posts, especially if you want to implement automatic post deletion application, but might want to keep some of those bangers around to reuse later.

• The most unusual use of RSS/Atom feeds goes to Calibre, which uses them to scan websites and build e-Books for reading offline.

• And, let's not forget podcasts. Lots of podcasting platforms serve RSS/Atom feeds for retrieving shows, and many podcast players use RSS/Atom feeds to retrieve the podcast(s).

Hopefully it's obvious that RSS feeds are not tech from a bygone era. I would say, in fact, that RSS/Atom is literally the protocol that is literally powering a substantial portion of the internet as we know it today.

What Is RSS?

The name RSS has multiple definitions, but for our purposes here, the best is Really Simple Syndication. Its purpose is to provide of stream of updated information from a website. This information can take many forms, and can include different types of media, such as photos, audio files, or video files.

The idea is that a website produces a stream (file) when another application or website sends a query to the site. The stream contains the information that has been updated since the last query. In some cases, the site (or client) may limit the number of items in an update. This is mostly true when the site has a lot of information that is changing very quickly.

The idea that only updated information is sent is what makes RSS flexible and light-weight. Since only a limited amount of information is sent during each query the overhead in processing each request is low.

Applications that receive these updates read them, and then take actions based on the updates. For example, if an update says there is a new article, the application can download that article. This processing includes items like images, video, and audio files.

Why Use an RSS Reader?

RSS readers are convenient. They allow you to keep track of the changes on as many sites as you desire. In most cases, the RSS reader will automatically check for updates on the sites you have specified, at an interval you specify. Most readers also allow you to set an expiry period for the information it gathers.

In addition to these features, many readers include additional features to allow you to tag items, mark items as favorites, or mark them for some other processing. Many times you can also export items to other formats or programs (say a note-taking application like Obsidian or Joplin).

And even more advanced readers will allow you to set up rules to tell the program how to treat items that match a one or more sets of criteria. For example, automatically download podcasts, or tag an item if the title contains a keyword.

This flexibility can allow the user to deal with massive amounts of information in a quick and efficient manner. You can think of a reader like a berm: it provides a barrier between you and the wide ocean of information that is out there on the internet. Inside the berm's perimeter you have your docks organized into bays where each of your boats (ie, website feeds) are docked.

RSS Feed Reader Options

So, time to look at some RSS reader options that you might be interested in. This is not going to be an exhaustive list by any means. I checked out the Wikipedia Comparison of Feed Aggregators list earlier. It's a large list, with a lot of applications that are both maintained and unmaintained, and some applications that probably really shouldn't be on the list.

Instead, I want to focus on different classes of reader applications you might want to consider. We'll talk about the reason(s) why you might want to use each, and These include extensions you can add to your web browser, desktop applications, cloud based applications, and hosting your own RSS aggregation server.

Browser Extensions

If you use a desktop computer or a laptop as your primary computing device, this is the most obvious place to start. Adding an extension to your browser can make your feeds available in a way that smoothly integrates with your current environment. The ones that I would look at are FeedBro, LiveMarks, SlickReader and The RSS Aggregator.

Of all of these readers, LiveMarks is available as both a Firefox and Chrome extension, and is rather unique when it comes to how it works. When you add a site to LiveMarks it creates a folder in your bookmarks with links to all the articles that are in the feed. You open the bookmarks to read the article, which actually literally opens the website web page. This can be nice if there are things about the actual web page that you want to or should see. However, this can also open you up to being tracked by the website, so I would only go this route if you have strong ad block and privacy measures in place.

The (unfortunately named) FeedBro for Firefox, and SlickReader for Chrome are the most traditional RSS feed readers, looking like an email application in your browser. As you add new sites, a folder is created in the application's database. You open an email like view and can scan through and read the entries.

The RSS Aggregator for Chrome differentiates itself a bit by allowing you to interact with your feeds through your choice of a drop-down menu, or an email-like interface. When installed a button is added to your shortcuts which will indicate how many updates there. Clicking the button will show you the feeds you've added, and selecting a feed will show you the updates. From there you can go directly to the article, or mark it off. The one downside to this reader is if you want the Filters, Rules, and Collections features you have to purchase their Plus or Professional version.

Self Hosted

Personally, I think this is where the best options are for aggregating content using RSS feeds. However, the downside is that you need to have some technical skill, and the desire to set up a self-hosting system. This is likely most appealing to people that are already into setting up home labs. However, if you run a Jellyfin server, or other media server, maybe this approach will appeal to you.

There are three options for self-hosting that I am aware of: TTRSS (Tiny Tiny RSS), FreshRSS, and Nextcloud News App. Personally, I ran TTRSS on a server many years ago and absolutely loved it. This was right after the Google announcement that they were discontinuing their reader application. I haven't used FreshRSS, but it looks to be comparable to TTRSS. The Nextcloud News App has the advantage of being available in the Nextcloud App store. If you already have a Nextcloud server set up then this is an obvious choice.

The reason I feel the self-hosted option is the best is that they offer the most flexibility. You can access them through their web based interfaces, or you can use them with standalone applications as clients. In this way no matter what device you are reading on, your clients will always know what you have / haven't read.

Cloud Readers

Right behind the self-hosted options are cloud based feed aggregator / readers. The biggest advantage that these applications have is they often have the work to build large databases of feeds to make available to you. You get to select the feeds that you want to read without having to find and add them to your reader. Often during the account creation process you will be presented with a list choose from.

Some of the most notable cloud based aggregator / readers are: Inoreader, Newsblur, Feedly, FeedMe, FeedLand, and The Old Reader. The (to me at least) downside to many of these sites is that they want a subscription for “advanced” features. The prices and features vary between applications. The plus side of cloud based applications is they often have companion web browser plugins, and standalone cellphone apps.

The most interesting of the cloud based options is FeedLand. This is a platform created by Dave Winer – one of the originators of RSS. His idea is to make a site that is “social” based around newsfeeds. You can share posts from your feed to your own social feed, which others on the site can follow. The site also provides exporting lists of your feeds, which you can use with other feed reader applications. And, best of all, there is no charge for the system.

Another one that is a completely free cloud based platform is FeedMe. I was unaware of it until it showed up in the referrers list in my analytics. It is self-described as a minimalist feed reader, and it is. You add your feeds manually, or using an OPML file if you have one. You can make categories for your feeds, and read them. There is no tagging feature, only a favorite option, and you have to manually mark each item as read (or mark the whole feed as read). There's no option to limit the number of items in a feed, or the age of the items. And there is no option for third party application integration.

Inoreader, Newsblur, and Feedly are all sites that seem to be fairly popular as they are ones that are showing up in my referrers, along with FeedMe.

Desktop Applications

There are a fair number of desktop applications, with a couple of them standing out as being available on many operating systems: RSS Guard is available on Windows, Linux, OS/2, and macOS. Fluent Reader is available on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Communique and NewsFlash are Linux native applications, while Fiery Feeds is available on iOS and macOS. The reason for singling out these applications is they all integrate with the Nextcloud News application.

Notably, RSS Guard also integrates with Tiny Tiny RSS and Feedly.

As I mentioned in the Tech of a Bygone Era section, Calibre can take your RSS feeds and produce e-Books from them, which turns them into a magazine-like reading experience. There are also a couple of desktop email applications that include support for reading RSS feeds: Thunderbird and Claws Mail. While Claws Mail is a Linux based application, Thunderbird is available on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

All of these applications should be able to import OPML files, if you decide to move from one reader to a desktop application.

iOS and Android Applications

While I am not very familiar with iOS applications since I've never used an iPhone, the aforementioned Fiery Feeds is an option that provides Nextcloud News integration. A couple more options with Nextcloud News integration are: CloudNews and Nextnews. Additionally, I believe (although I could be wrong) there is a news application that comes with the iPhone?

On the Android side there are plenty of options: Nextcloud News Reader, OCReader, Newsout, and Readrops are all notable for their Nextcloud News integration. A couple of other notable apps include Feedly, Flipboard. On the open source side there are quite a few more applications: RSS Reader, Feeder, Capy Reader, and FeedFlow to name a few (available in the F-Droid store).

And there are the applications designed to work with specific cloud platforms like Inoreader, Feedly, and NewsBlur.

(NOTE: while I did mention Flipboard, I am not mentioning apps like GroundNews, SmartNews, Google News, Yahoo! News as those apps are more specifically focused on gathering news from a predefined list of news outlets, and typically don't allow adding your own feeds.)

Conclusion

What I find interesting about this is an image of seeing all the information that is available on the internet as a stream. Much of that information is available for the taking, consuming, researching, etc. However, it's what we do with this information that matters. Feed Readers are like docks. You use a reader to set up the bays for all the information to flow into. How the docks and bays are organized is up to you.

So, what would I do given the whole sea of available options?

I've already mentioned several times that I use Calibre's RSS scanning feature. I like the idea of having e-Books that I can just put on my e-Reader and read at me leisure. But, there is another feature of Calibre I haven't mentioned: the Content Server. This feature starts a web server application that I can use on any of my devices within my house. So, if I wanted to read anything from my library, including all the news sites I download, on my tablet or phone, I can use the content server with my web browser.

But, if I weren't using this solution, I would self-host Tiny Tiny RSS, and use RSS Guard on my desktop, and the open source Tiny Tiny RSS android app on my phone and tablet. The other option I would explore would be setting up Nextcloud, using the Nextcloud News App and using the Android version of the Nextcloud News App.

However, I wouldn't take my advice in this area, as my needs and desires are likely far different from yours. Explore what's out there, see which options give you what you want. Personally, I am happy reading the IndieWeb on my desktop using my web browser, and don't see a need to do anything else with it.

Categories: #Features Tags: #rss, #feeds, #readers, #windows, #macos, #linux, #android, #ios, #cloud License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.