What is NetNewsWire?
NetNewsWire is a free and open-source feed reader for macOS and iOS. It reads four feed formats — RSS, Atom, JSON Feed and RSS-in-JSON — so a subscription only has to exist as a feed to be readable. It needs no account to run locally, and the project states that it does not want money from users.
Verified product facts
- Type
- feed readerEditorially reviewed
- Platform
- macOS
- Pricing
- Open sourceDeveloper-stated
- Open source
- Yes
- Relationship to Nuanyue
- Third-party product — not published by NuanyueEditorially reviewed
- Current version
- 7.1.5Developer-stated
- Official website
- ranchero.com/netnewswire/
Last updated . Facts marked developer-stated come from the developer and are not independently confirmed; editorially reviewed marks a Nuanyue judgement.
Key features
What NetNewsWire does at a glance.
Reads RSS, Atom, JSON Feed and RSS-in-JSON subscriptions
Free and open source
With no account needed to read feeds locally
Ships
For both macOS and iOS
Release notes and change history are published on GitHub
What you can use NetNewsWire for
- Following blogs and news sites from one list instead of visiting each one
- Subscribing to a site that never publishes anything but a feed
Who is NetNewsWire for?
- Readers who want a free, open-source feed reader with no subscription
- People who follow enough sites that checking them one by one stops scaling
Who is NetNewsWire not for?
- Readers who expect a hosted reader reachable from any browser — this is a native macOS and iOS app
Strengths and trade-offs
What NetNewsWire does well, and what to weigh before choosing it. Points marked developer-stated come from the developer’s own material and have not been independently confirmed.
Strengths
- Free and open source, with no account and no paid tier — the project's support page explicitly asks people not to send money.
- Reads four feed formats: RSS, Atom, JSON Feed and RSS-in-JSON.
- Ships for both macOS and iOS, so the same subscriptions can be followed on desktop and phone.
- Bug reports, feature requests and change notes are all public on GitHub, so a problem can be checked against a release.
Trade-offs
- The project asks contributors to ask before even starting a pull request, so casual code contributions move slowly.
- Building from source means cloning the repo and creating a DeveloperSettings.xcconfig for code signing — there is no one-command build.
- Reading stays local; there is no bundled hosted sync service in the app itself.Editorially reviewed
What it does
NetNewsWire is a feed reader: you give it a feed URL and it turns that feed into a list you can read. It handles four formats — RSS, Atom, JSON Feed and RSS-in-JSON — which means a site only has to publish a feed somewhere for NetNewsWire to be able to follow it. The formats are not interchangeable, and a reader that supports fewer of them silently drops subscriptions.
The app is free and open source and ships for macOS and iOS. Its support page opens with a spoiler — don’t send money — which is an unusual thing for a project of this size to say out loud. Bugs, feature requests and change notes all live in the open on GitHub, so a reported problem can be checked against a specific release rather than waiting on a support queue.
Where it fits
A feed reader replaces visiting sites with subscribing to them. If you follow twenty sites that publish daily, that is twenty browser tabs to open and scan; a feed reader gives you one list of what is actually new. NetNewsWire does this locally, without an account, which is the part most commercial readers have moved away from.
It is not a web reader. There is no hosted copy reachable from a browser on someone else’s machine, and there is no bundled sync service — the value it offers is a small, free, readable client on the machines you already own.
Questions about NetNewsWire
Is NetNewsWire free?
Yes. It is free and open source, and the project's own support page says not to send money.
Which feed formats does NetNewsWire support?
RSS, Atom, JSON Feed and RSS-in-JSON.
How do I install NetNewsWire?
Download the release archive from GitHub and open it, or build it from source with Xcode.
How do I report a bug or ask for a feature?
Open an issue on the NetNewsWire GitHub repository; change notes for current and previous releases are on the releases page.
Alternatives to NetNewsWire
Apps that could replace this one — the same job, a different trade-off.
Vienna
RSS/Atom reader for Mac OS X.
Both are open-source feed readers for macOS. Vienna is built around RSS and Atom; NetNewsWire additionally reads JSON Feed and RSS-in-JSON.
Reeder 5
News reader for Feedbin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler and so on.
Both are macOS feed readers. Reeder 5 is a paid client aimed at hosted services such as Feedly and Feedbin; NetNewsWire is free, open source and reads feeds locally.
ReadKit
Bookmark and RSS management client.
Both collect feeds on the Mac. ReadKit presents itself as a bookmark and RSS management client; NetNewsWire is a dedicated feed reader with no bookmark layer.
Links
Sources
Facts on this page are checked against the sources below. Last updated .
