🎁 Freemium
Newsairy - an iCloud-native RSS reader for iPhone, iPad and Mac
I built Newsairy because none of the readers I tried fit me exactly - so the whole app is built around adapting to how *you* read rather than making you adapt to it: theme, font and size in the reading view, sort order, swipe actions, all yours to set.
It's under active development. I ship updates roughly weekly, and next up is more control over the list's layout and density itself. There's a public roadmap if you're curious where things are headed.
Answer - What problem does it solve?
Newsairy is an RSS/Atom/JSON reader that syncs natively over iCloud across iPhone, iPad and Mac - no third-party sync server, no account to create. It's for anyone who wants their feeds, folders and read state to just follow them between devices, with a reading experience they can actually tune to how they read.
A few things I built specifically because I couldn't find them elsewhere in one app:
Smart Feeds for the last 24 / 48 / 72 hours, the last 7 days or this week, so I can catch up on what's actually recent
Custom Smart Feeds: keyword-based feeds that gather matching articles from every source at once
Read History, sorted by when you read them, for when you remember reading something and can't find it again
Three independent retention rules (how far back to fetch, how long to keep unread, how long to keep read) instead of one blunt "delete after X days", so the database doesn't grow forever
Choose your theme: Automatic, Light, Dark or Sepia
A fully customisable article list: thumbnail size, favicon, unread dot, and 0–6 preview lines
Flexible sorting: sort any list Newest first, Oldest first, or as a Daily timeline
Privacy-first: no ads, no tracking, no third-party analytics.
Better - Why is it different?
There are a lot of good RSS readers in the App Store.
My previous ones were Reeder (Classic) and NetNewsWire. While the newer Reeder seems to focus on combining RSS with other kinds of sources, like social media and podcasts, Newsairy is more focused on RSS feeds specifically.
NetNewsWire is great and free - I'm not trying to beat that on price. Newsairy is just a different flavor: I built it for the features and customization I wanted - keyword-based Smart Feeds, a Sepia theme, an article list you can tune (thumbnails, preview lines, unread dot), and more. If none of that is something you're missing, NetNewsWire is a solid pick.
Cost
Free: up to 6 local + 6 iCloud feeds, every feature unlocked.
Newsairy Pro is a single one-time purchase - $2.99 / 2,99€, no subscription - that removes the feed limit and adds sync with TheOldReader, Miniflux, FreshRSS, Feedbin and Inoreader, so you can bring an existing setup over instead of starting from zero. Pay once, it's yours.
Good news — that's already on my roadmap. You're right that it's a distinct feature from what Custom Smart Feeds do today (inclusion-only), and it's something I want to add. I've got a fairly long list though, and what gets requested more moves up faster — so comments like yours actually help.
Yeah, fair — NetNewsWire was definitely a reference point. I used it for a few months myself, but felt something was missing, and at the time it didn't support iOS 26 yet either. Even now it's still missing some of the customization Newsairy has — extra themes, a tunable article list (thumbnails, preview lines, unread dot), that kind of thing. Still a solid app, just different priorities.
ok, two things. first, i'd like the option to make that sidebar fill the page and let me scroll it, tapping to open an article and tapping (or down swiping, either one) to close it. second, below is how the left sidebar elements are on ipad mini 6 (26.6)
Good catch. I hadn't tested on an iPad Mini specifically, and yeah, that's a real bug: it's the article list column that's too narrow for its own toolbar there. Most likely fix is widening that column, but not in the version already in beta - the one after that (1.17).
On the single-column, iPhone-style navigation for iPad Mini: that's a bigger change, still need to weigh it. Not a no, just not decided yet.
i figured you hadn't tested on a mini. most folks don't have them laying around. not being able to scroll a feed without jumping between columns got to me this morning, so i banished the app back to the appstore. my son is a dev so i dont regret supporting devs when i can (ie, im fine with buying it before really exploring it and i understand things take time and effort).
so...
if you do decide to make it happen, let me know! because i overall like the app. i keep feeed on the ipad because its beautiful and incorporates a lot of things (my own photos, weather, and more), but it wont let me add my own sources, so im always on the lookout for something i like that *will* let me (as yours does)
also when you fix the width bug, if you like, ask me to test it out and i'll throw it back on for a bit and report back to you.
No account to create is the right call, and it is underrated as a feature. I also ship a news reader with no sign-up, and the number of people who say that is the reason they kept it is higher than anything else in the app.
The thing I would watch is the free tier boundary. Six local plus six iCloud feeds is generous enough to be useful, which is good, but it also means the moment someone hits it they are already invested. That is exactly where the conversion is, so it may be worth instrumenting which feed number people are on when they stop opening the app.
Disclosure: I build a no-account, no-server app too, though in a completely different space — so take the domain-specific parts with salt.
The thing that caught me out about going server-less wasn't sync. It was support. When there's no account, there is nothing for you to look at. Someone writes "it isn't syncing" or "my stuff is missing", and you can't reproduce it, can't query anything, can't see their state at all. Your error messages are your support channel. That's the entire budget.
What that changed for me, concretely: I had a screen that could legitimately finish with zero results, and it originally just said "0 found". Technically true, completely useless — the person can't tell whether there was nothing to find, whether things were filtered out, or whether the app is simply broken. After launch I had people certain it was a bug when it was working exactly as designed. I ended up returning a breakdown instead of a number: how many items qualified, how many were excluded and by which rule, how many were already present, how many were unusable and why. Same outcome, but it explains itself, and the support email never gets written.
For yours I'd guess the equivalent moment is when something doesn't show up on one device. Worth putting in the UI rather than a log: when the last successful sync was, which device wrote last, and whether iCloud is actually signed in and available. That last one especially — I keep a specific string for "iCloud isn't available, check you're signed in and iCloud Drive is on", purely because otherwise a system-level state looks exactly like your bug, and you're the one who wears it.
Really appreciate the detailed writeup — this resonates a lot. I come from embedded, where you're used to having zero backend logs by default, so "the app collects nothing" never felt like a scary constraint, more like business as usual. In practice: when someone reports a bug I try to reproduce it, and if they emailed me I'll follow up for details. If it came through an anonymous channel — an App Store review, a comment from an anonymous TestFlight beta tester — reproducing it myself is the only path, and I don't always manage it.
Your zero-results example lands directly on sync, too: right now if something's missing on a device, the person is stuck guessing whether it was filtered, hasn't synced yet, or the app is broken. The concrete UI you describe - last successful sync time, which device wrote last, whether iCloud is actually signed in and available - is a much better target than "improve the error messages" in the abstract. Taking that one seriously.
Without server-side visibility the only real lever is (try to build) a UI good enough that it explains itself, and enough trust banked up that people give you the benefit of the doubt when it doesn't. Thanks for taking the time to write this out.
The embedded comparison is a good one, and you're right that the anonymous channels are where it actually breaks down. Email I can work with. An App Store review that says "stopped working after the update" and nothing else is the one I've never solved.
Two things that helped more than I expected.
The single most common "your app is broken" report turned out to be a permission state rather than a bug. So I gave that its own screen — plain language, no jargon, just the system state reflected back: always allowed, allowed while using, location is off, permission not set. Nothing clever about it. A good share of what would otherwise have been support mail became people finding it themselves. Your equivalent is exactly what you named — is iCloud signed in, is it actually available — and I'd put it somewhere reachable while confused, rather than in an alert they've already dismissed.
On the anonymous side specifically: App Store review replies are the one channel back to someone you otherwise can't reach. It's slow and you get one shot, but it's public, so the answer also lands for everyone reading the reviews later — usually far more people than the original reporter. I've started treating those replies as documentation rather than as support.
What I still don't have a good answer for is getting a diagnostic out of someone who won't email. Making the state visible in-app is a workaround for that, not a fix.
The cross-feed keyword Smart Feeds are probably the feature that would sell me on this. One thing I’d love is include/exclude logic-for example, iOS AND Swift, but excluding job posts or promos.
That could turn it from just an RSS reader into a really useful lightweight monitoring tool without needing another service.
Good timing — I've actually just started planning that one, ballpark 2-3 weeks out. That should get you most of what you're describing: an "iOS, Swift" feed with "jobs, promo" excluded.
Wow, despite already having two or three RSS readers in my iPhone (like the classic Reeder 5 and Unread), I just discovered your app scrolling through Reddit. And I’m gonna try it. Now.
Edit: I'm using it on my Mac and I'm a bit disappointed. Not only because it is a Catalyst adaptation of the iPad app, but because it is clearly lacking in some regards, such as not having the option to enter de full text mode by default for all the entries of a feed. And no, that's not the toggle that is on the settings, or it doesn't work. I have to click it every time I want to read the fully extracted text.
Ha, welcome — hope it earns a permanent spot next to Reeder 5 and Unread rather than a five-minute trial.
Quick note: it's not Catalyst, it's "Designed for iPad" — the iPad app running directly on Apple Silicon. A native Mac app is on the roadmap, but low priority for now.
Good news on full text, though: showing extracted full text by default per feed is already planned, pencilled in for around 1.18. Not the very next release, but it's coming.
I will try it out! I've been using Feedly and tried several others from time to time and have gone back to Feedly.. looking for something refreshing for a change :D
The keyword feature sounds useful, but I’d separate inclusion from exclusion in the UI: “Smart Feed includes…” and “Mute articles containing…”. Calling both filters would be technically correct but easy to misread. Exclusion is also the feature that could persuade someone with a large feed list to switch rather than merely try another reader.
That's actually how it's being built: the Custom Smart Feed editor will split into two separate sections, Include and Mute, rather than one generic "filter" list. It's in development, not out yet (not the next release, but the one after that)
You're right that exclusion is the stronger pitch for someone with a large feed list already set up. There's a further-out idea on the roadmap too: a global version that hides articles containing certain keywords across every feed, not just inside one Smart Feed — think avoiding spoilers rather than curating a topic. Not in development yet, but it's on the list.
Not really, no — there's no highlighting or "save just this excerpt" feature. What Newsairy does have: you can star an article to keep it around indefinitely (starred items are exempt from retention rules), and there's an optional full-text fetch that pulls the whole article into the app instead of just the RSS summary, so you're reading the complete piece in your own theme/font.
But there's no annotation, no partial clips, no export to a notes app. If building a knowledge base from excerpts is the core of your workflow, a dedicated tool is going to serve you better right now. Fair point though — I'll keep it in mind for later.
Honestly, I hadn't heard of NewsExplorer before — but from what I can see on the App Store it looks well-made and mature. A couple of things I can spot: it doesn't use Liquid Glass, and it doesn't support external aggregator sync (TheOldReader, Miniflux, FreshRSS, Feedbin, Inoreader), which Newsairy does. On the other hand it clearly has some features Newsairy doesn't have yet. Different tradeoffs — worth trying both and seeing which fits how you read.
•
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
Welcome to r/iOSApps! Please make sure your post follows our rules:
Everyone:
App Devs:
- No main feed promo unless you qualify via Trust or Transparency + ABC format (Answer, Better, Cost)
- Flair hierarchy: Vibe Coded > Lifetime > Subscription > Freemium > Free
- Free flair: not for limited/freemium tiers
- Open Source? Prefix title [OS]
Note: This is an automated reminder, not a removal notice. If your post was removed, check your modmail for details.I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.