In the previous post, I shared the reasons why I use an RSS reader to get content delivered to me automatically. In this post, I’ll share my RSS reader of choice and my recent attempt to find an alternative. Let’s start with…
What is Readwise Reader?#
You can visit the official website to learn more about it, but to me, Reader is:
- A bookmarking/read later app.
- A feed aggregator.
- A highlighter/note taking app.
It’s an all-in-one application that tries to manage the whole reading stack: from getting articles to read, organizing them with tags and folders, to allowing taking notes/highlights.
Why do I want to replace it?#
- It’s expensive: $95.88/year (I’m an early adopter so I get the cheaper price).
- I don’t use the notes/highlights feature anymore. I take notes directly in Obsidian now.
- The reading UI can be improved, especially when rendering HTML in code blocks.
What’s holding me back?#
- It’s an excellent feed aggregator. My workflow typically goes like this:
- Every day, I check the Feed page and skim through articles.
- If something is interesting, I move it to Inbox/Later depending on the article length or the mental energy required to understand it.
- Then, I read those articles whenever I have the time.
- It supports subscribing to newsletters. New emails go to the Feed page just like RSS items so I have a centralized place to triage them.
- I can save articles to the app (bookmarking) and it even works offline. It’ll sync and fetch when I go online.
- It has an archive of everything I’ve read. This is great for looking back resources or just re-reading good ol’ articles sometimes.
- I can create custom folders from the articles I’ve saved. For example, I have a Long guides folder where I keep long, comprehensive guides on web development.
- It supports YouTube videos and will transcribe the audio. This is great for highlighting what’s said in the video.
- It has great text-to-speech. Even though I don’t really use it, it can be really handy when I want to give it a try later.
- It’s fast and smooth. No bullshit UI/UX.
What do I look for in an alternative product?#
There aren’t many non-bullshit all-in-one products out there. To be able to replace Reader, I have to look for 2 separate apps: an RSS reader, and a feed aggregator.
RSS reader#
I’ve tried NetNewsWire, Unread, ReadKit, and Reeder. None of them have an archive or let me create custom views/folders. This is crucial to me because:
- (1) I don’t take notes from every article I read (yet), and
- (2) I do sometimes revisit/need to search the articles I’ve read.
Readwise Reader does this very well and also has full-text search. The closest match to my needs is probably Reeder. It has folders and tags support but I don’t know how long it keeps them and the overall UX of the app isn’t my taste. There’s also a Reeder Classic app but it isn’t free so I can’t test it. It’s also discontinued by the developer, and I want to avoid such a product.
NetNewsWire is free and open source. It’s very barebones — there’s even no options to change the typography. It just shows a plain webview interface, I guess. But it seems to prefetch articles and cache them locally so opening them feels very fast. ReadKit is similar but can support more feed aggregators as its backend, and has some customizations.
Of all the RSS readers I’ve tried, I like Unread the most. It has well thought-out swipe gestures on the mobile app and the typography looks very pleasant. The lack of folders/tags or an archive is a downside, and the subscription pricing model is 🙂↔️, especially when I’m also looking for a feed aggregator and I don’t want to pay for 2 products.
Feed aggregator#
There are multiple results when I searched for a feed aggregator: Feedly, Feedbin, FreshRSS, miniflux, Inoreader, etc. I’ve only tried Inoreader since it gets the most love and has a generous free version. I don’t have many requirements for a feed aggregator — it just needs to send me new articles as they come out, and can receive newsletter emails. Inoreader performs well for the former feature but charges for the latter one 🤦♂️. But there’s a free service to fill in this spot: Kill the Newsletter! I tried it to create a feed for a Substack newsletter I’m following but Substack doesn’t accept the email address, yikes!
The self-hosting solutions like FreshRSS and miniflux sound appealing to me, but I’m very lazy to do so. I prefer serverless for anything I put up online now.
If I were to choose, Inoreader is actually fine. Most feed aggregators can import from an OPML file now so the cost of switching is nearly zero.
Conclusion#
In the end, I still think Readwise Reader is the best solution for me. Everyone’s reading stack is different and it’s hard to find a product that suits us all. I’ll see how things change one year later and maybe evaluate again.