chrislreed

I used to spend the majority of my online time on Twitter. I loved it. It offered two main benefits: it connected me to the internet people I wanted to follow, and it showed me new articles on my favorite websites. Twitter was my personal one-stop shop for all the online things I cared about. Best of all, I could navigate my feed using Tweetbot, a lovely app that made the whole experience smooth and downright delightful.

Then came the dark days. Remarkably stupid forces purchased Twitter and changed its name to X. The network fell into disrepute. The people I followed left at different times, but for me it all came crashing down on January 12, 2023, when the new management nixed third-party apps and I could no longer use Tweetbot to access the stream of information.

Since then, Bluesky has gained a critical mass of people I used to follow on Twitter, so the social portion of my internetting is covered. But I still needed to find a way to see the new posts on my favorite sites. For a while there, I was back to navigating homepages like how peasants used to do in the Dark Ages.

The obvious way for nerds to keep up with websites is to use an RSS reader. But I’ve never liked using RSS. Regardless of which app I used, it always felt like a list of chores to get through, with a nagging unread count next to each site. For whatever reason, zeroing out that unread count didn’t feel satisfying; it felt like the digital equivalent of cleaning the bathroom.

Then I discovered the new Reeder app, and everything changed.

Reeder is an RSS app, but it ditches unread counts, and it displays all the new articles in a stream that looks basically like Twitter. It’s like a social media app, but without the social part. That means articles aren’t attached to comment threads filled with random dipshits throwing in their two cents. Nor does it default to a crappy and unwanted algorithm-based feed as Twitter does now (so does Threads).

Reeder only shows articles from sites you’ve purposely chosen to see. It’s just a pure and uncomplicated stream of new articles from my favorite websites. Somehow we’ve reached an era in the modern internet when that feels like a novel concept. The app is also gorgeously designed and fun to use on a basic level.

Better yet, you can view the articles using a “reader view” which, depending on the site, has the added bonus of bypassing certain paywalls and stripping out all the ads (use this at your own discretion).

You actually can log into your Mastodon and Bluesky accounts and have those posts display along with your RSS feeds, but I prefer having separate feeds for social and web browsing. Reeder also lets you follow podcasts and YouTube channels, but I like other apps for those things, so I just ignore those features.

Reeder is free to try in a limited capacity, but the full features cost $10 a year – well worth it in my book. It’s available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and your position in the stream syncs seamlessly between platforms over iCloud. It’s a refined app with an elegant interface that just feels good to use. I like it so much I put it in the primo spot on my iPhone’s dock — right where Tweetbot used to be. Give it a try if that sounds like your kind of thing.