When Google ditched Reader, they told me how to export my OPML, so I did, and vowed to never again depend on a cloud service for something I could do with a local client app. I've moved from one to another over the years. At the moment I'm using Feeder on Android.
Likewise when they dropped Listen for podcasts, currently I'm on Antennapod. If I can get an app from f-droid, I prefer it.
I can live with backing up my OPML files whenever I add a blog or podcast, and having no web server for desktop use or tracking read/unread progress; I just only consume from my primary phone.
I had a similar sentiment. I did briefly use feedly until they started messing with their login screens some time back.
See, I had a local feedly login (with randomized password etc) but they Sussed out it was a google workspace enabled account/domain and would constantly try to redirect me to googles oath.
I moved to miniflux and love it. Easy to manage and super lightweight.
The only “feature” I wish it had was a “mark all items older than 1 day as read”.
You can mark all as read. And you can inverse your sort date and expand how many articles are paginated to mark large swaths as read. But a simple button to do some cleaning if I hadn’t read feeds in a week (and likely wouldn’t care for week old content) would be great.
Still is amazing overall and even that is a nitpick. In fact I donated a bit to the maintainer just this month.
I'm hesitant to ask for more features to a lightweight, stable RSS service, but it would be super-nice to be able to enter a youtube username (for example) and have it build a feed from it, as Google is, at best, wildly inconsistent about providing youtube RSS feeds. Essentially baked-in rsshub functionality. But I'm fine running rsshub in parallel.
> I'm hesitant to ask for more features to a lightweight, stable RSS service,
Agree entirely. Which is why I never bothered to even ask the dev about my “nitpick”.
I did try a few git repos that would do similar, but they were based on old builds of ruby and well, it didn’t go too well (and I’m not a Ruby on Rails person).
That said I will just periodically purge all reads, and history, and refresh all feeds in background to keep it running smooth.
It’s actually how I came to this very thread.
Re: YouTube, have you tried putting in a channel URL? Miniflux is great at finding rss feeds from indirect urls. But I have noticed rss is increasingly being stripped from sites, probably in an attempt to drive actual traffic stats. I usually try to visit the external link for some sites to give them the traffic/hits. Nevertheless some of my favorite feeds like TalkingPoints Memo and The Drive have completely stripped RSS off their site, which is a shame.
For news feeds, I'd really like to tell it "always play most recent, keep the last n newscasts, don't play older ones unless I manually start them, skip to next unread feed source after the most recent newscast completes.".
I'd typic'ly want to listen to the most recent 'cast from a two or three different Japanese news sources, then switch to whatever else is unread, especially when driving. I'd want to set this up as an automation, rather than spend time manually overriding (adding, removing, arranging) AntennaPod's playlist and manually ensuring each playlist item is downloaded before I go to places with spotty signal.
As it is, I go months at a time without using any podcasts players because I don't know how find one that fits my very idiosyncratic use case. Life is usually easier if I just ignore "the news" rather than 'fight' with getting sources ready one to three times per day. (>.>)
I actually saw this submission via Inoreader. It's got everything I want and need in a news reader. Been using it for years now and there's little I'd change about it. Each person has their own preferences, of course, but I recommend it highly.
I like inoreader too but i dont miss it after switching to freshrss. I was tired of paying them each year. The mobile browser is really good i frshrss, atleast when added to the desktop via bravr in android.
A shout out for Tiny Tiny RSS[1] for a self-hosted feed reader. I used a heavily modified fork from years ago but the current version looks pretty good.
(I made a couple of really simple contributions back in the day but decided maintaining my own fork was the easy path. The maintainer has a reputation for being a bit prickly to deal with. He wasn't uncivil or anything, but it was clearly his project and that's just fine.)
When Google killed Reader I stopped trusting them at that point as I realized they'd kill everything to maintain control. I hate GOOG nowadays and hope they become less influential on the internet.
Yeah, my impression at the time was that programmers and tech-related media turned against Google basically overnight when Reader was killed. I think the importance of Reader wasn’t “everybody used it” but “the people in a position to influence the public perception of Google used it”.
I believe it is about the audience, they are very casual about killing products. The users of the Reader was people with interest and influence in technology. Killing a product that is utilized by the people with the higher influence created no good.
NewsBlur is great but it lacks one particular feature: an RSS feed for a folder of blogs.
(or a category of blogs, potato - potahto)
So I switched to self-hosted FreshRSS.
It has all the features I want (plus, unlike NewsBlur, it's free) but it is Docker-based and I am already like 10 versions behind and I am too lazy/scared to learn how to upgrade it without destroying the Universe.
BoredReading has a fantastic UI and I absolutely love the approach and organization of feeds. Key shortcuts are cool, too.
If there is ever a self-hosted version that I can feed with my own stuff from scratch (ideally via an OPML file), I'd go for it immediately.
> but it is Docker-based and I am already like 10 versions behind and I am too lazy/scared to learn how to upgrade it without destroying the Universe.
You should be scared, the other day I messed a completely functioning miniflux docker by upgrading it. It's been so long since I set it all up that I lost the incantation necessary for the setup or the will to look it up, just went ahead and I'm using newsblur again. Sigh.
I'm getting old and loosing the will/patience to selfhost.
You guys need to use docker compose, then it is as simple as docker compose pull then docker compose up -d --force-recreate.
I keep my containers each in their own dir with a docker compose file with the volumes specified as ./volmedirname:/mountpointincontainer
Which makes it dead simple to write a bash script to go in to each dir, do a docker compose pull then bring everything up again. Extra points to call that script from cron.
What had Google Reader that was amazing and no RSS existing today has is feed history: when you added a blog to Google Reader you could traverse the feed as if you added it from the beginning of the blog (intersection with the born of Google Reader).
BTW, I wrote something along the topic above in an article from 2011 [1].
I forgot that and you're totally right. It was awesome to scroll (and search!) through a feed's entire history. Ugh it makes me so mad Google got rid of all that for nothing.
At the time they shut down Listen, some podcasts (e.g. Car Talk) were closing their back episodes and charging money for them; I figured that's why Google decided to stop the service.
Did Listen not support password protected feeds? I remember a solid 2-3 years after Listen was killed (2012-2015) where Android had no passable podcast player.
For those interested in "alternative" RSS Readers, I'd welcome you giving a go to my opinionated RSS (not only) reader - https://lenns.io. It supports tracking articles by headlines in those cases when a blog or a website doesn't support RSS. Plus a few other goodies, like assigning priorities to your feeds (and topics) and limiting the number of posts per source.
One thing I didn't see listed on the home/feature page: ability to send a random article/link you might be reading to a 'read later" folder (like Pocket for Firefox).
It's a feature that naturally fits into RSS and helps keep everything in one place. This would probably require browser extensions for best integration/ease of use.
I'm living with Feedly. Reluctantly. I don't think it's very sticky and I'd happily switch to this thing (which is giving me 504 Gateway Time-out right now) if it's any better.
FYI, there are a bunch of apps that sync with Feedly and that you can use as an alternate front end. NetNewsWire (Mac, iOS) is one example that's worth checking out, but there are many options that cover every OS.
I tried Feedly for a couple of days, then I switched to Feeder and haven't looked back. Zero dependency on any central service, no user accounts, no upsell, no algorithms. I don't need any synchronization features, though apparently Feeder now has that. You're probably on iOS in which case this is no help to you.
On a sidenote, I was shocked to find that basically all sites I read still have RSS feeds.
What would make an RSS reader sticky? If all you want is an ordered list there aren't many features to keep you attached.
I've been using Feedly since Reader shut down and it's been fine. Every time I want to add a new feed via URL I feel it's needlessly difficult and suspect they may have moved my cheese once again, but for reading the feeds I'm subscribed to it works great.
Do you know how the Android app is now? I'm still on Feedly Classic since they removed a bunch of functionality while trying to push their "own" content. Unfortunately they broke the layout earlier this week so I'm questioning how long it will live on.
Have a quick look at Feedbin. I've been using it for a few years now and it's the most Reader-ish of the options I've found so far. Feedly is too algorithm-y for me.
OP here: I'm considering it. Can you email me please? (email in profile)
Would love to figure out a way I can work out a self hosted version for those who want it, given there is enough interest in it. This goes to anyone else who's interested in self hosting, please email me! Thanks!
I have a project on my backlog to build "Google Reader" how it might have looked today, but Google is very slow with their Material Design 3 implementation for Web.
Likewise when they dropped Listen for podcasts, currently I'm on Antennapod. If I can get an app from f-droid, I prefer it.
I can live with backing up my OPML files whenever I add a blog or podcast, and having no web server for desktop use or tracking read/unread progress; I just only consume from my primary phone.