Top Mac RSS News Feed Readers

Get news and updates without jumping all over the web

By
Heinz Tschabitscher
Heinz Tschabitscher
Heinz Tschabitscher
Writer
  • University of Vienna
A former freelance contributor who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997.
lifewire's editorial guidelines
Updated on April 5, 2020

RSS readers enable you to directly follow people and sites without the clutter of social media and slowness of some websites.

While not all of the readers below are free, we feel these are the best ones for you to use on your Mac.

Long-time Mac users might remember than an RSS reader used to be jammed into OS X’s mail app, but it was pretty lousy and has thankfully been removed. It was then added to Safari, but that too has been removed.

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NetNewsWire - Mac RSS Feed Reader

A screenshot of NetNewsWire.
What We Like

  • Fast

  • Free

  • Lots of keyboard shortcuts

  • Available for Mac and iOS

What We Don't Like

  • Fewer features than some other apps

  • Doesn’t work with many sync services

NewNewsWire has quite a history on the Mac from a single developer, to being purchased by a small company, to finally being set free as open source (Simmonds is lead developer, but it's now developed by a large group of contributors) and as a free application. Icing on the cake is its companion app for iOS is as first-class as it is on the Mac

Lead by developer Brent Simmons, who is “Mac” through and through, NetNewsWire is a feature-light app that’s fast and gets the job (in a way that you appreciate the more you use it).

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ReadKit

Screenshot of ReadKit
What We Like

  • Customizable

  • Combines Read Later services as well as RSS

What We Don't Like

  • Few major changes in years

  • Not free

The major features of ReadKit is the ability to save articles for offline reading. If you think you’ll without internet service for a while, you can download stories to read until you are back online.

Customizable and the ability to read offline make it a good choice if those features are at the top of your list.

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