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NetNewsWire is Free RSS Reader That Loves Its Users
RSS readers are still somewhat surprisingly common and there are many apps to choose from that can handle this task. NetNewsWire is a popular preference…
RSS readers are still somewhat surprisingly common and there are many apps to choose from that can handle this task. NetNewsWire is a popular preference and offers many compelling features. The newly launched version 6 adds a wealth of new features including iCloud synchronization and much more.
Key to an RSS app is content, as well as syncing that content and keeping track of what you’ve read. The big sell for RSS is that rather than going to individual websites and checking for new stories, an RSS reader will automatically retrieve stories as they’ve publish and present them to you in one central location. Your own personalized newsfeed!
With the shiny new version 6, NetNewsWire brought support for both Reddit and Twitter. This is a darn-cool new feature that we don’t typically see with RSS feeds. Once set up, your Reddit feed and Twitter feed will now show alongside your news. Such a great way to consume content from so many different places.
Besides syncing via common services such as Feedly and Feedbin, NetNewsWire now can sync across your devices with iCloud. If you’ve got the app on your iPhone, Mac, or iPad, now everything you download or read on one, will sync to the others with Apple’s native data solution. Everyone who uses an iPhone or iPad has an iCloud account and this streamlines the syncing process and requires no outside services.
Love when apps take advantage of those native services! NetNewsWire also helps organization and status. There are smart feeds available for “Today” stories and “unread” stories. Any story that you’ve read will be denoted as such as hid from your feed (though you can still revisit it if you’d like). Articles are automatically updated in the background and can be sorted into folders for added convenience.
Those features are great and all, but it is the other touches that elevate NetNewsWire as a great app. The devs have supported a treasure-trove of native iOS features. There is a Share Sheet extension. Keyboard shortcuts when using a keyboard on iPad. Contextual menus when long pressing on iPhone or right-clicking with a mouse. Finally, there is newfound support for Home Screen widgets that can show starred articles, unread articles, or stories from the day.
RSS feeds aren’t for everyone but if you haven’t tried them before and you do a lot of news reading, I’d highly recommend you give NetNewsWire a shot. It takes a few minuets to set up and get all the feeds you’re interested in added — not to mention a change in habits from visiting all the various websites to looking at one app — but it can be done! And once NetNewsWire is configured to your liking, I’ll bet you have a hard time going back to what you used before.
But enough about other people's apps.
