I’ve been experimenting with Tiny Tiny RSS for a couple of weeks now, to figure out if I’m done with Fever RSS. Part of it is that Fever runs on a Digital Ocean VPS and I’d like to reduce the load on that server as much as possible.

I run TT-RSS on my home PC and get access to it using ZeroTier wherever I am. My app of choice for it on the move is Fiery Feeds. It’s a beautiful app with an amazing, rich feature set. But the main reason I use it is because Reeder doesn’t natively support TT-RSS.

But, I’m learning that I’m set in my ways. the TT-RSS web app feels just as dated as Fever, and there are some features in Fever that I really enjoyed, which I miss in TT-RSS. Since I’m looking at two dated, self-hosted RSS readers, why not go with the one I’ve used more?

Also, Fiery Feeds is gorgeous, but it’s not Reeder. Reeder is familiar and cozy. It’s got matured syncing and great UX. Fiery Feeds comes close, but there are some things which are just irksome, such as the way it opens up articles as a pop up. The cadence of Reeder’s panes is just beautiful to work with.

Today I learnt that Reeder 4 has been out since April 25th. At an absurd cross-device cost of $5, it’s a steal for all the features Reeder gives you.

But here’s the flip side – I only use Fever (and now TT-RSS) and while TT-RSS has a plug-in for Fever, I’m more inclined to just use Fever. Which means I have no space for using any other paid or free RSS reader service. So I’m really restricted in what I’m doing with Reeder. Further, though I’ve started using Instapaper as my read later solution, I’ve never really understood the point of using Reeder for Instapaper. It’s fine to skim through, but wouldn’t you rather use the Instapaper apps to read the content? For me, the highlighting and notes functionality of Instapaper is essential. How does one ignore that to read content on Reeder?

Lastly, there’s the demise of Mercury. Mercury has been my savior in this mess of RSS feeds. My TT-RSS installation has a Mercury plugin that cleans up and extracts content from the feeds. It really just works, and since they’ve made it open source and unavailable as an API, Reeder is bound to suffer. Reeder 4 is now experimenting with something called Bionic Reading and it’s a hit or miss. We’ll see.

So here it is –

1. I’m tired of TT-RSS and untired of Fever (for now).

2. I love Reeder 3 and Reeder 4 is ridiculously cheap for an upgrade. I have an older iPad Pro, so Reeder 3 works really well for me. But buying 4 means supporting Rizzi in the amazing work he’s doing.

3. Fiery Feeds is awesome and pretty and useful, but I don’t pay for the subscription, so I don’t get to use the fancy automatic folders that it creates.

4. RIP Mercury

5. I really want to get my RSS feed reader off the VPS and onto my local setup, secured and made accessible through ZeroTier.

How many people reading this have already bought Reeder 4?

How is it?

Have you used Bionic Reading?

Which RSS reader service do you use it with?

Do you read Instapaper articles on Reeder 4? How is that experience?