Ran into a new RSS reader (for iPhone, iPad and Mac; single purchase / no subscription) today and still need to read this long introduction post, but I’m curious: is anybody here already using it?
2 Likes
I am! (but then again, I built it)
I could not remember my original account name on here, but I’ve just re-registered here to follow along. Don’t mind me 
8 Likes
Didn’t expect the author of the app to be the first one to respond…
PS @metroid You might want to check out this recent discussion:
(Not accusing you of any wrong behavior, but it might help knowing how the community thinks about appropriate developer participation on this forum)
Thank you - absolutely not here to promote, in any way, shape or form.
6 Likes
I really dig the article and the thought process behind the tool. Intentional. I was always put off by 3-4 (sometimes 5) digit numbers in any of the big RSS readers (using tapestry now but it’s just a scaled up iPad version on the Mac for now, unfortunately, hence not the smoothest experience).
I’ll give this a whirl.
Intriguing idea. Many of my sources are ephemeral. If I don’t read a post today, I don’t need to see it tomorrow because it’s probably become irrelevant. So I love the concept of velocity.
However, other sources–usually low post rates—are different. I want to read every post. What is not clear to me from the article: can I set a source to “never expire post”? That would make me give it a serious try.
1 Like
From a brief stint with Current, the macOS version seems a bit undercooked to me (which is fine given it released just recently): I can’t seem to access or create currents, swiping is not a thing on Mac as well (which I’d very much like to be the case, swiping with touchpad was great in Reeder). Can’t change font size on Mac (there’s a setting in preferences but it changes nothing for me) I can change it now, but need to get out of the article view and back in to see the changes, it’s not live feedback; can’t change the width of the article ( I understand this might be intentional, but having a widescreen monitor as my main one I’d like the text to be wider, preferably configurable.)
No article thumbnails - this one is huge as it can make skipping non-interesting articles really fast by visually parsing.
All in all feels good, but needs some more time in the oven?
1 Like
I’m intrigued, and I’m giving it a try. It grapples with one of the issues I’ve had with RSS from day one: the firehose of ephemeral content that subscribing to certain sites makes inevitable.
Also not nothing: it’s really pretty! (I’m using the Paper theme at the moment.) Kudos for choosing a lovely serif font as the default.
Do you have any plans to add email newsletter forwarding to the app’s features? I know it’s possible add a newsletter’s feed via its URL, but in that case you have to leave Current to read any of the newsletter’s paid content.
thank you for trying! can you please email me or DM and I can look into this? That’s not ok, that’s a major issue and I’d like to get it resolved ASAP!
VERY interested in this kind of thinking. So far I’m pretty happy with it, one thing I am used to from other RSS apps is that they can mark things as read as I scroll past them.
1 Like
That’s one of the things I was wondering about:
Do you need to make a decision on every single entry in Current? And if you don’t, you’ll see it again at your next visit, if it’s not expired yet?
That would mean more instead of less “work” compared to regular RSS readers (like Reeder, which I currently use).
I currently (happily) use News Explorer but I found the idea of a slowly disappearing stream intriguing. After a few days of playing with it (mostly on Mac), there are a few things that for now will make me stay with News Explorer:
- No thumbnails. Many of my feeds have thumbnails that make it much easier to visually assess if a post is worth reading.
- I have quite a few feeds (e.g., Reddit) for which News Explorer shows me in the sidebar all the comments that have been posted. That makes it easier to decide to react to a post or not.
- Small font. It’s tiny. Even at 140%, which seems to be the max. Very hard to read for me.
- Color schemes are all very subdued. Even “bright” is very soft colors with little contrast, which—combined with the small font—doesn’t make for a pleasant reading experience, at least for me.
- I actually found the Sift mode much more useful than the River. And the black used for the titles seems darker than the one used in River view.
- Save, Release, Next buttons in Sift’s upper right corner didn’t do anything.
2 Likes
no, things will flow out of the river according to their source velocity (which you can configure, but the app tries to make a reasonable guess for you). or you can long press on the “river” in the nav bar to release all, or release all read. the goal is almost NO work required.
A lot of people have asked for thumbnails on the river but it was a deliberate choice. However, since a lot of people have asked, I’m prototyping (on test flight) a toggle in settings to add them to the river. They’re always available in voices, but maybe also in River for some folks.
Comments is very interesting. Honestly, it never occurred to me to integrate this. But the latest release now has a comments button that will at least take you to the comments on the website if they’ve marked them up appropriately.
Font size adjustments have been updated in latest release and now take effect instantly across the entire app. I’ve made them even larger, for you Note that it is based on your dynamic type settings at the OS level.
I can add a more powerful bold theme for folks who want it. That’s easy peasy work.
I love sift mode, too! But boy does it feel a little like productivity
I will fix the sift buttons on macos, that’s a bug I was unware of. Thank you for reporting!
2 Likes
I love the concept and may try it anyway, but as a completionist I have FOMO. Lol. Most of my feeds are people and I like hearing what they have to say. I don’t mind having a backlog of posts I guess is what I’m trying say. But anyone who keeps RSS alive is a hero. So kudos!
It is a beautiful website, and I like the intention behind it. My workflow is more of a triage from (new)Reeder to Chrome to Obsidian using the clipper, so this isn’t for me until I decide to change that, but it does look nice.
I just want to say: curse this thread and these great products for making me reconsider my reading management approach again. Current looks super cool, and I had no idea News Explorer had comments in-app.
I keep trying to forget because never read the comments. 
2 Likes
Yeah, it can be extremely painful based on what subreddit you’re in…
1 Like
I like a lot of these ideas but the UI is closer to NNW than I thought it would be, in practice. Voices are feeds, the individual rivers are sections, you tap items to read. It’s two pane with the third pane only showing sometimes.
I challenge @metroid to make reading in Current feel like reading his landing page!
Also, an idea to improve onboarding: when you import OPML from another reader, you’re dumping a lot of previously read items and the order is strange since Current timestamps them to the crawl after the OPML import. I would timestamp to the publication date to create a more organic river of news.
And, it could be nice to ask the user if they want everything unread, or if they’re already mostly caught up with this OPML in the other app. If they’re caught up, crawl the feeds and make a river of a handful of recent items, so they can experience Current without having to re-read too much.
(If only it were customary for OPML to include the read/unread state of individual feeds’ items…)
6 Likes
Seriously. My blood pressure was 20 points lower by the time I got to the end. Almost as good as petting a dog.
2 Likes