Friday, August 25, 2017

Freebie Friday - QuiteRSS

Dedicated RSS readers have fallen out of favor with the rise of online applications like Feedly and Inoreader, but they remain excellent ways to keep up with your favorite blogs, websites and other content producers.

I've been using an online service for some time now. I used the popular Google Reader until it ceased operation and moved to my current online reader. However, my concern over online privacy continues to grow. I decided to download and try out a native client for the first time in many years. I tried the built in readers for both ClawsMail and Thunderbird and was less than pleased. Neither were intuitive and were sort of tough to set up without email, which I have not switched yet, nor do I wish to set up. They might be fine for email + RSS, but they are not so good for stand-alone RSS.

I finally landed on the free and open source QuiteRSS. What an awesome RSS reader. I am once again an advocate of desktop RSS readers. I'll be paring down my online account for phone and tablet use and will be using QuiteRSS.
It's a full featured RSS reader with a built in browser (with ad-block built in!). You have the option of opening items in frame, in a new tab or in your default browser with a simple right click. You can also block images and flash content if you want.

It is cross-platform - It works on Macs, Windows, Linux, BSD and as a portable app.

Set up is absolutely painless. I downloaded a OPML/XML file of my subscriptions from my online reader, imported the file to QuiteRSS and like magic it appeared, ready to read.

The tool-bars are highly configurable and intuitive. They are also attractive.

Filtering and sorting is great. You also have the ability to save and tag posts. Of course, there is also a search function.

QuiteRSS minimizes to the systray and has various notifications for new items.

That said, there are a few caveats with QuiteRSS. It crashes with videos occasionally. Since the Google's latest censorship rage, many content creator's videos have been blocked to anonymous viewers, making it impossible to watch them without signing in. You can't sign in to Google on the internal browser and I'm not sure I want to. For those, I'll probably stick to my online service since Google is getting my viewing information anyway. (Yes, Google Overlords, I like Linux videos on YouTube. I'm not sure why my favorite Linux guy got stuck with an "adult content" label.)

Check out QuiteRSS! You won't regret it.

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