The new version of Reeder is out and it is glorious.

Reeder is by far the most used app on my phone. It’s been my go to RSS feed reeder since 2011 and I’m pretty sure it was one of the first apps I bought for my iPhone, after switching from Android that year.

Like most app addicts, I’ve tried a LOT of RSS readers and services over the years, but I always came back to Reeder as my app of choice. It’s beautiful, well thought out, and rock solid.

When I saw the developer of Reeder post about a beta version of a new version of Reeder this year, I immediately volunteered for the TestFlight. It turned out it was a completely re-thought out model and approach for the app, which I honestly didn’t understand at first and was hesitant to put it through the paces.

Then a little over a month ago, I decided to give it a go after the developer added an OPML import function, which would allow me to add all of my feeds to the app. Since then, I’ve been using it 100% of the time for reading RSS, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Micro.blog… as well as my YouTube subscriptions and (most recently) my podcasts.

Beyond the app design (still top notch and beautiful) and usability, the new Reeder has some great perks and solves a few issues for me:

  1. Unread counts = anxiety inducing and for no good reason. NONE of what I have in there is life ending if I miss it… even though I enjoy following most all of it.
  2. With the downfall of Twitter and social media spreading out to places like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Micro.blog there are a lot of apps and feeds to browse. It’s a chore to keep up with them… and all three of those have taken a back seat at one point or another this year. One app, one feed is glorious. The timeline sync keeps me tethered so I don’t re-read things I’ve already seen — it’s all pretty seamless.
  3. Turns out, Reeder is pretty good for watching video AND (at least through my testing over the last 24 hours) listening to podcasts. There are dedicated views for Video and Audio, which also tracks what I’ve seen so it’s easy to keep up with what I want to watch and read. I’m hoping this can replace my podcast app too, as I’m starting to realize that app is another inbox that feels unwieldily and a chore to maintain.
  4. Low Maintenance - no marking items as read, deleting un-listened podcast episodes from a queue, or anything else really. I REALLY like the low to no maintenance aspect of the app. If I don’t happen to see something in my feed, I can either rely on serendipity of it showing again some time OR I can browse specific feeds or services to do a deep dive if I really need to…

With that said, there are some things I’d like to see added like the ability to reply natively within the app, the ability to set up your own custom feeds (like Audio and Video), and more services (maybe Instagram and Threads?)

I get that this app won’t be for everyone, but if any of this speaks to you, I couldn’t recommend Reeder more.