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FeedDemon - Free Windows RSS Reader - RSS Feed Readers Software
Here's our list of the best RSS readers for Mac. RSS readers have a long history. Traditionally, they do two things: display content in reverse chronological order and allow you to curate the content you want to read. I excluded any apps that use an algorithm to determine the order in which posts are displayed e. Full text. When creating an RSS feed, publishers elect to show either a preview of their content or the entire article, so it's not always possible for RSS readers to display articles in their entirety.
But for sites that provide the full text, RSS readers should display the entire article. I eliminated any apps that placed access to full text—when made available by the publisher—behind a premium plan paywall. Easy to use. One of the major goals of using an RSS aggregator is to simplify the process of seeing content from multiple sites. The apps I chose make it easy to perform basic RSS app functions like following your favorite sites, organizing your feeds into meaningful categories, saving articles, and marking articles as read.
In short, they had to be nice. I've been using RSS readers for almost 15 years, so suffice it to say, I have strong opinions about what makes a good one. I started with a list of more than 20 apps that purported to be RSS readers quite a few weren't and checked to see if they met my basic criteria. Some of them didn't, had been discontinued, or hadn't been updated in the last few years.
RSS readers aren't exactly the most exciting or lucrative app category, so most of the popular apps have been around since Google Reader was killed. For the apps that met the criteria, I imported my list of subscribed feeds when they weren't already there; I've tried most RSS readers in the past. After using each one over the course of a week, these are the clear winners.
Feedly Web, iOS, Android. Feedly is the industry standard for web-based RSS readers, and has been for a while. It's not hard to see why—its clean and simple interface is a great solution for both casual readers who just want to see all of their websites in one place and power users who want to take advantage of every feature RSS apps have to offer. Feedly's free plan offers most of the features casual readers need.
Follow up to sources, sort the sites you follow into three folders, watch YouTube videos, and read full-text articles when available in a distraction-free, minimalist view. Plus, Feedly offers mobile apps for Android and iOS devices, so you can access subscriptions easily both at home and on the go. Remember: If you have to leave your RSS app and visit the source website to view the full text of an article, it's most likely a setting from the publisher and not a limitation set by the RSS provider.
But Feedly is also incredibly scalable, giving you the tools you need to do more than just curate and aggregate content. This is great for professionals who want to use their RSS app as a research hub.
Share feeds, boards, notes, and highlights with other members of your team, so you can all collaborate to uncover interesting research and share ideas.
Want to connect Feedly to the other apps you use? You can do that with Zapier's Feedly integration, which can connect the RSS reader with thousands of apps.
This lets you do things like push articles to your Buffer queue, share articles on Slack, or save tagged articles to a Google Sheet.
With a free NewsBlur account, you can subscribe to up to 64 different feeds, read full-text content of those sites in its web reader, and save stories to read or access in the future. And you don't even need to click that much while reading in NewsBlur. Just keep scrolling: articles display one after another for action-free reading. Though it's worth noting, you have to scroll through each site individually.
The "River of News" is limited to Premium subscribers. But NewsBlur's most interesting feature is its sophisticated filtering, which can automatically highlight or hide stories based on certain criteria. If you spend some time training your filters, the system will learn your preferences like what authors you prefer at a given site and try to surface the stories that interest you most. That way, you can subscribe to as many sites as you want—even the ones that publish articles a day—and still only see the content you're interested in.
NewsBlur also lets you share your favorite stories, either on social networks or inside of NewsBlur. Within the app, you can add stories that you read and like to your personal "blurblog," or find people with similar interests and follow their blurblogs as well. Or you can run NewsBlur on your own server for free. NewsBlur has the most traditional look of any of the RSS readers on this list.
By that, I mean it looks like it was designed sometime in the lates. It's not bad, per se, but it isn't the modern look of our other picks. If that's a dealbreaker, try Feedly or Inoreader. Feature-wise, though, NewsBlur doesn't fall short. Inoreader Web, iOS, Android. Inoreader is one of the most feature-packed free RSS readers on this list. Without paying a cent, you can follow feeds, and you can even search within your subscriptions.
Full disclosure: this is the app I use personally, and I do pay for the Pro plan. While most RSS apps only cache content for the short-term, Inoreader doesn't have limited-time archives. Your content—even the stuff you've already read—is stored permanently.
To stay organized, you can group your feeds in folders and use tags to separate out individual articles as you read them. This makes Inoreader a great RSS feed app for power users, but it's very accessible for beginners as well. After signing up, you're guided through a tutorial that shows you how to use the app's major features, making it easy to get up and running even if you have no previous RSS experience.
If you upgrade to one of Inoreader's premium plans, you get even more features. Add feeds for Twitter profiles or Facebook Pages, write advanced rules for sorting your content into folders and tags this is the feature that makes me pay for Pro , and customize your dashboard to see exactly what interests you the most when you log in.
For anyone who has to stay on top of a few different areas, it's really handy. I'm able to filter certain tech feeds so that I only see posts that are relevant to my beats. I don't need to wade through Android content to get to the cybersecurity and photography stuff. Inoreader offers a Zapier integration , meaning you can connect it to thousands of other apps.
This lets you do things like automatically save starred articles to Pocket and Instapaper, or compile saved articles in a Google spreadsheet. RSS is one of the foundational technologies of the internet; it's kind of like email in that way. But also like email, newer advances in technology haven't reduced its importance.
RSS remains the best way to make sure you see everything your favorite sites publish, even if social media is now more popular for the general public. For writers, researchers, and anyone who wants to keep on top of things, RSS will always be the number one option.
All three apps on this list are free, so I'd recommend setting up a few feeds in each one to figure out which one works best for you.
Related Reading:. How to filter, combine, and customize RSS Feeds. Ways to use RSS to boost your productivity. The most recent update was in July Get productivity tips delivered straight to your inbox. You can still download it for free , but it won't be updated and support for it is no longer available. FeedDemon is the most popular RSS reader for Windows, with an easy-to-use interface that makes it a snap to stay informed with the latest news and information.
Tagging Assign your own keywords to items, making it easy to classify and locate articles you've previously read. Watches Tell FeedDemon to let you know when your keywords appear in any feed you're subscribed to. Search Feeds Get alerted when your keywords appear in any feed, regardless of whether you're subscribed to it.
FeedDemon 4. What is RSS?
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