Reeder Rebuilt
Silvio Rizzi (September 2024):
The new Reeder is out!
A note to Reeder Classic users: For this release, I’ve tried to cover any questions you might have about the new Reeder and Reeder Classic in the FAQ.
There’s no pressure to upgrade. As mentioned before, both apps will coexist.
The best word to describe the new Reeder is “ambitious.” Its purpose is not just to be your RSS reader, but your inbox for keeping up with feeds of many different kinds from various sources across the Internet – text from websites, sure, but also videos on YouTube, audio from podcasts, posts on social media, and more. It’s a one-stop shop for the feeds you follow online, collecting them together into a single timeline that you can seamlessly browse across all of your devices.
This concept—like Tapestry—doesn’t really appeal to me. But I’m probably not a typical user. I like that they’re experimenting in this space and that Reeder Classic is sticking around.
What concerned me is that a new app that didn’t click for me had taken over the name of the app I loved. It felt like the app I loved was being put into a legacy status with the “classic” moniker. “Reeder Classic remains a product in our lineup,” if you will. Like I said, there aren’t a bunch of features I hope are added to Reeder Classic, so I’m fine if it goes on the back-burner, I just hope it continues to get support for the latest operating systems so I can keep using it how I do now for many years to come.
Maybe I’m not getting it, but it no longer has the concept of read/unread blog posts; everything just…hangs out there forever. It also makes it very difficult to read the content in a web browser; you used to be able to press B to open an article in Safari, but now it’s a click on the share arrow, then Open, with no keyboard shortcuts.
And the new Reeder just doesn’t do what I need it to. In fact, it doesn’t even do what it tries to do in a way that I find useful:
- Polling 200+ feeds? Local polling and iCloud syncing won’t cut it, and the lack of support for feed aggregators tells me this isn’t an app to keep track of a lot of diverse interests.
- Catching up on Mastodon? I have custom RSS feeds that track lists from a server, since having my home timeline or tags is just useless and too much noise in my experience.
- Reddit? Erm. Why? I do visit, but (guess what) I already have summary feeds from the couple of subreddits I care about.
- Videos and podcasts? I can get a much better experience in specialized apps like Yattee and Overcast, and I never consume that kind of content together with the rest–the contexts and use cases just don’t overlap for me.
See also: Mac Power Users and Reddit.
Previously:
- Tapestry 1.0
- NetNewsWire 6.1.6
- ReadKit 3.3
- News Explorer 2.0
- Receiving RSS Feeds in E-mail
- Unread RSS Reader for Mac
- The State of RSS on the Mac
1 Comment RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
I used every version of Reeder since my first iPhone, the 3GS, up through what has become Reeder Classic. I bought each upgrade version until now.
But in the last couple years I switched to NNW and now News Explorer. The problem with Reeder is that he would all to soon quit fixing bugs or releasing basic maintenance updates. The app would get stale to the point I had a feeling a new version would be coming soon and, sure enough, there it was. Another paid upgrade, but increasingly they just became basic functionality fixes.
He says Classic will continue to exist, but I had to quit using it years ago because it stopped working properly.
I would have paid for a new version of Reeder Classic, but I too don’t like the infinite scroll, total integration aspect of the new Reeder. I just want an RSS reader. News Explorer is about perfect for me at the moment. New Reeder seems like it’s trying to re-create Facebook or twitter.
