Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2019/05/09/reeder-4-gets-a-long-overdue-overhaul/
Reeder has long been a favorite among news junkies wanting an attractive, capable RSS reader. The just-released Reeder 4 for Mac and iOS provides several new interface and feature enhancements while preserving the program’s minimalist aesthetic.
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Improved Reader Mode
This feature baffles me. Reeder 4 offers a Reader view, via a button in the toolbar, to clean up an article for easier reading. But since articles are already shown in cleaned-up form when you pick them in the list, you’re streamlining an already streamlined article. Huh? There are some formatting differences, though, so it doesn’t hurt to experiment.
The default article view in Reeder shows you the contents of the RSS feed, which in a lot of cases is the clean, full content of an article, but in other cases (such as with TidBITS’ own feed) can be a truncated snippet or summery of the article. In the latter case, turning on reader mode has Reeder fetch the actual web page, extract the article content from it, and display it in that same streamlined article view.
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I was going to say exactly this! I find the Reader view extremely useful, as many of my feeds only provide a one-line summary in the RSS. Some websites are so cluttered and slow that it is far preferable to tap the Reader view and get a page that’s cleaned up and formatted similarly to Reeder’s feed view.
For me, Reader view is a great timesaver. The new version in Reeder 4 is much faster and far more reliable than it was in Reeder 3.
The only thing I’m missing in Reeder 4 is the ability to set custom fonts for headlines and content, but I’ve been informed by the developer that it’ll be returning in a future update.
Well I have one complaint - it only works in OS X 10.14 which is a bit beyond my abilities right now. That is a bummer. I will get the iOS version on my iPad Pro based on your review. Thank you very much!
Hello Julio,
Thank you for the article. Which RSS reader do you recommend ?. The most important feature for my use is reading mode.
Thank you !
As a complete novice and having not used a news aggregator before, does everyone here subscribe to a paid-for so-called “sync service” like Feedly – if so why and which one(s)? Are they essential to make aggregators or reading apps like this work affectively for the user? Is saving to iCloud best done in something like Pocket, or within the reading app?
Any advise greatly appreciated.
(Basically I’m just getting too annoyed by using Apple News app. Because, if I’ve been busy and haven’t gotten around to reading my sources in it for a day or so, it then only offers up the last 12 hours or so of articles from my sources, meaning I get a massive gap in the timeline: e.g. “4 days ago” article, is then immediately followed by “12 hours ago” articles onwards to the latest – so I cannot read the ones in-between! Aaaggha! Why Apple, WHY!?)
I Have been an RSS fan for a long time. I have used almost every combination of “sync service” and general reader. I really like Reader 4 for its options, and keyboard shortcuts.
But I am not using it, on a daily bases.
Here is what I am using. “News Explorer”
It also is in active development, has all the features you could ever want. Lots of keyboard shortcuts. Both a Mac and an IOS app. Cleans up text well. (Of course, the long stuff gets piped to “Instapaper” to read).
Syncs well between Mac and IOS.
I do not subscribe to a “feed service”. If I am reading a website the I want to add to my feed, I just copy the web address, open News Explorer, hit the “+” and it goes out and looks for the rss feed of that site. Simple and fast. News Explorer handles a large number of feeds well, and makes it easy to put them into category’s, or folders.
Highly recommended.
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does everyone here subscribe to a paid-for so-called “sync service” like Feedly
I use feedwrangler.net and I’m very happy with it. It only costs $20 a year and I feel good about paying for a service so it will remain in business. I love that I can read or star articles on any device and everything stays in sync. I’ve been using it for years (since Google Reader died) and I think the service was down maybe once for a few minutes in all that time.
It has a minimal web interface for seeing and manipulating your feeds, but in general you can use almost any third-party app to read and add feeds. That’s one advantage over an app that provides its own syncing – you’re forever stuck with that app.
(My favorite RSS app is Mr. Reader on iPad, but sadly it is dead. The copy I have installed on my old iPad still works fine, but it’s apparently not on the App Store any more, so I can’t install it on my new iPad, which sucks. Reeder is okay, but I prefer the Mr. Reader interface. The fact that it apparently died years ago and I didn’t even notice the lack of updates/improvements tells you something about how well-designed it is!)
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@xdev’s post basically describes my situation exactly. One small difference is that I moved from Mr Reeder a while ago (can’t remember the reason, but the lack of updates affected some aspect of using it that was important for me).
RSS beginner question: What draws you from News Explorer to Reeder 4 sometimes?
Not much, now a days.
I used Reader4 to test out the keyboard shortcuts.
Turns out the shortcuts I use the most are duplicated in News Explorer.
Now don’t get me wrong Reader 4 is a very good program.
I just had to pick one, and News Explorer was it.