5 Mac OS X RSS Readers Worth Giving a Shot

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There was once a time when my favorite RSS reader price a fair but not insignificant price and the open source alternative wasn't up-to-snuff. I won't name any names, though you tin probably deduce their identities by ruffling through some articles I wrote before I switched to a decent web-based solution (not all of us are able to resist the tides of trends and time, y'know).

There are probably a whole lot of RSS readers for the Mac; I haven't tried them all and I won't claim too. In fact, I've only tried a few of the nearly popular. I'1000 non the kind of person to spend endless days and weeks trying out new applications. I similar to detect something that works well, lets me get my task done the quickest, and get on with life. In my opinion if you lot want to be a productive person, that's a habit you should too develop — too many and so-chosen "personal productivity enthusiasts" spend half their time looking for new software. Unless reviewing the stuff is your job, there's no sense in spending more a modest amount of your fourth dimension doing this. That is what articles like this are for.

NewsFire

NewsFire has been around for quite some time. It's a free download from the NewsFire website. NewsFire sports a very simple two-pane view, with feeds on the left and feed items on the right. That said, information technology's attractive and easy to read from. It doesn't make use of tiny fonts past default similar one or two readers I've used in the past. Search is fast and volition run your query through every feed you're subscribed to pretty much instantly.

If you're a chronic sorter, so you might find NewsFire falls a little short. You can create smart folders, only you lot can't use labels or tags to organize certain items or feeds. Its organization features are good enough for most users. Where it falls down for me the most is the lack of synchronization.

Shrook

Shrook is an interesting application. Information technology's free, only the await and feel of the awarding is — to my eyes — very dated. I found the website to be much the same. Manifestly Shrook's founders are role over course types (like all programmers, right?). Looks aside, information technology has some really interesting features. Instead of setting up smart folders based on keywords, Shrook volition utilize Bayesian statistical filtering to pick out items of interest, and you teach it by picking out examples. It's a learning RSS reader. It as well uses a Distributed Checking mechanism to continue you every bit up-to-engagement as possible with new feed items; when 1 copy of Shrook checks a feed and find new items, it broadcasts the presence of a new unread item to other copies of the awarding around the globe.

Shrook features synchronization by fashion of Shrook.com, a web-based version of the reader that will sync with copies of the app on various computers.

NetNewsWire

Possibly y'all don't need to get checking my ancient articles after all. Before I moved to Google Reader, I was a NetNewsWire user. I was happy to pay for the software because information technology'south great. I can still go through all my feeds in NetNewsWire faster than any other reader, including Google Reader. NetNewsWire is now completely gratis, so there's no obstacle to trying it out — just go hither. NetNewsWire features a variety of views, a bunch of keyboard controls that don't crave contortionist acts and permit yous wing right through your feeds, detects microformats assuasive you lot to quickly add data to iCal or Accost Book, and has a tabbed browser right inside. All very cool.

Additionally, NetNewsWire'south owners Newsgator own a web-based reader, a Windows reader and there's a version of NNW for the iPhone. The spider web-based reader acts as a synchronization server. If you want synchronization between but virtually every device you lot've got, try this app.

Vienna

Vienna is the only open source reader on this list, and as far as I know the simply open source RSS reader for the Mac that's currently worth looking at.

These days, Vienna looks a fair fleck nicer than when I used it for a expert six months a few years back. I haven't been able to stress-exam it though, just in times past it really suffered under a heavy load and got quite slow. Vienna'southward got a overnice quick filtering bar on launch that enables speedy inquiry and trend monitoring, blogging app integration, and a bunch of helpful but pretty standard features. It has certainly come a long way over fourth dimension.

Google Reader

Google Reader is a good web-based feed reader, though not without its quirks (sometimes I've seen duplicate items I've already read in the All items view, and sometimes things just get stuck and items won't get marked as read). You can separate your feeds into folders, though creating and maintaining them is tedious. When Google Reader isn't being a pain, it's great being able to fly through your feeds with just your gyre wheel — items are marked as read as you curl by them — merely generally this doesn't piece of work out. Sounds similar an awfully negative review for the reader I'm actively using correct now, eh? I suppose it'south all about convenience.

But it is good. Information technology does work well and the bugs aren't serious enough to be worried about. It'due south the only reader I've used that has a social aspect — you can share items, and if yous've conversed with someone via Gmail you'll see their shared items too. Information technology features a Trends screen that lets you lot peruse your readership statistics, but no smart foldering or statistical sorting as yet. The Trends screen lets me know that my most frequently checked feeds are those pertaining to the forums or blog at the sites I manage and edit, which I'm sure volition be happy news for my employers if they're reading this.

I've been a scrap unfair by throwing Google Reader into the mix; it's not off-white on the desktop applications to be compared to a spider web service and information technology's not fair on a web service to be compared to desktop apps. I employ Google Reader myself these days, so it gets my vote, but it was a long and hard struggle to give up the comfort of a good desktop app. For that reason I'd have to call a tie between Google Reader and NetNewsWire, which is the all-time of the list in my stance — especially now that it's gratuitous.

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/5-mac-os-x-rss-readers-worth-giving-a-shot.html

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