RSS feeds are the ultimate power user tool for keeping up with the news, and power users can’t stand clumsy software.
If you have a Mac, that means the best choice is a native macOS RSS reader. Sure, you could use a web-based RSS app to keep up with your feeds, but they’re going to be slow and clunky compared to an actual Mac app—which is probably why there are so many Mac RSS apps on the market.
For the past few years, I’ve been testing every macOS RSS app I can get my hands on. Most of them are…not great. A few stand out, though, so here are the three best RSS readers for Mac.
The best RSS readers for Mac
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Reeder for the best design
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lire for the ultimate offline RSS reader
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NetNewsWire for a free RSS reader for Mac
What makes the best RSS feed reader for Mac?
How we evaluate and test apps
Our best apps roundups are written by humans who’ve spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. Unless explicitly stated, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it’s intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We’re never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.
I live in my RSS reader. I’m a full-time journalist and blogger, meaning I need to keep up on what’s happening—and RSS is how I do that. I’ve also reviewed software in general, and Mac software in particular, for over a decade.
For this review, I only considered traditional RSS readers—that is, apps that allow you to add any RSS feed you want. News apps that don’t allow this, like Apple News, weren’t considered. Neither were apps that don’t offer a full reading experience, such as browser extensions or menu bar widgets.
With that in mind, the best Mac RSS readers:
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Offer offline reading. An RSS reader runs faster if articles are downloaded before you start reading, and it’s also nice to be able to read without an internet connection.
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Can pull in the full text of an article. Many feeds don’t offer up the entire article. The best RSS apps can pull in the text using a parsing tool like Mercury Reader, allowing you to read the article without any clutter.
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Offer custom keyboard shortcuts. The whole point of RSS readers is speed, and nothing slows you down more than having to use your mouse. You should be able to jump between articles, copy a link, and do most anything else using just the keyboard—and you should be able to set things up just the way you like.
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Offer syncing. Reading feeds works best on a Mac, sure, but sometimes you’re on your phone. Syncing means you can catch up with your feeds while you’re on the go. Syncing with a third-party service like Feedly is a plus for cross-platform users, but native syncing using iCloud also works for Apple users.
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Offer a native macOS interface. A web app isn’t good enough, and neither is a ported iPad app. I only considered native apps for this list.
I update this article every year, searching the web for new Mac RSS apps to highlight and testing every one that meets my criteria. This year, I considered 20 apps and tested nine of them. The same apps came out on top as last year, which is to be expected: they’re all so good that nothing else comes close. Here they are.
The best RSS readers for Mac at a glance
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Best for |
Standout feature |
Pricing |
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|---|---|---|---|
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Reeder |
Design and user experience |
Extensive customizable keyboard shortcuts |
$9.99 |
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lire |
An offline option |
Pulls in the full text of all articles by default |
$9.99 |
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NetNewsWire |
A free option |
Does all the basics (and a lot of non-basics) |
Free |
The best RSS reader for Mac for its design
Reeder (macOS, iOS)
Reeder pros:
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Beautiful macOS user interface
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Extensive customizable keyboard shortcuts
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Various syncing options, including with read-it later apps
Reeder cons:
Reeder is beautiful. That’s self-evident in the screenshot above: the typography, the semi-transparent left panel, and the layout all draw the eye quickly. What I love, though, are the small touches that aren’t obvious in a single screenshot.
The app has three panels, like most RSS apps: feeds on the left, a list of articles in the middle, and the current article on the right. But unlike any other app I tested, Reeder will hide panels depending on how big the current window is. This means you can shrink the window to the side of your screen to only see the current article, which is ideal if you’re taking notes in another window. It’s a small thing, sure, and one that some users will never notice. There are so many little touches like this, which is what makes Reeder great.
None of this would matter, of course, if the reading experience wasn’t also great. It is. Articles are downloaded for offline reading, and you can even opt to keep weeks or months of read articles on your machine for future reference. There’s support for pulling in the full text for any article using a keyboard shortcut or button. You can even configure Reeder to grab the full text of any feed by default.
And there are more customization options. Every single keyboard shortcut can change, for example, and you can also set keys to quickly share articles on apps like Messages or Pocket. You can also set up touchpad gestures.
Syncing is well-supported. There’s a native iCloud syncing feature, which you can use to sync directly to Reeder on other Macs or any iOS device. Or, if you prefer, you can sync to every RSS service you’ve heard of and a few that you haven’t: Feedbin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler, FeedHQ, NewsBlur, The Old Reader, Inoreader, BazQux Reader, FreshRSS, and Reader. There’s also support for syncing from two of the best read it later apps, Pocket and Instapaper, meaning you can use Reeder for all of your reading if you want to.
I could go on much, much longer than this, but I’ll leave it at this: Reeder is, far and away, the best RSS app I found for Mac.
Reeder price: $9.99 (one-time purchase)
The best offline RSS reader for Mac
lire (macOS, iOS)
lire pros:
lire cons:
Most RSS feeds offer a headline and a small snippet of the article—not the full text. The other applications on this list can pull in the full text of any article using third-party scripts, but only lire has a built-in engine for the job. Even better, full-text versions of all articles aren’t just an option—they’re the default. This makes lire the ultimate offline RSS app, because you can read the complete text of every article in your feed without any sort of internet connection—all without the need to configure anything on your end. The result, even if you’re online, is a lightning-fast reading experience.
You can sync via iCloud to other devices running lire, or you can sync to web services, including BazQux Reader, Feed Wrangler, Feedbin, FeedHQ, Feedly, FreshRSS, Inoreader, Miniflux, NewsBlur, Nextcloud News, The Old Reader, and Tiny Tiny RSS. Lire also offers a few features I’ve never seen in an RSS reader, like the ability to browse articles by author (you can even pin your favorite authors) and the ability to export any article as an eBook file.
If you do most of your reading offline, check out lire first. It will work just the way you want out of the box. It’s not quite as customizable (or pretty) as Reeder, granted, but it’s the best app for reading RSS feeds offline.
lire price: $9.99 (one-time purchase)
The best free RSS reader for Mac
NetNewsWire (macOS, iOS)
NetNewsWire pros:
NetNewsWire cons:
Some free apps are just good enough. NetNewsWire isn’t one of them. This application, for most people, is going to work just as well as either Reeder or lire, and it does that while being completely free. That’s worth noticing.
You might have the impression that NetNewsWire stopped existing sometime in the early 2010s, and to be fair, it wasn’t actively maintained for a few years. In the past couple years, though, the app has been totally overhauled and revived. It’s by far the best free RSS reader for macOS.
It fits right in on the modern macOS desktop. The user interface is modern, there’s support for offline reading, and you can pull in the full-text version of any article. And there are a few features not available in other apps: there are custom themes, for example, which you can create yourself or download online. You can sync to Macs and iOS devices running NetNewsWire via iCloud, and there’s also support for syncing to third-party services like BazQux, Feedbin, Feedly, Inoreader, NewsBlur, The Old Reader, and FreshRSS.
If you’re not sure which app to use, start with NetNewsWire. There’s a good chance you won’t find any reason to switch.
NetNewsWire price: Free
A few other options
The above three apps cover just about every type of user who wants RSS for Mac, but here are a few more things to try if none of them are quite what you’re looking for.
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This list only included native macOS apps, but you could use a web service in your browser, like a Safari RSS reader. Check out Zapier’s list of the best free web-based RSS readers to learn more.
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RSS Bot is a free menu bar app for quickly keeping up with headlines. It’s light on features, sure, but great if you just want to see headlines and click on a couple occasionally.
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Vienna is another free and open source option that dates back to the 2000s. I find it clunky, but you might disagree. Try it if NetNewsWire isn’t right for you.
Automate your RSS feeds
With Zapier, you can automate your RSS feeds to automatically send things to your feed or turn feeds into emails, social posts, or chat messages. Here’s how to make your own RSS superfeed and how to automate your RSS feeds—or you can get started with one of these pre-made workflows.
Zapier is a no-code automation tool that lets you connect your apps into automated workflows, so that every person and every business can move forward at growth speed. Learn more about how it works.
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This article was originally published in September 2021, and the most recent update was in August 2024.
