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NetNewsWire 5.0 – Open-Source RSS Reader for Mac
- mooreds 7y agoRSS is back! Just added it to our corporate 11ty site using a plugin. So glad the open web is on the upswing.
- gigatexal 7y agoAnd there’s a podcast with John Gruber about it: https://overcast.fm/+B7NA72wCE https://overcast.fm/+B7NA72wCE
- unicornporn 7y agoI'd recommend self hosting FreshRSS[1]. It works on all my devices via the browser and there's an open-source Android client on F-droid. Works with a SQLite DB, so no migration issues. PHP, so also works on my cheap shared hosting. [1] https://freshrss.org/ https://freshrss.org/
- mhd 7y agoI'm actually a bit sad that it seems there's no decent standard for just syncing the read status and subscriptions, combined with some good native clients (like NetNewsWire, which always was one of my prime examples of why the OS X app space seemed so good in the '00s). But hosting or paying for a common complete RSS service and accessing that with a limited set of clients seems the only viable approach these days. Although in the last few weeks, I've foregone centralized services and do it all via NNW in the evening -- saves me from constantly checking feeds, too.
- eisa01 7y agoI started out with NetNewsWire, but have in the past transitioned to Inoreader - web apps work perfectly for RSS as you don't need to sync anything between devices (EUR 20/year for ad-free version) Now if only all services could retain RSS, there's a new CMS being used by Norwegian press that don't support it - I'm actually considering cancelling one subscription because I will miss a lot of the content :/
- unicornporn 7y agoMind me asking what CMS that is?
- eisa01 7y agohttps://labradorcms.com https://labradorcms.com The few sites I checked doesn't offer any feed at least
- unicornporn 7y agoThanks.
- jjtheblunt 7y agocontent management system ?
- unicornporn 7y agoDid not ask what a CMS is. :)
- unicornporn 7y agoWell, there is. FreshRSS and others have settled on the Google Reader API.
- shadowfacts 7y agoI'm writing my own personal RSS aggregator, and one of the things I did for it was writing a spec for a service-agnostic API for RSS aggregators with the goal of being the bare minimum necessary to sync feeds and items: https://github.com/shadowfacts/fervor https://github.com/shadowfacts/fervor
- jamespo 7y agoI still miss Mr Reader for iPad, the best RSS reader I've used on any platform - now sadly abandoned
- tschellenbach 7y agoI worked on Winds for a few weeks: https://github.com/getstream/winds https://github.com/getstream/winds It has quite a bit of a following amongst designers and developers. RSS has a lot of quirks, I wonder if an open-source solution will ever become truly mainstream in this space though.
- jray 7y agoI use viennaRss: Vienna is a free and open-source RSS/Atom newsreader for macOS https://github.com/ViennaRSS/vienna-rss https://github.com/ViennaRSS/vienna-rss
- mobilio 7y agoAnother Vienna user here.
- konart 7y agoStill can't find (not that I really want to) anything better than ReadKit. Most of the readers can't fetch the whole article when rss has only an excerpt (or do ot poorly). This is a must for me.
- masklinn 7y agoRSS-wise, is there any "accumulating" / persistent / offlining RSS client? I read a fair amount of serials these days, and while most notify updates over RSS (though not necessarily with a full-text feed), neither generic RSS clients nor offline readers (e.g. pocket, instapaper, …) are really built for multi-updates works, the ability to browse across chapters, re-read a work, … I guess an option would be to collect updates into ebooks, but there it's not quite clear how various epub readers handle updates (e.g. can I point the reader towards a URL and it'll check for updates on its own, do I have to update manually, do updates only work through proprietary storefronts?)
- naravara 7y agoFeedbin does along participating readers that work with its API. But it’s a $5/month subscription fee.
- masklinn 7y agoCould you explain what you're thinking of? Because I went to check it out and it looks like an aggregator service with a desktop client (which I don't have a use for) and some basic services like search & offline reader integration & a builtin offline reader?
- hendersoon 7y agoYou can install full-text RSS yourself at the URL below. They also offer a hosted solution for €4 per month. https://fivefilters.org/content-only/ https://fivefilters.org/content-only/ I personally pay for and recommend a hosted RSS service called Bazqux, and they host the FiveFilters full-text RSS service for their customers. https://bazqux.com/ https://bazqux.com/ https://ftr.bazqux.com/ https://ftr.bazqux.com/
- masklinn 7y agoI don't know if I failed to explain things correctly or if you just missed it, but that certainly does not seem to help much. The core issue is not partial feeds, it's — as the first paragraph describes — the ability to collect and collate feeds into persistent offline-available books (for lack of a better word). Having full-text feeds don't really do anything when the feeds are still ephemeral, mixed together, to be sent to a separate reader for any sort of offline permanence, and basically unavailable for later (also offline) re-reading. The RSS feed of a serial is a way to get update notifications, it's not a feed of articles which become outdated once you've read them.
- leemailll 7y agoDo it support fever api?
- gglanzani 7y agoNot yet unfortunately. There are issues open about this, but Feedly will probably be the next sync service.
- captn3m0 7y agoAny suggestions for a Linux RSS reader that supports Feever?
- Fnoord 7y agoIs there a way to synchronize between Firefox (or another browser) and RSS reader which links have been visited? If I use Firefox on every device, and I use Firefox Sync, then the content of synced including tabs, history, and which sites have been visited. These have a different color (e.g. when I visit HN). How do other people work around this? By never using a browser? If that works for you, then I suppose you use some way to synchronize your RSS readers.
- Fnoord 7y agoI've partly figured out the answer to my question. You can self-host a backend such as Nextcloud News, TT-RSS, FreshRSS. Your client then needs to sync two-way with such a backend. Using Newsboat (a TUI RSS reader) as standard, I'd say the following backends are applicable: urls-source (parameters: <source>; default value: "local") This configuration command sets the source where URLs shall be retrieved from. By default, this is ~/.newsboat/urls. Alternatively, you can set it to opml, which enables newsboat's OPML online subscription mode, to ttrss which enables newsboat's Tiny Tiny RSS support, to oldreader, which enables newsboat's The Old Reader support, to newsblur, which enables NewsBlur support, or feedhq for FeedHQ support, or ocnews for ownCloud News support, or inoreader for Inoreader support. Query feed specifications will be read from the local urls file regardless of this setting. (example: urls-source "oldreader") For example, for NextCloud/OwnCloud (which I opted for, as I already run NextCloud, and have no clue whatsoever which one I should be otherwise using) you need to add urls-source "ocnews" in ~/.newsboat/config and furthermore configure ocnews-url, ocnews-login, and ocnews-password. NetNewsWire looks good (Vienna looks like macOS did 15 years ago). However, it does not support nearly as many external synchronization as Newsboat does (only Feedbin, which is commercial, while I can self-host and prefer an open protocol). As for an Android RSS reader, I haven't figured that out yet, but Nextcloud News support a lot of sync clients [1] [1] https://github.com/nextcloud/news#Bugs https://github.com/nextcloud/news#Bugs
- ABS 7y agoI'm one of those people still using version 3.3.2 and I've just exported from it and imported into version 5 and.... it loses all the folders and subfolders I've spent years polishing up. All feeds are now at the same level and basically unusable :-(
- toyg 7y agoThat’s probably because it’s a full rewrite.
- ABS 7y agosure, just not the easiest way to convince someone to move to a new version if they cannot carry things over. It's the same effort to moving to a completely different product/service (which it is in fact). Haven't found anything on the roadmap but still exploring
- heenann 7y agoIn case you're not aware, that version won't run in Catalina.
- ABS 7y agothanks, good thing I'm not planning on upgrading to Catalina for quite a while after it's finally released :-D
- shadowfacts 7y agoNetNewsWire is capable of importing OPML files with folders. Worked for me when I imported from Feedly. If it doesn't work for you, I'd report a bug. I'm sure having a migration path from old versions of NNW is something Brent cares about. https://github.com/brentsimmons/NetNewsWire/issues/new https://github.com/brentsimmons/NetNewsWire/issues/new
- ABS 7y agothanks for pointing this out. If I change the export option from the default to "with groups" I can import folders into v.5 but not subfolders as mentioned by others below. It's better than nothing for sure
- WA 7y agoAny recommendations for a RSS reader for Mac and iOS that syncs, preferably without a third party? Doesn’t have to be free.
- matthewmcg 7y agoI’ve been using reeder and it’s just fine.
- george_perez 7y agoReeder doesn't sync without a third-party though.
- pantulis 7y agoNews Explorer syncs with itself via iCloud, not a third party service. So no other fees involved if you’re already paying for iCloud. I migrated from Inoreader and it turns out it works pretty fine. Would like to see this possibility with NNW.
- adrian1973 7y agoNewsblur
- cyberpip 7y agoJust want to mention self-hosted rss app tt-rss (https://tt-rss.org/ https://tt-rss.org/). It can publish to a feed URL itself if you want, or just use the tt-rss app.
- eddyg 7y agoAnd tt-rss works great with Fiery Feeds[0] (along with many other RSS sync services)... Fiery Feeds is an outstanding RSS client for iOS. [0]https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fiery-feeds-rss-reader/id1158763303 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fiery-feeds-rss-reader/id11587...
- rvz 7y agoI've settled with Vienna (another open source RSS reader for Mac) for quite sometime after trying out many RSS readers on Mac. I've ignored electron-based RSS readers, but after trying out NetNewsWire, migration from Vienna was just a export and import away and that was it. I couldn't be more happier with using NetNewsWire on my MacBook. > (We’re also working on an iOS version.) I am seriously looking forward to this. Syncing from iOS and Mac would make sense here.
- george_perez 7y agoSyncing will likely be limited to the third-party sync, I believe.
- fallenhitokiri 7y agoNews Explorer is doing a great job syncing between macOS and iOS without third party service, I hope NNW follow that model
- pantulis 7y agoYeah, News Explorer is breaking new grounds here. News Explorer's price point is somewhat high but it makes up for it avoiding subscription costs. And technically it does it really well. The FAQs in News Explorer support page try to explain some issues that can arise but I've never found them (my Mac Mini always running News Explorer at home and use it from my iPad, iPhone, and two laptops).
- peternicky 7y agoHow is netnewswire better than Vienna? I have been extremely pleased using Vienna for years.
- wasdfff 7y agoMy gripe with vienna is that there is no way to hide the reading pane. You can have a nice list view but that reading pane always inches up from the bottom somehow.
- outadoc 7y agoThis looks very good, I'm just waiting for Feedly compatibility.
- soapdog 7y agodoes anyone know some software as nice as NNW for Windows 10? It is the kind of thing I miss on my surface...
- BrunoBernardino 7y agoI’m curious if no one is interested in reading less of RSS feeds, effectively curating them and only reading them once a day. A few years ago I had over 300 feeds in Google Reader, and even migrated them to Feedly and Reeder, but eventually I ditched them to my most important 10 and built something to get any new things only once a day (won’t link here so people don’t think I’m spamming).
- ScottFree 7y agoI'm interested in something similar. I currently tame various firehoses by using regex filters in QuiteRSS. That makes switching to NNW a non-starter right now. But, both of these readers still make the assumption that I want to keep a feed reader open all day every day to check feeds and interrupt me when new ones come in. I'd like something that runs on a server and emails me a link to an rss "digest" once a week. I currently imagine that digest being a "newspaper" stream where the full content of every feed item is listed in chronological order. You can skip ahead to the next item with 'n' if you don't want to finish the item you're on. I'm sure I'll get around to building it one day.
- BrunoBernardino 7y agoThat’s basically what I built, and I very much prefer to read that way. It’s a lot calmer. You can find the link in my website, if you’re curious. Edit: major difference there: I don’t download the content, just link to it.
- ScottFree 7y agoCool! I found it. The site's down. :(
- BrunoBernardino 7y agoHmm, which one? https://focusd.co https://focusd.co should be working
- webwanderings 7y agoIn this day and age, how could people use desktop reader without syncing feeds when they're on their phones? I don't get it. NetNewsWire on Mac is pretty good looking and fast software. But it is useless without its counterpart on iPhone. When it comes to RSS feeds, it is an either/or scenario. You either have RSS wherever and whenever you want (and it has to be synced up and up to date), or you don't.
- dictum 7y agoI agree that a multidevice, always-available solution is better for many activities, especially for news, but the downside to this requirement is that desktop apps become unimaginative, blown-up versions of the mobile apps. I want more developers to create unapologetically desktop apps — unconstrained, customizable, with multiple and filterable views of content, able to integrate and share data with other apps. (Yes, these are not mutually-cancelling goals. You can have a good enough iOS app and a more interesting Mac app. However, developer time is finite, features beget bugs, and only a small fraction of users collaborate with an open source project)
- webwanderings 7y agoI agree. I only want my up-to-date data (which is feeds in this context) to be available in a bare-minimum fashion on my mobile, when I'm away from my desktop. The argument I make above is based on the fact that when it comes to RSS, your data (feeds) is either in a read state, or it is un-read. It should be up to the users to decide where and what he/she wants to read. The equal unavailability of the data/feeds on multi-platform makes it very hard to consume the feeds.
- vzaliva 7y agoI've used NNW for years and it was fantastic! If you looking for desktop RSS reader look no further. Switching back to Linux forced me to look for alternatives and I ended up with Feedly. There were complaints at first but after a while, I came to the conclusion that web app is a better choice for RSS reading than stand-alone. The modern browsers privide sufficient UI for implemnting a full-featured RSS reader, and since the most of contents is rendered in HTML, having a reader inside a browser vs. having a browser inside a reader makes more sense. Opening new links in tabs also plays well: you navigate over one dimension (tabs) vs. two (apps+tabs).The bottom line is that I want to encourage you to consider web-based RSS reader.
- kmfrk 7y agoHere's another super specific request: are there any RSS readers that 1) Support both Windows and macOS 2) Can import a Fever database Moving from Fever is a pain which keeps me on my usual host, but it'd be great to migrate it somewhere else, preferable something self-hosted. I also think my license is tied to a specific domain to make matters even more annoying.
- m_st 7y agoI'm in the same boat and keep using Reeder on Mac, iPhone and iPad for now. But I'm sorely missing a Windows client.
- sirn 7y ago>2) Can import a Fever database It has been a while since I used Fever, but I remembered it being able to export OPML files, which most feed client should be able to import.
- kmfrk 7y agoOPML is easy enough; I'm talking about the database of saved items. :)
- mikece 7y agoIs cloning Google Reader really that hard? I use QuiteRSS but this article and comments has me thinking an RSS aggregator in PHP and using SQLite that could be installed (git cloned?) to any hosting provider would be an awesome project. Maybe I should write it. :-)
- superkuh 7y agoA native application like QuiteRSS, completely self contained, just works, fast, low attack surfaces, etc is infinitely better than any web based monster.
- ScottFree 7y agoThat's exactly what TheOldReader[0] did. https://theoldreader.com https://theoldreader.com
- mikece 7y agoTheOldReader appears to be a semi-free SaaS; I was referring to something that's an open source product that could be installed on any commodity hosting provider -- git clone {path_to_repo_on_github} -- with the database/state of the app being just a SQLite database which can be backed up or moved at will. That's not at all what TheOldReader appears to be.
- listenallyall 7y agoBut you asked for a clone of Google Reader. Which theoldreader is. (bazqux.com is better though)
- mikece 7y agoI actually asked if cloning Google Reader was all that hard, not if it had been done.
- justinator 7y agoDamn, needs Mojave. This ol' laptop has been having problems upgrading the OS. Guess we'll try that, again. That's a bummer for me, I find the last version of NNW to hold its caches for forever, leading to several dozen gigs of images I have to delete every now and again.
- aheilbut 7y agoI wish that there were more apps that focused on the problem of searching and organizing archives and tracking ideas over time, rather than just another interface to the latest posts.
- andersonnnunes 7y agoI use RSS/Atom to email, so I just save an .eml and file/organize it on my file system (with all my other files). So I got three independent interfaces: one to configure the feeds, one to read them and other to organize and search/recall. Each with different folder structure optimized for the task at hand.
- wdr1 7y agoA link to the github repository, in case anyone else was looking for it too: https://github.com/brentsimmons/NetNewsWire https://github.com/brentsimmons/NetNewsWire
- wasdfff 7y agoThis app is nearly perfect for me, but I cant stand the three pane layout on every rss reader. It’s a mobile layout, not a desktop layout. Give me a single line list view with completely customizable columns. Give me articles in simple popup windows, like apple mail messages. If I could have those two things this would be perfect for me and would replace inoreader.
- aladine 7y agoFor me, I am stick with terminal-like interface. Since I am using Emacs, elfeed (https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed) is my best choice for RSS reader.
- ralphc 7y agoDumb question, but is RSS still that much of a thing? I remember it being big 10+ years ago. Then Google reader shut down and I haven't given it much thought. Where would I find a good list of RSS feeds to try this out?