NetNewsWire 5.0 is a free and open source feed reader for macOS.
It’s so basic it’s not even funny. By design.
It’s usable, but it’s not actually shipping. Especially important: it doesn’t have syncing yet (we’re working on that right now).
Nevertheless, you can:
- Download the latest build
- Report bugs and make feature requests
- Checkout the code
- Read the blog
- Read the roadmap
To Do
The 5.0 alpha milestone — which will be reached when the app is feature-complete — has a few bugs and one big feature: syncing. In 5.0 the app will sync with FeedBin. (Later releases will add other services.)
A few notes about the future:
- We might do an iOS version. Concentrating on Mac first.
- We don’t plan on making a for-pay version ever. This app is written for love, not money.
- Future versions will add syncing via existing services (such as FeedBin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler, and others), though we make no promises about which ones and when. (This means that, some time in the future, you could use NetNewsWire on your Mac and Unread, Reeder, or other feed reader on your iPhone and iPad.)
Technical Notes
NetNewsWire supports RSS, Atom, JSON Feed, and RSS-in-JSON.
NetNewsWire requires macOS 10.14.
About Using the Code
You’re free to use the code and make your own app, even on iOS. It’s MIT-licensed. Just give us credit and call it something besides NetNewsWire.
In fact, please do use any or all of this code. If you can learn from it — things to do or things not to do — then great! Creating a full-featured example Mac app of use to other developers is one of our goals.
Most of the code is written in Swift. Some older parts, particularly in the frameworks, are written in Objective-C. We think this is one of the largest open source Mac apps written mostly in Swift.
NetNewsWire History
The app was started in 2002. After a couple acquisitions, it returned to its original home — right here — on August 31, 2018.
How to contact us
You can reach the developer @brentsimmons on Micro.blog, make bugs and feature requests on the bug tracker, or send email to Brent Simmons (brent at the domain for this site).