![]() I excluded any apps that default to an algorithm to determine the order in which posts are displayed (e.g., popular posts displayed first), and I also excluded tools better described as content discovery platforms (e.g., Flipboard).įull text. Traditionally, they do two things: display content in reverse chronological order and allow you to curate the content you want to read. (Here's our list of the best RSS readers for Mac.) Most of these apps can also work with popular native RSS apps that sync feeds directly to your device, but that wasn't required for inclusion. If you're used to reading things in your browser, it's the most natural experience. A web-based news feed reader lets you read content online using any device just by visiting a site. Each featured app has, at the very least, a great free plan that's sufficient for many users. Paying may get you no ads, more features, and an improved experience, but it isn't essential. As a vestige of an older, more open internet era, you don't have to pay to get a premium experience. In addition to that must-have, I required all the apps on this list to be:įree. They're all polished, easy to use, and put the content you want to read front and center. Thankfully, as it's a decades-old standard, there are a few great apps that have thoroughly cracked this problem. You don't want to have to deal with weird UI quirks or even really interact with your reader app-it's all about seamlessly browsing the content you want to see. Good RSS services have a weirdly challenging job: they have to gather content from loads of different places and display it for you, all while getting out of the way as much as possible. It means I don't have to constantly check and see if Derek Sivers or Tynan has published a new post-it just pops up in my feeds. I follow a few dozen tech sites, but it's also really great for following blogs that only publish a few times a year. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.Īs a tech writer, I rely on my RSS app to keep me up to date on what's going on. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site-we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. My picks for the best RSS readers are far nicer than Reader ever was.Īll of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. The world of RSS apps has moved on and, a decade later, is actually in a much better place than it likely would have been if Google had remained at the top. ![]() While it's still traditional to bemoan the death of Google Reader all the way back in 2013 in any article about RSS, I'll skip the eulogy. You just open your RSS app and get reading, with every article and blog post presented in reverse chronological order. Still, it remains the absolute best way to combine stuff from loads of different places into one central app, where you can read it without having to click around a bunch of sites or scroll through your social feeds. Although pretty much every podcast app relies on RSS, it isn't as publicly popular as it used to be. Those of you who want regular-expression handling in Google Docs: forget it.RSS (it stands for Really Simple Syndication) has been around since the '90s, and it's a way for sites to publish a feed of all their content in a way that can be easily parsed and aggregated by RSS apps. ![]() With each passing year, Google becomes more of a consumer products and services organization, aiming for the mainstream and not the nerdy technophiles it likes to hire. RSS never drew much in the way of mainstream usage, and while some place the blame for that irrelevance at Google's feet for all but ceasing Google Reader development, I'm not convinced RSS was really ever a great tool for ordinary folks. I'm one of the people who bemoans the loss of Google Reader, since I use it daily to scan countless news sites and blogs for the latest updates and think it reduces the friction of information flow around the world.īut I'm not surprised that Google is scrapping it. According to the unofficial Google Operating System blog, it's based on Google's own RSS extension for Chrome, and based on my tests works identically so far. ![]() The extension would detect Web sites' feeds then let people use a variety of RSS reader services to subscribe to those feeds.įor those who want to replace Chrome's reader extension, one option that seems to be actively maintained is the RSS Subscription Extension.
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