The RSS feed reader landscape • Hacker News Board

Re: The RSS feed reader landscape

#191

Post by xukecheng » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 2:38 AM UTC

dhruvmittal wrote: post #165

Although I've been an Inoreader user over the last few years, this year I switched to Miniflux. I felt like features/cost ratio for Inoreader finally tipped away from what I was interested in paying. Migrating to Miniflux was genuinely very easy-- spin up the docker compose, export OPML from Inoreader, import OPML to Miniflux. I use tsdproxy and tailscale funnels to get access to the web endpoint. While I started out…

Appreciate the shout-out for PoweReader! I’m the developer. If anything feels off or you need help, please email me: support@powereader.app

Re: The RSS feed reader landscape

#192

Post by not--felix » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 8:48 AM UTC

HanClinto wrote: post #28

I still miss Google Reader. I loved the social aspects, where I could repost my favorite articles (with comments about them), and friends could easily subscribe to my feed and comment on my shares. It was a really great social network for sharing blog posts and articles. I credit the demise of Google Reader with a lot of the downfall of the Old Web. Since then, social sharing platforms are motivated to keep you on th…

The easiest way to share good articles is to just write a short blog post about it

Re: The RSS feed reader landscape

#193

Post by NostraDavid » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 8:56 AM UTC

I've found RSS Guard a few months ago, and it has finally replaced the gap that existed since Google Reader. It's cross-platform, which is a nice bonus, it works like a classic Windows program, which is a great plus because the modern RSS readers have a terrible UX because right click doesn't work, shortcuts don't work, etc.

The only thing I miss is that I want it to keep an OPML file up-to-date so I can autosync it to a repo, but it doesn't, so I have to export the OPML file sporadically. It's acceptable.

Re: The RSS feed reader landscape

#194

Post by xela79 » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 9:09 AM UTC

a RSS reader should allow for quick view of titles & summaries so you can decide to click through or not, inoreader free version scratches that itch. Don't need any fancy features, or social stuff. sure it's not self hosted, but it's just a collection of rss feeds, if it's down for a while, nothing big of value was lost, a small ompl backup of the feeds is all you need to get started elsewhere, self hosted or not.

Re: The RSS feed reader landscape

#195

Post by tobi_bsf » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 12:14 PM UTC

I use Reeder Classic on Mac and iOS, synced via Feedly. I also use the Feedly app on Android and the web app on Windows, but this article made me discover folo.is, which could probably unify my experience across all these platforms. I’ll give it a try.

Re: The RSS feed reader landscape

#196

Post by HanClinto » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 1:08 PM UTC

not--felix wrote: post #192

HanClinto wrote: post #28

I still miss Google Reader. I loved the social aspects, where I could repost my favorite articles (with comments about them), and friends could easily subscribe to my feed and comment on my shares. It was a really great social network for sharing blog posts and articles. I credit the demise of Google Reader with a lot of the downfall of the Old Web. Since then, social sharing platforms are motivated to keep you on th…

The easiest way to share good articles is to just write a short blog post about it

Yes, that's essentially what I want. With Google Reader, I liked how easily my reader and reblogger were integrated together with my social network, and linking to external sites wasn't penalized in the algorithm.

Re: The RSS feed reader landscape

#197

Post by nonethewiser » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

glenstein wrote: post #181

nonethewiser wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a good question and I had the same thought while constructing it. Almost like stock market diversification. You can represent the entire market pretty well with just a handful of stocks. However, this seems like an overwhelmingly NO: >is one RSS feed with NYT headlines perhaps comprehensive enough that it is 90% functionally equivalent to a more voracious habit of reading diverse sources, subject matter exper…

>I think at minimum you would want 1 left, 1 right, and 1 center. Probably a convo for a different place and time, but strong disagree here. Calibrating relative to political polarization is relativism, and I'm not a relativist.

Nor am I. I think we have a misunderstanding on the goal. My goal is to get a wide range of perspectives.

How did you interpret the goal? Perhaps the widest range of topics? Most closely aligned editorial viewpoint?

Re: The RSS feed reader landscape

#198

Post by jkmcf » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 2:23 PM UTC

My 2¢: Feedly's free plan is great and their web UI awesome. The features I want from the pro plan do not warrant the price.

I've switched to using Feedbin. I don't mind paying for it even though I could keep using Feedly for free, but the web UI ads annoyed me enough to look elsewhere.

The best Apple app is easily Unread, both for UI and UX. It still is t perfect for me, but the problems are minor and the author pleasant to interact with.

Re: The RSS feed reader landscape

#199

Post by MaxwellM » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 4:53 PM UTC

swyx wrote: post #134

HanClinto wrote: post #28

I still miss Google Reader. I loved the social aspects, where I could repost my favorite articles (with comments about them), and friends could easily subscribe to my feed and comment on my shares. It was a really great social network for sharing blog posts and articles. I credit the demise of Google Reader with a lot of the downfall of the Old Web. Since then, social sharing platforms are motivated to keep you on th…

> I credit the demise of Google Reader with a lot of the downfall of the Old Web. maybe you have causation wrong. social platforms were so effective they caused downfall of old web, and with it the demise of Google Reader

Google Reader was killed by Vic because it was the only "social" app at Google at the time. He wanted to grow their FB competitor (G+) and insisted on migrating users over from Reader to G+, which never happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Gundotra#Career

Re: The RSS feed reader landscape

#200

Post by timbray » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:04 PM UTC

mzmzmzm wrote: post #187

One of the "I wish I'd paid for premium sooner" services I use is Newsblur. The UI is not the most modern, but it centralizes, organizes, offlines, etc with enough power features to handle edge cases that I can feel like I "read everything today" the way I used to with Google Reader.

+1 on Newsblur. I use it every day and it has flaws but nothing that really gets in my way.