Current - RSS Feed Reader

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.

This reader removes all the stress from following many feeds, it gives you control of what matters and somehow does that with very simple controls. This is a marvel of design (actual design: both how it looks and how it functions)

I can have various feeds that publish at wildly different cadences and for the first time not feel overwhelmed by the content I’ve chosen to subscribe to.

I really want to like this app but there are any issues with going to a webpage where videos on the webpage will just keep trying to open full screen and I can’t find a setting to actually disable these features.

A core function of a good RSS reader is its ability to fetch your feeds and this app is struggling to do that.