7 ms·

I don't really share most of jwz's specific complaints, but I've been trying to use feedly, and boy .... it's really hard to believe so many people are recommen

I don't really share most of jwz's specific complaints, but I've been trying to use feedly, and boy .... it's really hard to believe so many people are recommending this as a general Google reader replacement. Besides its somewhat quirky UI, the main problem I have with feedly is that it seems predicated on the assumption that you will more or less read through all articles, one by one, in order, and finish them. That's not how I use reader at all. I leave thousands of things left unread, and yet google reader makes it quite easy to keep up to date with whatever I feel like reading at the moment, without getting bogged down by all the stuff I don't want to read. It lets me categorize stuff hierarchically, and then drill down to what I want to look at, and maintains unread counts for each level, easily visible all at once. It's easy to see what categories/subcategories have new stuff. It's easy to mark stuff as read/unread, one by one, or in bulk by category. Yadayada. Feedly basically flattens and linearizes everything, and doesn't give any summary information, so I constantly feel unsure what's available without looking, and once I look, I quickly get lost in the undifferentiated flow of articles. Of course Google reader also allows a more "feedly-style" one-big-stream mode of operation via its summary feeds. Except that it does a better job of it by allowing multiple different views, and provides summary information for all of them too. And despite all that flexibility and power, Google reader's interface seems far simpler than feedly's... it's really just a tree-list-view thingy like we're all used to from a zillion apps, and everything just sort of works like you expect it. It does all that, and because it's web-based, everything's always in sync no matter where you read. It doesn't have dedicated mobile apps, but it works pretty well on smartphone browsers (and even on dumbphone browsers, although it started to flake out during authentication a few months ago, presumably because Google wasn't keeping it updated). So basically reader's about a zillion times better, with one glaring exception: it's going away... TT [The closest free replacement I've found so far is "yoleoreader", which kinda gets the vibe right, although it's a bit rough in places...]

Orva 13y ago
> I leave thousands of things left unread, and yet google reader makes it quite easy to keep up to date with whatever I feel like reading at the moment, without getting bogged down by all the stuff I don't want to read. It lets me categorize stuff hierarchically, and then drill down to what I want to look at, and maintains unread counts for each level, easily visible all at once. It's easy to see what categories/subcategories have new stuff. It's easy to mark stuff as read/unread, one by one, or in bulk by category. I was seriously starting to think I am only one who wants this from web-based rss-reader. Most of the native rss clients are built around this behaviour and I really cannot understand why web readers don't. Maybe A/B testing with bad test cases (or without enough diverse user population) or maybe we are just crazy. > It doesn't have dedicated mobile apps Android at least has. It was/is really nicely hidden under all unofficial, privacy violating rip-offs in the Google store.
- seanp2k2 13y ago
  If Google were smart, they'd open-source Reader and let the people who love it maintain and run it (It's probably much too dependent on their architecture for this to actually be a viable option).
  - abraininavat 13y ago
    If Google were smart, they'd open-source Reader and let the people who love it maintain and run it (It's probably much too dependent on their architecture for this to actually be a viable option). So.. if they were smart they'd do something that's impossible, you're saying.
  - rikf 13y ago
    I dont think they are killing ready because of the cost to maintain it. I think its more likely a strategic move to push people onto plus.
    - kolev 13y ago
      Google surely realized they've made a mistake, but they are like the government - never admit they err.
  - lotu 13y ago
    Ignoring the dependence on architecture; who's going to pay for the servers that are needed to run Reader? They don't run off love last I checked.
  - yid 13y ago
    This is almost certainly impossible. Systems at large Web companies have tons of dependencies on internal systems, libraries and build tools. It would probably be easier to rewrite Reader from scratch rather than open-source it.
tmzt 13y ago
It seems that Feedly's Cloud API may be the best replacement for the Reader backend (really an ATOM PUB feed source). It may not however turn out to be the best frontend for our use case. I would like to see if it is possible to rebuild the Reader UI/UX on top of the Feedly Cloud API, using an ATOM feedreader core implemented in javascript. Personally, I want a centralized solution, not a standalone daemon running on a private server. I switched to reader from a Gnome feed reader after losing all of my subscriptions due to losing access to a home directory. From there (in 2004 I think) I've built a massive collection of diverse sources covering every position, philosophy, point of view, etc. I can. I have so many feeds that I cannot possible read all of them, and so many that the Feedly mobile UI on Android won't even display the entire list. Feedly appears to have imported everything I want from Reader, including the tags that I have created over the years, and the folder structure. None of this appears to be in a simple OPML export. (But thanks Dave for standardizing that.) I think everything is preserved in Feedly, and now that the pressure of Normandy is off I hope that they will work to address those people that brought them all of these new accounts, and all of the press surrounding this mass migration. The Reader theme is a start but doesn't go far enough.
anu_gupta 13y ago
The closest replacement is The Old Reader - unfortunately they seem to having problems with feed update speed (probably due to load)
- kybernetikos 13y ago
  Yup, that was the only one that I tried that really fit my workflow.
  - owyn 13y ago
    I'm using The Old Reader. I would have recommended it to him but he wants something with iPhone/iPad support too. They aren't charging anything, maybe they should make an app...
    - th0br0 13y ago
      They are currently in the process of publishing an API, some select developers already have access to it according to their latest blog so an iOS app is in the coming...
    - joosters 13y ago
      As of yesterday, the iOS app Feedler supports The Old Reader!
- Semaphor 13y ago
  My favorite, Newsblur, has pretty much everything GReader had. And by now he even managed to do away with the performance problems.
  - sleepyhead 13y ago
    Too bad it's ugly and has lots of ux-quirks.
    - jimhart3000 13y ago
1123581321 13y ago
Yoleo has been wonderful for me. I've been recommending it to everybody.
- zainny 13y ago
  I gave Yoleo a shot as well. Biggest issue is no mobile app :-(
  - jamiebikies 13y ago
    Working on it as we speak. Andriod first, for once.
- carlio 13y ago
  I found it to be awful. It's so slow. I presume this is an artefact of using it from Europe, and the developers not taking latency into account. I'm willing to overlook the bugs such as the same item appearing more than once in a feed (it's quite new), but the incredible slowness of it make it unusable for me. For example, I loaded it before writing this comment, and as of this point, it still hasn't finished loading. I just get a spinny box and 'Loading...' I also know from experience that if you click on something else, such as a folder, it won't override what it's currently loading, so the state of the UI will get out of sync. You also can't read a list of items, you have to read one by one, incurring yet another AJAXy-load which doesn't necessarily ever respond, thus leaving in you in Loading... limbo.
  - gaelian 13y ago
    That's interesting. I'm using it from Australia and it seems acceptably fast for me. I don't have a huge number of feeds, maybe this makes the difference. Did you contact the developer? She seems quite eager to help.
  - 1123581321 13y ago
    Those are significant items that need to be worked on, but the main thing Yoleo does for me is feel good using it like Google Reader felt good several years ago. I haven't come across an RSS reader in awhile that didn't make reading feel like work. I do wish the doubles would disappear, though.
shrikant 13y ago
InoReader (https://www.inoreader.com https://www.inoreader.com) gets quite close to the Google Reader experience. I've been juggling between that and YoleoReader to get better acquainted with them and will settle for one after getting properly used to one of them.
- Erwin 13y ago
  Thanks, I've spent a few months with Feedly but InoReader feels much more right! While Feedly does not allow you to export OPML, it still syncs with Google Reader so unless you've changed your feeds very recently, you can get them InoReader within a minute.
- webwanderings 13y ago
  Looks and feels pretty good (though I'm not sure how they'll keep it in business). I believe i came across it the other day and brushed off because I didn't see a Register link (not signing up with Google or Facebook anywhere). But I logged in today and was fairly surprised to see the number of features available to the readers. The key to any good Reader is the availability of the customizing features for the end-users, plus of course the speed and scalability. As soon as I plugged in HN feed to inoreader, I saw thousands of feeds fetched ready for me to scroll quickly. That's a first good sign.
jacoblyles 13y ago
Google reader had an amazing dedicated mobile phone app that shipped with Android on the Nexus 4. It was perfect.
- sagarm 13y ago
  I used that app heavily, and it certainly wasn't perfect. It had annoying bugs/behavior; some that I remember: (1) confusing vertical scrolls with horizontal swipes; (2) going back to the top of a story after rotating the screen; (3) limited ability to manage feeds; (4) an annoying delay when switching between screens; (5) failure to follow the Jelly Bean "up" convention (6) pictures would not be automatically scaled to fit the screen it wasn't _terrible_ either. I'm sad to see Reader go, but there was plenty of room for improvement. I'm now happily using (and paying for) Newsblur.
- squidi 13y ago
  I will also miss https://www.google.com/reader/i/#sub-tree/0 https://www.google.com/reader/i/#sub-tree/0 That iPhone-focused mobile view served me well for many years. I vastly preferred it to all iterations of the Android app and often use it on my desktop too. Showing only 15 items and being able to mark just them as read was a great workflow for me.
- admbk 13y ago
  Exactly. It is also great on a Galaxy Tab. Do any of the alternatives to Reader have a good app for Android ?
mzl 13y ago
I have the exact same use-case: big hierarchy of feeds, and just reading the ones I feel like at the moment. I switched to Newsblur, and apart from some small issues with the UI (which is getting better), I've been really happy. The iOS app is also nice. The downside is of course that it costs money, but it really isn't that much IMHO.
- WickyNilliams 13y ago
  I also switched to newsblur, and I'm pretty happy with it. The UI is definitely clunky, but after you get used to it, it's really not so bad. It's free for some number of feeds, has a sane business model (i.e. it has any business model), the entire thing is open source, and it has an open API so you can build your own client if you wish! I've not felt the need to try any others since switching
  - kokey 13y ago
    I've actually tried Feedly first for a number of weeks and it drove me half insane for similar reasons to that of jwz. I switched to Newsblur and after a few buttons it goes into 'works almost like Google Reader' mode.
badideabear 13y ago
I've been using The Old Reader (theoldreader.com) which, as the name suggests, is very much like old school reader before they crippled the social features. Sure, it doesn't have a dedicated mobile app, but the mobile site looks pretty nice.
- joosters 13y ago
  Apps are starting to support it, try using Feedler (on iOS, no idea if there is an Android version)
  - cstross 13y ago
    I thought you were flat-out wrong for a moment, then did some digging: Feedler 2.0 does indeed support Theoldreader, however Feedler Pro (which was what I was squinting at) is still on version 1.12.5, and only supports Google Reader. As Feedler 2.0 only showed up in the app store yesterday I assume the Pro version is stuck somewhere in the approvals process ...
    - joosters 13y ago
      Yeah, I've been using the free version for ages. When they added the old reader support, I bought the pro version out of gratitude, only to find a google login screen! I'm sure the pro app will get the update soon...
jvm 13y ago
I shared a lot of your issues, and I have to say ridly[1] has really been doing it for me. They did the hierarchy really well IMO. [1] http://www.ridly.net/ http://www.ridly.net/
barrkel 13y ago
Try InoReader. A limitation is that a feed can't appear twice in the treeview (or it will be duplicated), but apart from that, it's mostly a clone of GReader.
tspascoal 13y ago
I'm having an even worse experience. It keeps losing the unread status, even on articles i haven't touched (yes i've disabled auto mark). It's a mess. The UI is bearable, but this....
anonymouz 13y ago
I've tried TT-RSS as a replacement and it works quite well. It's self-hosted, depending on your point of view that may be an advantage or disadvantage.
- scumola 13y ago
  +1 for tt-rss. I've been a big GReader user for years and I love that tt-rss is self-hosted. Fuck the cloud. Nobody can take it away from me now. :) It's been heavily modified since the news of GReader going away was announced and it's easy to write plugins for it. I've got my version of it tweaked to the gills and it's even better than GReader was in my opinion.
sjs382 13y ago
I feel the same way. Best replacement I've found so far is Feedbin.me and Press (for Android). Feedbin's web client acts pretty strangely sometimes, but it's the one that best fits my Reader workflow.

Orva 13y ago

> I leave thousands of things left unread, and yet google reader makes it quite easy to keep up to date with whatever I feel like reading at the moment, without getting bogged down by all the stuff I don't want to read. It lets me categorize stuff hierarchically, and then drill down to what I want to look at, and maintains unread counts for each level, easily visible all at once. It's easy to see what categories/subcategories have new stuff. It's easy to mark stuff as read/unread, one by one, or in bulk by category. I was seriously starting to think I am only one who wants this from web-based rss-reader. Most of the native rss clients are built around this behaviour and I really cannot understand why web readers don't. Maybe A/B testing with bad test cases (or without enough diverse user population) or maybe we are just crazy. > It doesn't have dedicated mobile apps Android at least has. It was/is really nicely hidden under all unofficial, privacy violating rip-offs in the Google store.

seanp2k2 13y ago
If Google were smart, they'd open-source Reader and let the people who love it maintain and run it (It's probably much too dependent on their architecture for this to actually be a viable option).
- abraininavat 13y ago
  If Google were smart, they'd open-source Reader and let the people who love it maintain and run it (It's probably much too dependent on their architecture for this to actually be a viable option). So.. if they were smart they'd do something that's impossible, you're saying.
- rikf 13y ago
  I dont think they are killing ready because of the cost to maintain it. I think its more likely a strategic move to push people onto plus.
  - kolev 13y ago
    Google surely realized they've made a mistake, but they are like the government - never admit they err.
- lotu 13y ago
  Ignoring the dependence on architecture; who's going to pay for the servers that are needed to run Reader? They don't run off love last I checked.
- yid 13y ago
  This is almost certainly impossible. Systems at large Web companies have tons of dependencies on internal systems, libraries and build tools. It would probably be easier to rewrite Reader from scratch rather than open-source it.

tmzt 13y ago

It seems that Feedly's Cloud API may be the best replacement for the Reader backend (really an ATOM PUB feed source). It may not however turn out to be the best frontend for our use case. I would like to see if it is possible to rebuild the Reader UI/UX on top of the Feedly Cloud API, using an ATOM feedreader core implemented in javascript. Personally, I want a centralized solution, not a standalone daemon running on a private server. I switched to reader from a Gnome feed reader after losing all of my subscriptions due to losing access to a home directory. From there (in 2004 I think) I've built a massive collection of diverse sources covering every position, philosophy, point of view, etc. I can. I have so many feeds that I cannot possible read all of them, and so many that the Feedly mobile UI on Android won't even display the entire list. Feedly appears to have imported everything I want from Reader, including the tags that I have created over the years, and the folder structure. None of this appears to be in a simple OPML export. (But thanks Dave for standardizing that.) I think everything is preserved in Feedly, and now that the pressure of Normandy is off I hope that they will work to address those people that brought them all of these new accounts, and all of the press surrounding this mass migration. The Reader theme is a start but doesn't go far enough.

anu_gupta 13y ago

The closest replacement is The Old Reader - unfortunately they seem to having problems with feed update speed (probably due to load)

kybernetikos 13y ago
Yup, that was the only one that I tried that really fit my workflow.
- owyn 13y ago
  I'm using The Old Reader. I would have recommended it to him but he wants something with iPhone/iPad support too. They aren't charging anything, maybe they should make an app...
  - th0br0 13y ago
    They are currently in the process of publishing an API, some select developers already have access to it according to their latest blog so an iOS app is in the coming...
  - joosters 13y ago
    As of yesterday, the iOS app Feedler supports The Old Reader!
Semaphor 13y ago
My favorite, Newsblur, has pretty much everything GReader had. And by now he even managed to do away with the performance problems.
- sleepyhead 13y ago
  Too bad it's ugly and has lots of ux-quirks.
  - jimhart3000 13y ago

1123581321 13y ago

Yoleo has been wonderful for me. I've been recommending it to everybody.

zainny 13y ago
I gave Yoleo a shot as well. Biggest issue is no mobile app :-(
- jamiebikies 13y ago
  Working on it as we speak. Andriod first, for once.
carlio 13y ago
I found it to be awful. It's so slow. I presume this is an artefact of using it from Europe, and the developers not taking latency into account. I'm willing to overlook the bugs such as the same item appearing more than once in a feed (it's quite new), but the incredible slowness of it make it unusable for me. For example, I loaded it before writing this comment, and as of this point, it still hasn't finished loading. I just get a spinny box and 'Loading...' I also know from experience that if you click on something else, such as a folder, it won't override what it's currently loading, so the state of the UI will get out of sync. You also can't read a list of items, you have to read one by one, incurring yet another AJAXy-load which doesn't necessarily ever respond, thus leaving in you in Loading... limbo.
- gaelian 13y ago
  That's interesting. I'm using it from Australia and it seems acceptably fast for me. I don't have a huge number of feeds, maybe this makes the difference. Did you contact the developer? She seems quite eager to help.
- 1123581321 13y ago
  Those are significant items that need to be worked on, but the main thing Yoleo does for me is feel good using it like Google Reader felt good several years ago. I haven't come across an RSS reader in awhile that didn't make reading feel like work. I do wish the doubles would disappear, though.

shrikant 13y ago

InoReader (https://www.inoreader.com https://www.inoreader.com) gets quite close to the Google Reader experience. I've been juggling between that and YoleoReader to get better acquainted with them and will settle for one after getting properly used to one of them.

Erwin 13y ago
Thanks, I've spent a few months with Feedly but InoReader feels much more right! While Feedly does not allow you to export OPML, it still syncs with Google Reader so unless you've changed your feeds very recently, you can get them InoReader within a minute.
webwanderings 13y ago
Looks and feels pretty good (though I'm not sure how they'll keep it in business). I believe i came across it the other day and brushed off because I didn't see a Register link (not signing up with Google or Facebook anywhere). But I logged in today and was fairly surprised to see the number of features available to the readers. The key to any good Reader is the availability of the customizing features for the end-users, plus of course the speed and scalability. As soon as I plugged in HN feed to inoreader, I saw thousands of feeds fetched ready for me to scroll quickly. That's a first good sign.

jacoblyles 13y ago

Google reader had an amazing dedicated mobile phone app that shipped with Android on the Nexus 4. It was perfect.

sagarm 13y ago
I used that app heavily, and it certainly wasn't perfect. It had annoying bugs/behavior; some that I remember: (1) confusing vertical scrolls with horizontal swipes; (2) going back to the top of a story after rotating the screen; (3) limited ability to manage feeds; (4) an annoying delay when switching between screens; (5) failure to follow the Jelly Bean "up" convention (6) pictures would not be automatically scaled to fit the screen it wasn't _terrible_ either. I'm sad to see Reader go, but there was plenty of room for improvement. I'm now happily using (and paying for) Newsblur.
squidi 13y ago
I will also miss https://www.google.com/reader/i/#sub-tree/0 https://www.google.com/reader/i/#sub-tree/0 That iPhone-focused mobile view served me well for many years. I vastly preferred it to all iterations of the Android app and often use it on my desktop too. Showing only 15 items and being able to mark just them as read was a great workflow for me.
admbk 13y ago
Exactly. It is also great on a Galaxy Tab. Do any of the alternatives to Reader have a good app for Android ?

mzl 13y ago

I have the exact same use-case: big hierarchy of feeds, and just reading the ones I feel like at the moment. I switched to Newsblur, and apart from some small issues with the UI (which is getting better), I've been really happy. The iOS app is also nice. The downside is of course that it costs money, but it really isn't that much IMHO.

WickyNilliams 13y ago
I also switched to newsblur, and I'm pretty happy with it. The UI is definitely clunky, but after you get used to it, it's really not so bad. It's free for some number of feeds, has a sane business model (i.e. it has any business model), the entire thing is open source, and it has an open API so you can build your own client if you wish! I've not felt the need to try any others since switching
- kokey 13y ago
  I've actually tried Feedly first for a number of weeks and it drove me half insane for similar reasons to that of jwz. I switched to Newsblur and after a few buttons it goes into 'works almost like Google Reader' mode.

badideabear 13y ago

I've been using The Old Reader (theoldreader.com) which, as the name suggests, is very much like old school reader before they crippled the social features. Sure, it doesn't have a dedicated mobile app, but the mobile site looks pretty nice.

joosters 13y ago
Apps are starting to support it, try using Feedler (on iOS, no idea if there is an Android version)
- cstross 13y ago
  I thought you were flat-out wrong for a moment, then did some digging: Feedler 2.0 does indeed support Theoldreader, however Feedler Pro (which was what I was squinting at) is still on version 1.12.5, and only supports Google Reader. As Feedler 2.0 only showed up in the app store yesterday I assume the Pro version is stuck somewhere in the approvals process ...
  - joosters 13y ago
    Yeah, I've been using the free version for ages. When they added the old reader support, I bought the pro version out of gratitude, only to find a google login screen! I'm sure the pro app will get the update soon...

jvm 13y ago

I shared a lot of your issues, and I have to say ridly[1] has really been doing it for me. They did the hierarchy really well IMO. [1] http://www.ridly.net/ http://www.ridly.net/

barrkel 13y ago

Try InoReader. A limitation is that a feed can't appear twice in the treeview (or it will be duplicated), but apart from that, it's mostly a clone of GReader.

tspascoal 13y ago

I'm having an even worse experience. It keeps losing the unread status, even on articles i haven't touched (yes i've disabled auto mark). It's a mess. The UI is bearable, but this....

anonymouz 13y ago

I've tried TT-RSS as a replacement and it works quite well. It's self-hosted, depending on your point of view that may be an advantage or disadvantage.

scumola 13y ago
+1 for tt-rss. I've been a big GReader user for years and I love that tt-rss is self-hosted. Fuck the cloud. Nobody can take it away from me now. :) It's been heavily modified since the news of GReader going away was announced and it's easy to write plugins for it. I've got my version of it tweaked to the gills and it's even better than GReader was in my opinion.

sjs382 13y ago

I feel the same way. Best replacement I've found so far is Feedbin.me and Press (for Android). Feedbin's web client acts pretty strangely sometimes, but it's the one that best fits my Reader workflow.