RSS feeds are an excellent way to keep up to date with all kinds of information sources -- blogs, news, the weather, discussions and more. An RSS feed reader will check subscribed channels for updates automatically and let you browse the news that's important to you. Here are our top picks of news aggregators for Mac users.
Download Free RSS Reader and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Create a personal news feed and read your favorite websites and blogs in a clean and intuitive format. Subscribe to as many feeds as you want and keep up on all topics and sources you care about. The Best Free RSS Readers for Windows, Mac and Linux. As I am probably not the only one to look for an RSS reader I decided to share my list of those I think are the best ones. “Most people until 2013 used Google Reader for RSS (and Atom) feeds but then Google decided to shut it down.”.
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NetNewsWire - Mac RSS Feed Reader
NetNewsWire is a competent and flexible RSS feed reader that combines Mac elegance with smart tools that help you follow news updates efficiently. Fast search and smart folders make getting to the important updates a snap (though NetNewsWire does not plug into Spotlight) and reading news in NetNewsWire is a pleasure indeed.
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Cyndicate - Mac RSS Feed Reader
Cyndicate lets you organize news from RSS feeds in just about any manner you would like, and even knows (from your own past ratings) which stories you're likely to like in particular. Unfortunately, Cyndicate was a tad slow — too slow to really appreciate all its wonderful appeal.
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NewsFire - Mac RSS Feed Reader
NewsFire is an RSS reader designed with beauty and simplicity in mind. This makes NewsFire attractive, easy to use and very functional. The price you pay is in some advanced features the lack of which makes NewsFire best suited for finding, reading and then forgetting news, not for archiving and handling them.
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Vienna - Mac RSS Feed Reader
Vienna keeps following RSS feeds simple and functional with smart folders, groups, an integrated browser and item flagging. Unfortunately, you can only set a global refresh interval, podcasts are not really supported, and custom labels cannot be created.
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NewsLife - RSS Feed Reader
NewsLife provides a sane and simple way to read news and articles coming via RSS feeds. Smart folders could still be a helpful addition, and better keyboard navigation would be nice.
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RSS Menu - Mac RSS Feed Reader
RSS Menu turns the Mac OS X menu bar into a versatile RSS feed reader that not only displays headlines but also complete stories, lets you group feeds and integrates with both Safari and iTunes. Apart from the obvious shortcomings of a menu-based RSS feed reader, it would be nice if RSS Menu could hide read items and integrate with Google Reader and other web-based aggregators.
Reading a lot of blogs can be tough to manage without an RSS news reader, which consolidates everything you read in one place. While there are plenty of news readers on the Mac, Reeder wins our hearts thanks to its beautiful and simple interface, thorough integration with social features, and fantastic customizability.
Reeder
Features
- Syncs with Google Reader
- Beautiful interface
- Syncs (and fully integrates) with Readability
- Post articles directly to Instapaper, Delicious, or your blog
- Gesture support
- Customizable shortcuts
- Send to QUOTE.fm Read, Instapaper, Pocket (formerly ReadItLater), and Readability
- Save to Pinboard, Delicious, Zootool, and Evernote
- Post on App.net, Twitter, Facebook (posting on Facebook requires OS X 10.8.2)
- Open articles with Instapaper Mobilizer and Google Mobilizer
- You can disable Flash (and other plug-ins) if you want
- Support for retina displays
Where It Excels
Reeder first entices you with its beautiful and simple interface but keeps you around with its solid list of features. Despite Reeder's simplicity, the app manages to pack in quite a bit. One of the biggest highlights is that Readability—the service that converts web pages into more readable pages of text—is a part of the app. If a news feed contains an article that needs a little touching up, you can click the Readability button and make it a lot cleaner. Reeder also provides tons of ways to share and save articles you find in your feeds. It integrates with several services, such as Instapaper and Pocket. You can also pin articles to Pinterist, save them to Evernote, share them on Twitter or Facebook, and much more. A very comprehensive preferences pane allows you to customize your entire experience, from shortcuts to gestures to the app's appearance. Reeder offers solid performance on its own, but you can make it run exactly the way you want with a few simple tweaks.
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Where It Falls Short
Reeder offers few downsides, but it does lack subfolders. Rather than displaying any subfolders you may have in your Google Reader account, Reeder simply lists them without any hierarchy (i.e. it displays 'News — Finance' instead of listing Finance below the News category). If you don't have a ton of feeds, this isn't a big deal. If you do, however, you'll find it a little annoying and wasteful. Reeder also costs money. While $5 is a pretty fair price for a really great news reader, its primary competition—NetNewsWire—costs nothing. While we like Reeder better, if you're frugal you're simply not going to choose it when an app that's nearly as good costs absolutely nothing.
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The Competition
NetNewsWire (Free) was once our top pick, but over time it has come to feel a bit outdated. That said, it's still a remarkably powerful news reader with lots of great features. It's also free, so if you don't want to cough up $5 for Reeder you can get yourself a great alternative at no cost.
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Cream ($4) offers a more compact experience than Reeder's default view and costs a little less. Reeder, however, can shrink down to the same size. Cream is fairly new and still has a ways to go before it's truly a serious competitor, but it's definitely a news reader to watch.
Pulp ($10) costs more than anything on this list and doesn't offer a ton of advantages. That said, if you'd like to read your news feeds in a traditional newspaper format you'll want to check it out. It offers a very different interface from all the other apps and seeks to show you news you'll actually like rather than just everything (by default).
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Gruml is another free RSS news reader much like NetNewsWire, but in my few months of use I found it wasn't quite as stable. On the positive side, it does have greater support for external services (like ReadItLater). It may have features that are important to you, and if so it may be worth trying, but despite being a pretty solid app it just doesn't measure up when you're actually using it.
Best Rss Reader For Mac
There are a lot of other news readers for Mac but these three offer the most notable, worthwhile differences. If you have a favorite that was pass over or overlooked, please mention it in the comments.
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Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories. This week, we're focusing on news reader applications.
Rss App Mac Free
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