Personal productivityOriginal Reddit post
What do you think of News Explorer (news reader)?
I did some research for a new newsreader. And considering the features and price, News Explorer appears to be an attractive choice. MAS: €10, directly €12 (yep...) I want something local and a non-subscription app. It also needs to cover Reddit and Youtube. I don't need AI summaries. Does anyone here have experience with NE? Do all features work properly? Are there new newsreaders meanwhile that are even better than NE?
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I have been using News Explorer for a few years now. It's a solid app that does exactly what it is supposed to do. It is nothing groundbreaking or outstanding, but it is simple and reliable, and it feels native to Mac. I usually recommend that people looking for a macOS newsreader try NetNewsWire first, as it's open source and free. However, if that does not work for them for whatever reason, News Explorer is usually the best option, especially given its fair pricing and regular updates.
🙏 Yes, I used NNW, but I want something better now.
I have been using News Explorer for a few years. I think it's the most solid newsreader available. You won't regret purchasing it.l
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Yeah, I've been using for years as well, it's very good. The ability to add reddit, youtube, bluesky and other feeds make it worthwhile in my opinion.
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News Explorer is the GOAT. It doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. If you’re going to use it on a Mac and iPhone, I recommend setting the Mac app as a server (it will pull the news and upload them to iCloud), while the phone will work in client mode and download changes from iCloud only. This way, you won’t need to wait for a long time while the feeds are refreshing. News Explorer can do it all. Two different feed parsers (I prefer Arc90 most of the time) are lifesavers since not all websites manage their feeds properly. It even allows you to make notes and read comments left on the articles.
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For me the main advantage of News Explorer is that it handles the boring parts well: feed discovery, folders, unread counts, full-text view, iCloud sync, and a clean native UI. Reddit works as RSS feeds, and YouTube channels can be followed too, so it fits that “one place for everything” use case better than some simpler readers. I would still keep expectations realistic. It is not a revolutionary app, and some sites with broken/limited RSS will always be annoying in any reader. But if you want local-first, no subscription, no AI layer, and something more polished
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As a former user of Inoreader and Feedly, I got tired of the rising prices each time I had to renew. I didn't need the AI and other fancy bells and whistles everyone was putting in their solutions. I tried literally every RSS app out there. I wanted something that would work on Mac and iOS, support Reddit feeds and YouTube channels, and have integration in the browser or be able to share to the app to subscribe to new RSS feeds. When I finally found News Explorer, I couldn't believe I had missed out on using it all this time. It's a great product, and I'm a very happy user. I recommend it to RSS geeks that still want one place to get all of their content in one place.
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I use it for a few years. It's reliable and without any useless bells and whistles. It has everything you need to structure your favorite feeds as you want without clutter. Highly recommend.
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It’s a solid app, but I use feeeed instead. The latter has built-in article summarization, and handles comments better (for Reddit)
Just tried Feeeed. Well, I prefer News Explorer. To say the least 😎
Thanks! Will try Feeeed (free) as well. edit: MAS states: "Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS." But apparently this is not a problem?
Longtime user here, best I’ve found.
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New to me - probably worth it for this feature alone: https://betamagic.nl/images/news_explorer_featurette_02_07.jpg
That's indeed something!
Thanks for all the comments! Bought it 🤝
As a long time user of a Reeder app (mac/iphone/ipad), I thank you for showing me something new to try out :)
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The strongest pattern in this thread is that people are not looking for a revolutionary RSS app. They want something native, reliable, local-first, and fairly priced. The comments about rising Feedly/Inoreader prices and not needing AI summaries are useful signals: for this category, boring reliability seems to beat feature inflation.