Poll: RIP Google Reader. Which RSS solution do you use nowadays?
On July 2, Google Reader shut down. I’m a heavy RSS user and I’m quite satisfied with the alternative I found, but I’m always on the lookout for better products. If you used RSS before, what did you do to replace Google Reader?
46 comments
Other: Rawdog (http://offog.org/code/rawdog/). Very bare-bones: you edit a textual config file and run it periodically from cron, and it gives you a (repeatedly updated) static HTML page with the contents of your feeds merged into chronological order. It doesn't live in the cloud; if you run rawdog on a server at home that isn't visible from the outside (as I do), then you have no way to read your aggregated feeds when you're away from home.
But it's simple, it works, and (with a tiny bit of CSS and Javascript tweakery in its templates) it presents things in exactly the way I want them, which no other RSS-reading tool I've seen does. (One page with everything inline, rather than a list of feeds that I have to select one by one: I want my feed aggregator to actually aggregate my feeds. This enables the simplest possible reading process[1]: start at the top and read or skim until reaching something you've seen already, then stop. The only nontrivial change I've made is adding little toggles to collapse and expand whole feeds or individual entries.)
[1] I should in good conscience admit that this breaks down in the presence of feeds whose timestamps are b0rked, which are unfortunately not that rare. This doesn't in practice require a big deviation from the simple process in the previous paragraph.
And I like having it live on my local server, not in the cloud. What feeds I choose to read are no business of, say, Google's, and the whole cloud thing is overrated. Get off my lawn!
But it's simple, it works, and (with a tiny bit of CSS and Javascript tweakery in its templates) it presents things in exactly the way I want them, which no other RSS-reading tool I've seen does. (One page with everything inline, rather than a list of feeds that I have to select one by one: I want my feed aggregator to actually aggregate my feeds. This enables the simplest possible reading process[1]: start at the top and read or skim until reaching something you've seen already, then stop. The only nontrivial change I've made is adding little toggles to collapse and expand whole feeds or individual entries.)
[1] I should in good conscience admit that this breaks down in the presence of feeds whose timestamps are b0rked, which are unfortunately not that rare. This doesn't in practice require a big deviation from the simple process in the previous paragraph.
And I like having it live on my local server, not in the cloud. What feeds I choose to read are no business of, say, Google's, and the whole cloud thing is overrated. Get off my lawn!
This is exactly what I've been looking for. I almost got to the point of building something like it for myself.
I grudgingly use Feedly. I don't like it (too much mystery meat navigation), but it's good enough.
Even though you might have to host it yourself (or email me, i can setup a temporary account on mine for you to test with), I've found I like TinyTiny RSS's UI. It doesn't try to get in my way with my reading, and replicates the way that I had been using google reader with liferea fairly well. I don't have any complaints about it (other than it loading a little slow sometimes).
Ah, I'll install it on my home server and give it a shot, thank you very much for the recommendation.
You should add Feedspot and Goread. Both are reasonably faithful clones of the original.
Goread has the advantage of also being open-source, in Go, so you can install your own on Google App Engine. https://github.com/mjibson/goread
Goread has the advantage of also being open-source, in Go, so you can install your own on Google App Engine. https://github.com/mjibson/goread
I use Feedly, but I really dislike it. I, almost overnight, transitioned from reading blogs for most of my content, to using HackerNews and Reddit for most reading. I might check my Feedly account once every week or two as opposed to multiple times a day with Reader. The things I liked about Reader, that it was minimal but what it did (find RSS feeds given a URL, catalogue what I have read, fetch new posts, and be reasonable on a mobile device) it did very well, are just not present in Feedly.
I'm actually surprised with the lack of non-webapp RSS feed usage. RSS has been around for such a long time and people moved on from desktop applications to webapps?
Personally, I use Thunderbird and newsbeuter since I've used them for such a long time and old habits die hard. When Google Reader was relatively new, I tried switching, but it never stuck.
Personally, I use Thunderbird and newsbeuter since I've used them for such a long time and old habits die hard. When Google Reader was relatively new, I tried switching, but it never stuck.
That's one of the large reasons I went with TinyTiny-RSS. It's got support in Liferea, and a decent android app to do reading with. Let's me keep everything in sync for read/unread across devices, just like i was using google reader for.
I think the Digg Reader is really quite nice. Was very snappy when I was trying it out and the UI is good. I like the ability to mix in popular stories without it taking over my own subscriptions. If I hadn't written my own already (Stringer) then I would be using Digg.
Other : Just mine... a special software developped with Python/Django/Celery and that works fine. The architectures is not proper for a huge loading but for me it is sufficient.
I have implemented a Google-Reader like appearence (navigation in the left, list of posts in the right) but have added some UI that was missing to me in GR (tags and subscription are not in the same place, hierarchical tags, not just one star but five to a better evaluation, a right panel that appears to show the post,...).
My purpose wasn't only to follow posts but to organize them so that I can't find them quickly and logicaly later when needed. Several things could be improved but the critical path and emergency to import my GR data before the 1st july are passed and worked fine.
Now I just know that if something very important needs to be improved I can work on it as I want :-)
I have implemented a Google-Reader like appearence (navigation in the left, list of posts in the right) but have added some UI that was missing to me in GR (tags and subscription are not in the same place, hierarchical tags, not just one star but five to a better evaluation, a right panel that appears to show the post,...).
My purpose wasn't only to follow posts but to organize them so that I can't find them quickly and logicaly later when needed. Several things could be improved but the critical path and emergency to import my GR data before the 1st july are passed and worked fine.
Now I just know that if something very important needs to be improved I can work on it as I want :-)
Other: Antisocial (https://github.com/thraxil/antisocial/), which I wrote the weekend after hearing about Reader shutting down. I like it much better than Reader, but it's extremely opinionated, so it will probably only ever work well for me. I wrote more about the how and why back here: http://thraxil.org/users/anders/posts/2013/03/31/My-History-...
Feedly because of this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.noinnion.a...
Guys I can see alot of people use feedly but with complaints - if you want something better then original greader have a look on inoreader - seriously, I'm using it and I wouldn't switch back to greader from it.
I'm using Inoreader too and I'm quite happy with it.
I would like to give a try also to Yoleoreader, but right now it just can import the feed list from Google Reader and it's not good for me
After trying out a few of the alternatives pre- and post-shutdown, I ended up subscribing to Feed Wrangler mainly because it integrated well with reeder on my iphone. I also liked the fact that the website isn't overdesigned or confusing, although the two features it sorely needs are (i) sorting preferences and (ii) the ability to open tabs in the background in chrome (I had a chrome extension that did this for google reader).
[Other] wrote my own rss to email gateway: https://github.com/peterkeen/feeds
Other: BazQux https://bazqux.com
Surprised that it isn't on the list.
[Other] Akregator http://userbase.kde.org/Akregator
Feedly - and I read less RSS than ever.
It's been a relief, as I used to treat Reeder as another inbox that needed clearing.
Omnom, which has the advantage of being able to read any kind of online content, not just RSS/Atom (it can read from APIs, scrape sites, etc). It's extensible and configured in Ruby:
https://github.com/tombenner/omnom
Netvibes! I've used Netvibes for many years and love it. I'm honestly quite surprised it's not more popular in the hacker community. It's quite tweakable and flexible.
One major drawback: They still have no native mobile apps and a pretty poor mobile web offering.
One major drawback: They still have no native mobile apps and a pretty poor mobile web offering.
rss2email running on a server. It converts rss entries to email, which then gets sent to an email account that filters them into a folder. Email is surprisingly an ideal platform for this kind of information. You can read it pretty much anywhere: web, desktop client and phone client.
[Other] Bazqux - https://bazqux.com/
I continue to be amazed that Bazqux has gotten little to no press recognition. The UI is clean, simple, and an excellent match for the Google Reader UI, and it offers several different list view options (of which headline list is the only one _I_ need, but at least the options are there for those who are so interested. There's an API, and it's picking up some device app support (I use News+ on Android).
The one potential downside is the need to pay a subscription fee after 30 days, but given my heavy dependency on RSS, and what happened to the free Google Reader, $10-$30 a year is a trivial and well-deserved expense.
The one potential downside is the need to pay a subscription fee after 30 days, but given my heavy dependency on RSS, and what happened to the free Google Reader, $10-$30 a year is a trivial and well-deserved expense.
I tried a lot of different readers prior to and after the reader shutdown, and Bazqux was the only one I found I could live with.
Very fast, has search, is consistently up, keeps the familiar UI and has no problem with my 1,000 item/day habit.
Worth the small expense.
Very fast, has search, is consistently up, keeps the familiar UI and has no problem with my 1,000 item/day habit.
Worth the small expense.
[Other] TT-RSS. I'm open to alternatives because the UI is very clunky, but I like that it is self-hosted and that I can sync my tt-rss installation with a feed reader app on Linux (Liferea) and iOS (Reeder via Fever API emulation, and tiny Reader)
NetNewsWire just came back to life with a beta release of version 4:
http://netnewswireapp.com/
I just started using it, but so far it's been a really wonderful switch.
I just started using it, but so far it's been a really wonderful switch.
RSS Owl http://www.rssowl.org.
Feedly right now--the Android UI is solid, and I kind of think other apps should adopt the "card stack" pattern.
But goread tempts me, and I particularly like how the look and keyboard shortcuts are very no-nonsense and Reader-y.
But goread tempts me, and I particularly like how the look and keyboard shortcuts are very no-nonsense and Reader-y.
Agree with the Android UI. After working with it a few times, I find it quite intuitive.
[Other] feedlier (http://www.feedlier.com) A simple & clean way to aggregate feeds. It's a side project, so I'd appreciate any feedback on the site as well!
A relevant side note: is there any good way to get RSS feeds on a Kindle Paperwhite?
[Other]News reader app for ownCloud.
Edit: http://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/News?content=15843...
Edit: http://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/News?content=15843...
I use this one too. After I configured the cronjob correctly it is running smoothly.
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I used Feedly, but with GReader on Android for the mobile front end.
I'd love to have a Windows desktop app for it too - if only FeedDemon hadn't been killed off.
I'd love to have a Windows desktop app for it too - if only FeedDemon hadn't been killed off.
We built https://kouio.com when Reader shut down - we've picked up a few thousand happy users since :-)
[other] Rolled my own with a friend at readuction.com
We wanted to filter out the noise from our feeds, so this reader gives you only a selection of your news.
We wanted to filter out the noise from our feeds, so this reader gives you only a selection of your news.
I like NewsBlur's training feature that lets me block things I hate. This poll has convinced me to give Digg a go, though. Thanks guise.
[Other] I rolled my own Client for personal use.
Did you share it online (Github, etc)? I’d love to take a look at it.
Not yet, since i am planning to rewrite it from scratch. My first (current) implementation taught my how to use backbone.js, bootstrap, coffeescript and node-webkit to crank out a crossplatform desktop application.
Now that i learned how that stuff works under the hood (my main reason to roll my own client), i am planning to build everything in a sane manner an then release it.
Now that i learned how that stuff works under the hood (my main reason to roll my own client), i am planning to build everything in a sane manner an then release it.
Alright, if or when you do release, could you let me know? My contact info is in my profile.
use goread.io
Code is on https://github.com/mjibson/goread
Looks just like the old google reader and works really well! ;)
Hope it works well for you!
Code is on https://github.com/mjibson/goread
Looks just like the old google reader and works really well! ;)
Hope it works well for you!
I always preferred iGoogle over Google Reader for organizing and reading RSS feeds so now I use ighome.com
[Other] miniflux - http://miniflux.net/
Looks good, I’ve added it to the list of options for the poll.
My best choice: G2Reader http://g2reader.com
MnmlRdr (https://mnmlrdr.com) of course ;)
Newsblur, and I hate it. I'll be canceling my account soon; I can't believe how slow it is.
Strange--I have been using Newsblur since GReader closed, and am impressed at how fast it is. There were a couple of brief periods when it was sluggish, but he's done a good job of clearing bottlenecks as they have come up.
FWIW, I have about 400 feeds and about 1000 articles a day, so I am using it fairly hard.
FWIW, I have about 400 feeds and about 1000 articles a day, so I am using it fairly hard.
Gotta jump in here and agree with the other sub-commenters — it's generally very responsive. I mean, it has its once-in-a-while hiccups just like every other service out there, but overall, very very happy with it.
I've been using is since the shut down and I've been pretty happy with it.
What do you find slow?
What do you find slow?
Bazqux
Put it on the list - it's got 4 votes already
Put it on the list - it's got 4 votes already
Feedly's android client is fine piece of crap.
feedly... i've actually gotten used to it.
gReader with Feedly as a backend. Android app, good offline support, everything I liked about Google Reader.
selfoss http://selfoss.aditu.de/
Reeder, backed by Feedly.
newsblur