the new Reeder is exactly the app I want right now

introduction and history

I’ve experimented for a while with consuming a range of media through an RSS reader. I don’t remember how long I subscribed to Feedbin, but being able to follow both Twitter accounts and email newsletters in the same app as my RSS subscriptions was a real game-changer. Eventually, I jumped ship for NetNewsWire—I don’t remember all the reasons behind the switch, but knowing that I could keep subscribing to Twitter and start following some subreddits was definitely a major factor.

an aside on feeeed

For the past several months, I’ve been trying out the feeeed app for iOS and having a great time with it. I really appreciate that it doesn’t do read counts, which have always stressed me out in an RSS reader. It’s also the only time that I’ve ever enjoyed an algorithmic timeline at the same level as a chronological one: feeeed would know in the morning that the first thing I wanted to do was to read the latest Dumbing of Age and present it really high in the list. If I added a new source or went a while without finishing the feed, the app would work new items in throughout the feed rather than dumping them in all at once. It was also neat to add things like photo flashbacks, reminders about what’s on my (in-app) reading list, and other, innovative sources.

Speaking of those sources, I enjoyed Reddit integration (even if I only used it for r/WaitingForATrain). I hadn’t bothered trying the Twitter integration, since I can’t stay far enough away from that site, but what has really been impressive to me has been the Mastodon integration. Despite an all-in pivot from Twitter to Mastodon after Elon Musk took over the former, I’m starting to realize that my use of Mastodon is kind of passive. I frequently post to Mastodon, but mostly as a POSSE endpoint (and via Micro.blog). I also really enjoy reading Mastodon posts—do you have any idea how many people there are posting train pictures for me to look at? That said, I’ve found that I don’t really need to (or want to) boost, like, or reply. I don’t need a typical Mastodon client—just something that will let me read Mastodon posts.

feeeed does this really well. Mastodon has RSS integration, but feeeed integrates via the API instead, which allows me to see what people are boosting, what some of the metrics are on posts, and has a few other benefits besides. At some point, I realized that there were some Bluesky users (who were less present or not present on Mastodon) that I also wanted to follow. Bluesky also has RSS feeds per accounts, and that did the trick, but like Mastodon, there’s a clear gap between “following” a Bluesky user via RSS and the in-app/API experience.

leveling up with Reeder

With all of this in mind, I was ecstatic when I heard about Silvio Rizzi’s recent “reboot” of his long-running Reeder app. I had used older, RSS-only versions of Reeder before and already appreciated the app (it may have been what I was using before feeed? to be honest, I don’t remember), so it definitely seemed worth a try. An hour or so with the trial version convinced me that it was worth switching over. First thing first, this version of Reeder ditches read counts in favor of a social media style feed, which is one of the things that I liked best about feeed, so I wasn’t going to lose that.

Furthermore, the Mastodon integration is just as good as feeeed—arguably better, since you can bring up a thread in a Reader View rather than needing to open up the Mastodon web interface. I also appreciate the ability to identify my preferred client for Mastodon (Mona, for what it’s worth) and be able to swipe a post to open it in that client, for those moments when I do want to reply, like, or boost (or share a screenshot of a post, which is one of my favorite features about Mona).

Another amazing feature that sets Reeder above feeed is that you can use it more like a Mastodon client. Instead of manually selecting Mastodon accounts to follow, you can sign in to one or more accounts and have Reeder pull in whatever’s on your following list(s). I am not currently using this feature because of my currently idiosyncratic approach to Mastodon, but I honestly can’t see how this wouldn’t be the preferred option for anyone else.

What’s more, all of this is also available for other indie social media platforms. I can follow Bluesky accounts so much better than I could earlier, and I even find following Micro.blog users more intuitive through Reeder’s dedicated M.b interface (again, I could—and maybe should—also log in and have Reeder pull whoever I’m following through my M.b account) even if the great thing about M.b is its focus on RSS. I don’t think Reeder is as good as feeed when it comes to Reddit—or at least the single, photo-heavy subreddit that I like; the photos don’t get as much real estate as they did on my last app—but I can live with that.

I also suspect that Reeder is going to become my main podcasting app, dethroning Overcast after almost a decade. This isn’t necessarily a criticism of Overcast. In fact, I don’t think Reeder actually downloads podcast episodes, it is missing key features like playlists, and I’m starting to miss Overcast’s superior smart speed. The thing is, though, that I’m not really a podcast power listener anymore? I’m used to subscribing to a podcast and listening to every single episode, but these days, I like the idea better of subscribing to a podcast like any other RSS feed and saving the occasional episode to the in-app Later list. It’s certainly better than letting a bunch of unlistened episodes pile up and feeling guilty about deleting a bunch.

Reeder isn’t without its issues, even beyond the ones that I listed above. Reloading feeds and syncing between macOS and iOS has been slower than I’d like, but it seems to be getting better as time goes on (perhaps as all my many feeds get pinged and imported for the first time), and I hope that keeps up. At any rate, it’s been ages since I had a cross-platform RSS reader, and while there are some advantages to keeping RSS consumption on my phone, I’ve been missing being able to do it on my computer, too.

On a similar note, I appreciate Reeder’s autosorting of feeds into separate media categories (so that you can zoom in on just Podcasts or just YouTube), but I also wish I could override some of those choices. One of the feeds that shows up under Podcasts isn’t really a podcast, and while Reeder recognizes xkcd and places it in Comics, it does not do the same for Order of the Stick, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Dumbing of Age, or other webcomics that I consume. That kind of defeats the purpose of that category for me (even if it does remind me that I should try subscribing to newspaper comics through Reeder).

conclusion

Having a single app to consume all of my web content—instead of a Mastodon client, the Bluesky app, a podcatcher, and an RSS reader—is amazing, and Reeder does a heck of a job with it. The Mastodon posts that introduced me to the app’s reboot (though Rizzi is also continuing to develop in parallel a more traditional RSS reader, which I think is the right call) noted that it may not be for everyone, but it was an interesting idea. I don’t know if it’s for everyone, but it’s very much what I want out of an app right now. Paying $10/year for Reeder is a great deal for just how easy and convenient this makes content consumption for me, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the app evolves and improves in the months to come. What’s more, I hope there are more and more and more RSS readers that start to go in this direction. I know some are taking steps toward Mastodon or Micro.blog integration, and I’m glad that things like feeed are someone’s side project, but Reeder is the boldest effort I’ve seen so far at showing how different parts of the (semi-)open web can be brought together in a single client, and we need more of this.

• macro
• Myself
• RSS
• Mastodon
• Bluesky
• Reeder
• feeeed
• Feedbin
• Twitter
• reddit
• NetNewsWire
• iOS
• macOS
• Elon Musk
• POSSE
• Micro.blog
• Dumbing of Age
• Mona
• podcasts
• Overcast
• xkcd
• Order of the Stick
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal