Use Feeeed to View Articles, Reddit, and YouTube Simultaneously
Why rely on the channels built into your favorite websites and social media apps when you can create your own that brings them all together? I like to read online using RSS services like Feedly and Inoreader for a real newspaper feel. But as great as RSS is, it only works for articles. And like it or not, most of our current discussions happen across multiple platforms like YouTube, Reddit, Threads, and Substack newsletters. To keep track of everything, everywhere, you need something beyond RSS.
That’s why I’m so happy to find the Feeeed app (yes, with four ‘e’s) available on Apple platforms including iPhone, iPad and Mac, with its own design elements and fast interface. This is a passion project for Nate Parrott, a designer at The Browser Company who creates the Arc browser. Arc is known for its thoughtful design , and the Feeeed app brings the same design magic to your news feed. The app is free, updated regularly, and Nate has even included synopses of artificial intelligence in the articles.
Curate your own news feed
In my experience, creating your own feed in Feeeed takes time, but it’s worth it in the end. When you first start using the app, it will prompt you to create some basic settings, but I suggest taking the manual route. Like RSS apps, the Subscribe screen has pre-populated feeds from a variety of popular publications, and you can also search for and add any RSS feeds (you can also import all your feeds using an OPML file).
But things get interesting when you get on YouTube and Reddit. Open the YouTube menu and you can find and subscribe to any channel to add it to your feed. For Reddit, all you have to do is enter the name of the subreddit and the app will show you the same new posts. Now that real third-party Reddit apps are gone , this can be a good way to stay up to date on specific subreddits without diving into Reddit as a whole. The same trick works for Tumblr blogs, Substack publications, and TikTok creators. Subscriptions to Mastodon accounts are also supported and work for any Fediverse account, including Threads. Unfortunately, you’ll have to search for each account you want to follow by its exact username—I wish Feeeed would add an automatic import option.
The app also has a newsletter feature that connects to your Gmail account. I was unable to get this feature to work as Google appears to have suspended the Feeeed account. Hopefully this can be fixed in future updates.
Overall, creating your own news feed is quite a labor-intensive process, but I think that’s the point. You really should exercise caution and take your time before adding a YouTube channel, subreddit, or Mastodon account to your channel so that you can view the content in a targeted manner.
Single channel experience
The Feeeed app is, of course, superior to the channel itself. The app does some pretty smart grouping to ensure that similar articles from different sites aren’t repeated. It also features thumbnail images and shows the top three news stories from each source in a box. This represents a happy medium between old-school Twitter and today’s algorithm-heavy X-feed.
What’s great is how non-RSS sources are integrated. YouTube videos appear directly in your feed, and you can start playing either in full screen or using the embedded player. And all this without comments or advertising. Reddit posts open in article view, and you can easily switch to comment view. Mastadon posts also have a full preview right in the feed.
If you’re a purist, you can go into Settings and switch to Chronological in the ranking system to simplify the timeline. Here you can also view stories as a list rather than cards. The app also has an option to turn off words.
The overall reading experience in Feeeed is very simple. By default, articles open in a stripped-down, ad-free reading mode, and you can call up an AI summary if you want. The app has its own reading list feature and the sharing menu is easy to find.