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AI-generated summary
If you don’t know what RSS is, this article probably isn’t for you — I’d suggest checking out the Wikipedia page.
To subscribe to RSS feeds, there used to be dedicated apps, and browsers themselves could even handle subscriptions without going through a web service. Little by little, browsers dropped that feature, probably because demand didn’t justify the maintenance effort.
These days, the vast majority of RSS subscriptions go through web services. The most well-known of these used to be Google Reader, which gave way to the hugely popular Feedly.
Personally, I was using Feedbin, which I think is really good. It’s a paid service at €30/year, but at least your data isn’t being commercially exploited.
That said, if you don’t want to pay or use a free online service, I highly recommend the excellent News Explorer. This app is available on iOS and Mac. Its standout feature is that it syncs your feeds via iCloud, meaning you get read/unread status across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac — without going through a third-party server, and without spending a cent.
The app is particularly well-built. It supports the classic Dark Mode, and the browser extension lets you add an RSS feed directly from your browser (the app will find the feed on its own).
It has full keyboard shortcut support and integrates with read-later apps like Pocket or Instapaper.
One feature I really appreciate is the ability to fetch the full article content from RSS feeds (which are often truncated to force you to visit the publisher’s site). The fetching relies on the excellent Mercury parser, which reliably retrieves the full article.
Feed fetching happens in the background, so as soon as you launch the app your unread items are already waiting. That said, I found the live refresh while the app is open a bit annoying — it auto-scrolls the list, making you lose your place.
One thing I regret about this app is that you can’t use it as a read-later tool. If you’re reading an article in Safari and want to come back to it later, there’s no way to save it to News Explorer — you still need to rely on another service like Pocket or Instapaper.
That’s about it. I hope it helps you cut the cord from external web services and saves you a few euros.
