8 Reliable RSS Readers for Your iPhone
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8 Reliable RSS Readers for Your iPhone

on December 31st 2009

Although Twitter is fast becoming one of the best ways to find out when your favourite sites are updated, RSS still has a major role to play. Many of us subscribe to a number of different news feeds to easily keep track of various websites easily.

The iPhone offers the perfect mobile platform for reading news on-the-go, and a number of different RSS apps are available – either for free, or for a small fee. We’ll be focusing mainly upon RSS readers that sync with Google Reader, as it seems to have become a popular central point for managing a set of RSS feeds.

Byline

Byline

Byline

Byline is a highly regarded RSS reader that fully syncs two-way with Google Reader, and also allows you to download items for offline reading (including their inline media). It organises feeds well and has a simple interface for browsing different articles.

I’d definitely recommend this as a reliable solution if you’re happy to fork over a few dollars.

Price: $3.99
Developer: Phantom Fish
Download: App Store

Reeder

Reeder

Reeder

Recommended by a number of our readers on Twitter, Reeder is a great looking solution for reading the news. It supports Google Reader syncing, and you can easily share articles to Delicious/Twitter, or save them for later reading in Instapaper.

The user interface is the real selling point here, and I’d recommend taking a look at a few screenshots to decide whether it wins you over!

Price: $2.99
Developer: Reeder App
Download: App Store

NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire

Although NetNewsWire is still a popular desktop client for the Mac, the iPhone version hasn’t received quite the same warm welcome. Though I find it to be an excellent solution, others regularly note problems with syncing and performance.

It’s worth considering, and offers a simple solution that syncs well with the desktop counterpart via Google Reader.

Price: Free – $4.99
Developer: NewsGator
Download: App Store

Feeds

Feeds

Feeds

A slightly unimaginative name, but Feeds is a decent app for basic Google Reader syncing and news reading. It doesn’t have the polish of Byline, but the ability to fully manage (add/remove/edit) feeds is welcome.

There are a wide range of options for sharing or reading articles later, but I feel that the interface could use a little more thought and refinement.

Price: $3.99
Developer: Prime31
Download: App Store

Fever

Fever

Fever

Whenever I mention RSS solutions, I can’t help but come back to Fever. It’s a web based piece of software (that you need to host yourself), but offers a really different and useful way to organize feeds and pick out important stories.

It comes with a great iPhone user interface, but doesn’t quite have the responsiveness you’d hope for from a native app. Certainly worth checking out if you’re technically-minded and are happy to try something different.

Price: $30
Developer: Shaun Inman
Download: Via Feedafever.com

Newsstand

Newsstand

Newsstand

The defining feature of Newsstand is their interesting use of a newspaper rack as the interface for quickly skimming articles. This could be really appealing, or slightly off-putting, depending upon your taste. Theme support allows for even further customization of how the app looks.

The latest version has a faster sync option for Google Reader that doesn’t download every item – just the most recent for each group.

Price: $4.99
Developer: omz:software
Download: App Store

MobileRSS

MobileRSS

MobileRSS

Fast and comprehensive syncing is the key with MobileRSS, along with an interesting search feature to easily find an RSS feed to subscribe to. It also ticks all the boxes of sharing articles with others, or saving them for later through a service such as Instapaper.

A solid all-rounder, that comes in slightly cheaper than some of the other competing apps.

Price: $2.99
Developer: Nibirutech
Download: App Store

Google Reader

Google Reader

Google Reader for iPhone

If you’re happy to settle for a web application rather than a native piece of software, Google’s own iPhone optimized web app is a great place to start. It keeps improving with time, and gives you a simple interface to your RSS feeds and news.

Functionality remains fairly simple, and it doesn’t have many of the advanced options offered by dedicated iPhone apps.

Price: Free
Developer: Google
Available at: http://www.google.com/reader/i/

Conclusion

I hope that one of the above options seems suitable for your needs. They’re all good, and each excels in a different area. If I had to pick two to recommend, I would probably go for either Reeder or NetNewsWire – I’m sure you’d be happy with either.

I’d be interested to hear what your preference is, and whether you’re finding that RSS is becoming less important with tools such as Twitter. Feel free to let me know your thoughts!


  • http://macmylife.de Lukas

    RSS is the most important onlinetool, because its reliable, fast and easy to use. As a twitterer or on facebook you have to follow each site and you have to be online when they tweet the links, otherwise you won’t get them.
    With RSS the news come to you, on your iPhone and your desktop (Mac of course), and the news will stay there, whether you read them 5 seconds or 10 days after they arrived.

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  • Jen

    I started with the free NetNewsWire and quickly ditched it for Free RSS, which I much preferred the simple look. But alas, no instapaper or twitter, so I checked out and am still using MobileRSS which was free for a few days and is now back to 99¢. I like the layout, it’s easy to navigate and a pleasure to use. The icons are nice and it has both instapaper and twitter support (as well as readitlater/facebook/email.)

  • http://dzine-studios.com Dan

    I use Gazette- it’s simple and effective.

  • http://studio-qb.com quadzero

    Tried Newstand and Feeds, bought Byline for the offline reading/caching.

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  • David Browlowsky

    I have a google account and use NetNewsWire for Mac, I tried it’s iPhone free version but It has some performance issues. At the moment I am using smartRSS2 that has got a good performance, I can view my articles by channels, Top Articles and bookmark some of them for later reading, it supports Google Reader and syncs automatically with channels when I ADD/EDIT/Delete.
    Byline and Reeder are interesting too, I will give them a try.

    The feature that I am looking for at the moment is that when I read an article on a particular feed, I want it to be seen as “read” on my desktop NetNewsWire through the Google Reader.
    Twitter function seems necessary too.

    I would like also to mention that there is a NetNewsWire and Byline “lite” versions that are free in the Appstore.

  • http://www.twitter.com/sulcalibur Sulcalibur

    I use Newsstand and absolutely love it. I use Google Reader and this is awesome. I used to use Fever but the iPhone app sucked big time! If Fever incorporated Google Reader then I’d be as happy on my Mac as I am with Newsstand on my iPhone.

  • http://adrian-clement.com Adrian Clement

    I’ve been using Fever for the past couple of months on my Mac and I think it’s great (especially when it’s paired with Chill Pill) but I’ve been pretty disappointed by the iPhone web app. I find it really unresponsive, slow an often buggy. As a result I often take it off my phone. An actual iPhone app would be really nice, even if it’s 3rd party.

    • Valashtar

      Try Sunstroke! Native client for fever, supports Instapaper and other native iOS sharing methods! I’m loving it.

  • vballas

    I searched a lot the last week to find the right app and ended up with Reeder, by which I am very happy the first days of usage.
    I am happy to read here it is also one of the top choices!

  • http://azadcreative.com Saddam Azad

    Tried everything listed above and ended up falling in love with Reeder. Love the interface and the simplicity. The best RSS reader if you want GReader sync IMHO.

  • http://www.martinvaresio.com.ar Orfebre

    Mac problem to convert multiple files in Handbrake into iPod/iPhone suitable movie format

  • http://thinkbrief.com Mick Gill

    Google iPhone Apps are pretty Naff I think!

  • http://xanato.net maique

    are you joking with mobileRSS ?
    they just ripped reeder.

    http://reederapp.com/ripoff

  • http://enoda.co.uk Jack Griffiths

    Forget the rest of the review and download Reeder.

  • dorian_grey

    I really like iPhone AppStorm, but mentioning MobileRSS after their huge ripoff of Reeder is an enormous fail – especially well known blogs should stand their ground when it comes to plagiarism in the AppStore and defend the initial developer. Mentioning Reeder and MobileRSS in the same round-up is something you shouldnt do. I’m very disappointed!

  • http://magnetdownloads.com/ torrent

    I use Google Reader and absolutely love it.I am happy to read here it is also one of the top choices!

  • http://smokingdesigners.com evan

    you have forgot the best one, Pulse news.

  • http://www.mobilepornwebcams.com iPhone chat

    The iPhone offers the perfect mobile platform for reading news on-the-go, and a number of different RSS apps are available – either for free, or for a small fee.

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