Best RSS Reader Apps for IPhone and Mac
Apple’s platforms are a land of carefully crafted apps and utilities, and it’s not limited to official apps. An independent app like GoodLinks will help you explore better, and an app like Almighty will make you a Mac God .
However, my favorites are RSS reader apps. Yes, you can download apps included with RSS services like Feedly and Inoreader , but with them you’re missing out on a lot of the fun. These apps are designed to be cross-platform, heavy, slow, and lack any customization options.
Instead, if you use a Mac or iPhone, try dedicated RSS readers created by passionate indie developers for a whole new reading experience. Your content can still come from Feedly (or you can sync your feeds using iCloud), and you can enjoy features like fast, native full-text feeds. But there are also options for custom typography, themes, keyboard shortcuts, sharing options, and even additional sources like YouTube, Reddit, and Mastodon.
Reader (and Reader Classic)
For over a decade, Reeder has been a staple of the RSS app market for Apple devices. It provides a fast and easy RSS reader that is truly a pleasure to read. The minimalist app puts readability first, and I really like that.
The application is now divided into two parts. The original Reeder app is called Reeder Classic, and it still offers the same traditional RSS interface where you can connect multiple RSS sync services and read all the latest articles. Reeder Classic is a one-time purchase from the App Store ($4.99 for iPhone and iPad , $9.99 for Mac ).
The new Reeder app is now more like a social reader. It does away with traditional RSS features such as unread message counting and the ability to connect to various RSS synchronization services. The Reeder app syncs only with iCloud, which allows it to create social networks, such as a timeline sync where the reading position is automatically synced across all your devices.
As a social media reader, Reeder goes beyond articles and lets you add YouTube channels, podcasts, subreddits, and entire channels from Mastodon, Bluesky, or Micro.blog .
Once you’ve got everything set up, Reeder can be the only place you need to read, listen, and watch content online. Reader also has a pretty interesting take on shared channels. You can turn any tag into a general news feed and use it to curate articles to share with friends or followers online.
The downside is that the new Reeder app isn’t fully finished yet. For example, at startup there is no option to create folders (a core feature of RSS readers) or change the font size or style in the reader. Both features will fortunately be added in future updates. The premium version of the Reeder app is now available via subscription and costs $1 per month or $10 per year (the free version is limited to 10 channels and does not have features such as connecting to social media accounts and channels).
NetNewsWire
If all you want is an incredibly simple and fast RSS reader designed specifically for Apple devices that’s free, try NetNewsWire . It is a free, open source project that is supported by the community and is under active development.
You can synchronize data using popular services such as Feedly, Feedbin, Inoreader and others. You can customize article topics, there’s a dedicated reading mode, dark mode, keyboard shortcuts, folders, and all the basic features you’d expect from an RSS reader app.
Fast, simple and no frills is how I would describe NetNewsWire.
Lyra
Lire is an RSS app for iPhone ($9.99) and Mac ($9.99) that specializes in one thing: full-text feeds. Many sites only show part of the article you are trying to read in their RSS feeds. This means you either need to click to open the website or use the built-in reading mode to load the article content, which takes a while.
Instead, Lire downloads and parses text from a website directly to your device. Before you even start reading, it will download the text for hundreds of articles together, and all that content will be ready to read even when you’re offline. Lire is great for watching content or browsing news sites without any wait.
Otherwise, Lire is a regular app. You can use it as a standalone RSS app or sync with popular RSS services like Feedly, Inoreader, and others.
Unread
Unread is style. I remember using it almost 10 years ago on my first generation iPad mini. It looked so cool . The combination of beautiful typography and colorful themes was truly a sight to behold. But that’s not enough for me, at least these days. Unread has undergone many updates, but has retained its signature style.
The downside is that there is no option to change the application’s default font, Whitney . If you don’t like it, you should look at other apps on this list.
However, if you like the font, you will enjoy using Unread. The app is native and loads dozens of channels incredibly quickly. If you decide to pay for Unread Premium ($4.99/month or $49.99/year), you’ll get additional perks such as automatic text and image caching in advance, custom Dock icons, widget customization, Safari Share extension and actions with articles.
But even without paying, Unread turns out to be an excellent RSS reader. Like Lire, it can also automatically download full-text content from RSS feeds, although you’ll have to explicitly enable it on a per-site basis, which is a bit of a hassle.
Feed
Feeeed is a social media reader application built on top of RSS. Feeeed is completely free and only works on iPhone, so there is no Mac version. It’s also a pretty opinionated app that pulls related stories from all your channels together, plus it defaults to an algorithmic feed (you can change it to a traditional timeline if you want).
Feeeed, being a social reader, allows you to add YouTube channels and subreddits in addition to articles, but unlike Reeder, it doesn’t let you sync your entire Mastodon feed, which is a shame (you need to follow each Mastodon user individually). Besides all this, Feeeed is a light and interesting e-reader for iPhone. To learn more, check out our previous review of the Feeeed app .