Reeder 5 Review by MacSparky

Software
#1

@MacSparky Just posted WHY I’M SWITCHING TO REEDER 5 on his website. Others have also been singing the praises of Reeder 5. I paid for the Mac version and I must confess that I don’t see the utility of the app. Maybe I’m missing something, but:

  1. I don’t see where Reeder 5 will manage the feeds. It seems that you still need something like Feedly or Feed Wrangler or Inoreader to bring in the feeds. I still needed to connect it to my Inoreader account. David implied that he could get rid of Feed Wrangler, which he used with Unread and Instapaper, since Reeder 5 could replace all these.
  2. I don’t see any way to sort the folders but alphabetical. I have certain order that I want to read, and it is NOT alphabetical. I need a manual sort function.

Just for these 2 reasons, I cannot see switching from Inoreader, which I have used for a long time. As I said, I would like to be corrected if I’m wrong, but, for now, I’ll stick with Inoreader.

Tony

3 Likes
#3
#4

Re your Number 1 point … in Accounts, add a local feed “On My Mac” or on IOS “On my iPhone”. They don’t sync, though.

I’ve found Reeder very useful for many years.

#5

I have reeder manage the feeds through iCloud. (it has options for that for both read it later and feeds)

On my iOS devices I have “don’t fetch on this iPhone/iPad” set, and my mac is set to fetch the feed data every 15 minutes. (can be adjusted in settings)
This makes syncing very fast and saves on data used.

#6

Thanks for this. It seems to take care of #1. As for #2, I imported an OPML from Inoreader. Reeder imported them as Unread and it looks like the folders are in the same order as they were there. I marked them all as Read (which they were in Inoreader) and the folders disappeared. I assume Reeder hides folders with no unread messages.

I’ll play with it for a few days and see how it goes. It looks like it might work out.

#7

That’s an option you can toggle in Reeder to show Starred, Unread, or All.

#8

Long as I got you here…

Is there any way to import starred items in Reeder? Inoreader creates a json file, but I don’t see a way to get it into Reeder, either as a starred item or into read later.

Thanks.

#9

Inoreader is a supported account in Reeder-won’t that work?

#10

It would, but I’m trying to get away from having to maintain another service.

#11

I believe Reeder only imports OPML files, so if Inoreader has that export option, you are good. If not, add the Inoreader account to Reeder, then export that out as OPML, then import that back into Reeder as an iCloud feed.

#12

I did that initially to set up my feeds. However, Inoreader only exports starred items as json.

#13

With V5, you can manage the feeds through iCloud, which I’ve been doing without trouble. I’m still not sure about whether or not to give up on Instapaper. There’s a lot to like about it.

3 Likes
#14

As I use Reeder, I understand that there are things it can do that I didn’t see at first. Feeds is one of them. But then you weigh what it does with what your current system does and you ask yourself if it can be a replacement. For you, that’s whether it can become a replacement for Instapaper. For me, it’s whether it can replace Inoreader.

You often talk about “muscle memory.” I’ve been using Inoreader for so long that it’s become second nature. I would rather see it come out with a Mac app, but I don’t see using the web site as much of a drawback. I mostly use it in iOS and the web site is much the same, so I don’t see that as a major drawback.

Since I bought Reeder, I’ll keep it around and try it from time to time. But, for daily use, I’m going to stay with Inoreader.

#15

I left Inoreader a few weeks ago because I do not like how it formats newsletters and twitter posts. Nowadays, my RSS reader is equally a newsletter and Twitter reader.

I’m using Feedbin now, and like it. A deceptively powerful service.

#16

I’ve stopped using Inoreader for Twitter and for newsletters.

Twitter: I would only get the post from the person I was following and not the tweets that led up to it. I follow a few tech people and I’d get something like, “I do” or “you just have to tweak the settings”. This is meaningless if you don’t know the context leading up to the answer. I’m not sure that this is the fault of Inoreader, but maybe of the way tweets are set up. This just occurred to me, but it would be a help if you could jump from the tweet in Inoreader to the tweet in Twitter, either online or via an app. Either way, though, it just seems impractical.

Newsletters: I’d get the newsletters into Inoreader, but I still get them in the email. I think this is not the fault of Inoreader either, but of the way the rules are structured, especially in Apple Mail. I’d go into my iCloud account, but the rule would only give you one step…forward to xxxx@inoreader.com. You need another step to tell it to then move the email to the trash. There’s no option for that 2nd step. Maybe there’s another means to get newsletter into a central location out of email. I asked one of my newsletter providers if they could set up an address other than the account address only for newsletters. They said you could only have one address linked to the account. I think this should be a simple addition and is something that services that provide newsletter are going to have to consider. I don’t know if any of the other read-it-later services (e.g. Instapaper or Pocket) can handle forwarded newsletters, but it would be handy.

Tony

#17

Regarding Twitter: IIRC that’s one of the reasons I prefer Feedbin. You can set it out exclude @replies from Twitter accounts you follow.

Regarding newsletters: I have most of my emails sent to Gmail and then marked read, forwarded to Feedbin, and removed from the inbox. Feedbin provides a single email address for receiving newsletters, and it automatically generates separate feeds for each newsletter. With Inoreader, if you want separate feeds you need to send to different email addresses, which is painful to configure in Gmail.

There are a couple of newsletters I send directly to Feedbin, because the messages never arrive at Gmail. I haven’t run into a problem sending newsletters directly to Feedbin. I just change my email address for the newsletter provider, setting up a separate account at the email sender where that is necessary.

#18

Reeder has been my staple for as long as I can remember. I’d say 90% there with the remaining 10% of parts that can be improved such as better rendering of images, layouts, etc (reminds me I need to check if I’ve optimised the settings for this).

One of the true gems of the Apple ecosystem.

2 Likes
#19

On the subject of Reeder 5’s settings, has anyone discovered a way to edit or delete the tags that the user can create in the Read Later account? I reached out to Silvio on this, but haven’t heard anything back yet.

#20

I know this is more a desktop review, but I have noticed something on iOS (Reeder 5) that is driving me crazy. It could be feed-related and not something to do with Reeder itself but it’s annoying.

If I click on a source and go to a list of articles, each article often has a little thumbnail image included. I’ve noticed lately in Reeder that clicking an article – removes said image.

So right now if I scroll to “The Verge” there is an article in the list with the title “Amazon Adds 720p streaming to its Luna cloud gaming service to include stability”. Then off to the right there is a small image. When I click the article itself and go to read it, I have it set to expand all text in the settings of Reeder to save me clicking to the article. But in this screen – no image.

It’s amazing how often I click on an article in the list view because I want to look at a larger copy of the image, only to find no image in the post.