My Reeder 4 RSS Reader Review
After a too long update hiatus, my favorite RSS reader is back under a complete remake. Here is my Reeder 4 review. Spoiler alert: I like it a lot.
After a too long update hiatus, my favorite RSS reader is back under a complete remake. Here is my Reeder 4 RSS reader review. Spoiler alert: I like it a lot.
RSS are still a thing these days. Even when services like Apple’s News+ comes out. I recently wrote that since this service is out, my RSS feed consumption is decreasing. In fact, this isn’t exactly the case. I’m still using an RSS reader as a mean to easily browse news content in an organized and targeted matter.
For a while, I thought the venerable RSS reader was dead. With each major iOS releases, Reeder was a bit more broken and fixes were long to come. I started to use Feedly which I didn’t really like. I’m happy to see Reeder is back. The wait was worth it. Apparently, the code base is now the same between the iOS and macOS versions. This explains why it took a long time for these to be released.
On the surface you feel at home with version 4 albeit the different application icon. The difference is seen when you start using the application. The design is cleaner, there are a lot of subtle touches to the refreshed UI. You’ll see many small animated UI elements while interacting with Reeder. There is attention to the details and I like it a lot.
One notable change is the share sheet as Reeder no longer use a custom share sheet. It is now relying on iOS builtin one which I think is better. The custom share sheet was introduced at a time where Apple didn’t provide a system wide solution for acting on content like sharing on Twitter an article. Reeder 4 introduces a Read Later feature where you can mark articles to read later. This list syncs across all your devices with iCloud. It is not obvious how to invoke it but once you find it, it is a nice feature to have at your fingertip. See following annotated screen shot.
Reeder 4 introduces support for Bionic Reading. Supposedly, this text presentation should help the reading experience. I’m still trying it without seeing any difference though. This could be because English is not my primary language. We’ll see how this evolves.
All in all, I’m happy with Reeder 4. I’m still on the fence to buy the macOS version though. Oh, one last thing: If you are using Apple’s News+ service but would like to replace it with Reeder, head to AppleInsider’s article.
