Current - RSS Feed Reader

I love this concept and want to love the app so much, but my initial take is that it’s kind of a mess. The feature of setting different article lifespans for different feeds is great, except when you go change the lifespan for a feed and then hit save, nothing gets saves, so there doesn’t seem to be any way to *use* the feature. I clicked something that opened an article preview pane, which is nice, but then there’s no way to close it - the entire control disappears! - and I was stuck until I figured out that “sift mode” under the view menu really means “hide preview pane.” Basically - awesome thinking - please be a little less clever in the UI so users aren’t left scratching their heads wondering how to do what they want. And how do I actually change article lifespans? Because that’s one of the main things that attracted me to this, so it is a bummer to have paid my ten bucks and find it just isn’t there anywhere I can find it.

Current has become my preferred RSS reader. I love the reading pane, with its clean format, large readable fonts, and nice integration of text and images. It took me a few weeks to get used to Current’s method of managing feeds, but it’s working smoothly for me now. I have a few minor issues; I wish Current kept track of my position in the Voices sidebar, instead of returning me to the top of the list after reading an article. But overall, this is a great app!

Current has become my preferred RSS reader. I love the reading pane, with its clean format, large readable fonts, and nice integration of text and images. It took me a few weeks to get used to Current’s method of managing feeds, but it’s working smoothly for me now. I have a few minor issues; I wish Current kept track of my position in the Voices sidebar, instead of returning me to the top of the list after reading an article. But overall, this is a great app!

This app has been a game changer for me. I have been so stressed with other RSS apps, feeling like it was homework to keep track of all those new posts. In the end I just did abandon the app. With this app I don’t have that issue at all, I love the concept of “currents” and “river”, and when the river sleeps, it feels liberating to me. It is very clever and innovative and I highly recommend it for anyone that has felt stressed with RSS apps in the past.

The inoreader support. The app stops syncing after only a few days and I have to keep logging in.

Imagine yourself relaxing on a golden sand bar along the bank of a meandering river, sun shining down on your face, the gentle rustle of tall meadow grass in the distance. A tree branch floats by, bandied about by the current, green and yellow leaves swirl past, an occasional raft or kayak navigates the waterway. You glance up and watch them pass in and out of existence, resonating in your mind like a plucked guitar string fading into the wind. This is how information should be consumed. Own your attention again.

Within the first few minutes of using this app I accidentally dismissed two different articles in two different ways. One by tapping an icon above the story, an icon with a totally mysterious design and function, so I tried it and poof, story gone. Another I accidentally swiped in the list, and again it's gone. That swiped does display a label by the icon that's revealed during the swipe but it's light font on a light background so I can barely read it. No undo. And no history of read stories that I can see. Also you can only browser the stories in the feed through a thin strip on the margin wasting the rest of the screen real estate. It's just not a great experience. How about you make that a little wider add a photo or something from the article? Shame on me for buying an app that the dev doesn't even let the customer try out first. I'm a sucker.

In over 20 years of smartphone ownership, this singularly the best app I have ever installed. Online content can easily become overwhelming, in both speed and volume. That feeling has only grown over time as we’ve moved from blogs, news, forums to social media. I’d love to see the “currrents” approach available on social media apps. Even decentralized social media, like Mastodon, can still give you a sense of endless scrolling to catch up on what you think you missed. FOMO is a real problem. For now, my RSS feeds have become more human. More sane.

Originally I had this at five stars, because it is awesome. And while that is true, it could really use filters for me to fine tune my sources. The app has these weird overly general suggestions like “you skipped the last several stories about Apple,” but I really just want to stop seeing the Apple TV, Apple Music, and Apple Watch stories from that source (as an example). Some sources cover a bunch of subjects, but I really just want one or two of them. I can filter very well on Bluesky, so I tend to not use Current nearly as much.

The reading view does not respond correctly to taps at the top, which should cause the article to scroll to the top. The custom webview looks nice with its custom toolbar, but since the app needs to open a standard webview in order to display Safari Reader mode, there seems little point in not just opening the standard webview in the first place. Also, the custom webview doesn't support magnification.

I’ve finally found an RSS reader that seems perfectly okay with my tendency to just nope out of online life now and then. I don’t feel overwhelmed by unread stories. I can just hop in and vibe with the flow. This is a news aggregator that just sorta rolls with my flakiness. In the best way.

I know from the title, this may sound like it should be a mediocre review. This is not a mediocre app, it is an exceptional one. It promises a uncluttered, simplified RSS reader, and it delivers. Before I adopted this app, I used Reeder, itself a fine RSS reader. But, the unread count, and that I let it climb bugged me. I was drawn to the app to zero out that count way too often. Having a RSS reader that does not shove an unread count in your face is refreshing. Calming, even. I can read items in my feed, or not, as I choose. There are improvements that could be made. Things like the APOD feed, it could be easier and more consistent to load the web page for the feed itself. I have not managed to get the keystrokes for previous artcle/next article to work, and I’m not sure if the problem is me, or the app. I like the three-paned view, but I think that won’t show up if the window is too narrow. These are nits though, small things that I think could be done better by an app with a simple mission, that executes brilliantly.