I literally just found out about this app through Taylor Lorenz.
Given that it’s made by Flipboard, I’m guessing it’s not FOSS.
That being said, the idea of combing RSS, YouTube, Mastodon, and BlueSky and more in one elegant feed, is attractive to me. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but I’m curious if others have.
This app does look like it could be promising to people who like the
Additionally, I could see this app, or apps like it helping to promote broader adoption of activitypub and the fediverse.
From a personal perspective, I don’t really want social features in my RSS feeds so I’ll stick to tools tools like Elfeed and standalone apps for RSS (Feeder) vs fediverse (Mastodon).
That’s fair. I’m not sure if I want it either if I’m honest. But I like the idea of having BlueSky and Mastodon feeds in the same place, as well as Twitter if it was possible.
I have been looking for free RSS readers for both desktop and mobile with great UI & UX, and I am hoping that Surf could be that. Though, admittedly, I’d prefer a FOSS option. Currently, I use Feeder on Android and Fluent Reader on desktop. They’re alright, but I want a richer more unified experience.
Slightly different projects I have seen recently are https://flareapp.moe/ and https://fread.xyz/.
Wow. These look very interesting.
I just remembered that I haven’t been able to use Twitter on mobile ever since I changed my password. I changed my password on Desktop, which automatically logged me out of the Android app, but when I tried to log back in, it wouldn’t let me.
My phone doesn’t use the Google Play Store. I download everything from Aurora or F-Droid. And I read online that apparently Twitter’s developers updated it so that if you are not connected to a play store account, you can’t log in. I’m 95% sure this is why I’ve been having issues. These apps could potentially be the solution I need for social media account aggregation. Don’t know yet if I’d use them as an RSS Reader, but I’m willing to try because they look pretty sleek.
I also like that the apps are FOSS because if I connect my Mastodoon, Twitter, and BlueSky accounts under one feed, I don’t want anyone to know they are the same person.
I might be in the minority on this but these all-in-one apps just don’t appeal to me. I like my apps to have one specific purpose. I just want my RSS reader to be an RSS reader. If I want to, for example, watch a youtube video I will use Grayjay (probably a bad example in this case lol) or one of the many other youtube specific apps.
All of those, YouTube, Mastodon, Bluesky, etc. can all be read/watched through RSS feeds already, so I don’t see the point. Am I missing something here?
The problem for my own use case, and I’m assuming others might be in a similar boat, is that the social services I want to read things from, are the social sites that I want to completely avoid going to directly. With the exception of YouTube, I personally am not very active on Mastodoon or Bluesky.
The things that I need feeds from would be the unholy Trinity of Meta, X, and Tiktok for my own workflow. And the services that do offer fees from those places, aren’t exactly the best in the world, or the most private.
Yeah alas it’s much harder from a developer perspective to do it for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tiktok since they locked down their APIs and do not take kindly to web scraping. In contrast, at least Mastodon and Bluesky, partly due to their open source nature, do have APIs that are easy to access.
I also don’t see the appeal. I suppose one function the app has is that you can share your customized feeds and explore others in a centralized place. Maybe they also include sources that don’t have RSS functionality? I’m not sure, I haven’t looked into it.
It’s more about having the ability to follow other people’s lists, adding your posts and comments with hashtags to show up elsewhere in relevant feeds.
If you go through this service’s offerings, it should be clear why it exists and how it’s different from RSS which only you have access to.
This service also makes it easier to follow and manage your feeds/lists. There is a social element here which is one of the differentiating factors.
I only played around with it for a bit so this is my understanding from using it briefly. I don’t think it is for me as reading and catching up on things of my interests is a personal matter and having a social element is irrelvant to me.
Both of these arguments are completely fair. The thing is, many people are drawn to certain apps simply because they offer a better user experience compared to others. Nobody said that you have to use Surf or any similar app to aggregate your social media account. You can opt out of that.
However, I have yet to see a cross-platform FOSS RSS reader that I am impressed by from a UI and UX point of view. I am frankly still waiting for it. I haven’t had the chance to try Surf, or any of the other apps some people have mentioned, but I am eager to, just to see if they offer a better UX.
I just recently got back into using an RSS reader, after many years, and frankly I missed it.
Having to remember to visit certain sites for news is exhausting and impractical. I’m happy to be back, but I am looking for a better UX, and Surf, Fread or Flare could be it. I’ll soon find out.
Like Twitter, Mastodon and BlueSky help me keep up with news I am interested in.
Why Meta and TikTok?
(Adaption of xkcd 927)
Why Meta and TikTok?
Part of the industry that I work in deals in entertainment publicity, and I’d kinda have to have my fingers on the pulse of a lot of various figures, and brands, as well as monitoring clients.
I hear you but most of the time, very few apps stand out. I currently have 3 Mastodon clients on my phone. The official Mastodon app, and 2 others (Megalodon & Moshidon). I have noticed that the nonofficial apps sometimes won’t let me see the whole list of followers someone has, or even their own toots. They are buggy that way, even if I prefer their UI to Mastodon’s app, I have to use the latter every time the one I prefer bugs (Megalodon).
All this is to say that there are certain services for which there are no great solutions.
Another one is EPUB readers. IMHO, all EPUB reader apps suck. They are ugly and have terrible UX. The best EPUB readers in terms of UI & UX are Apple Books and Google Play Books, but both of these apps spy on you and are owned by mega corporations.
The same way that I have yet to find a great EPUB reader, I have yet to find a great RSS reader.
I see. Makes sense. Do you use TikTok on your phone?
I see. Makes sense. Do you use TikTok on your phone?
I do, however, it is strictly a work phone. I don’t have it on my personal device.
Feeder is pretty good. Especially how it handles Hacker News. You can also toggle an option to load articles in the background. Such a saver when you have no connection and nothing to do.
I agree that many of these apps are buggy. But I doubt an universal can do best, in fact resources division show it will do worse.
I’m guessing you are referring to the Android app by No Nonsense Apps? That is the one that was recommended to me by the PG community, and the one I have been using for the pas 2 months. It’s pretty good. But I wish it had more bells and whistles and was cross-platform, so I don’t have to use a different app on my PC.
I think it’s possible to have a great FOSS cross-platform RSS reader with amazing UI & UX. The same way I believe it’s possible for EPUB. It just hasn’t happened yet.
I actually meant FeedFlow, that’s the one that is better as it actually supports HN (HN RSS is two links, article link and comments link- so Feeder just displays those two. FeedFlow actually loads the article). I also use Feeder as an alternative as it has better backs sync.
This looks pretty neat. Do most RSS readers load articles in an external browser?
Because I would rather read my articles inside the app. I also see that they support backups via Dropbox. If that is the case, why not support all popular cloud services like Proton Drive. It would be cool if they supported Filen too, but I can settle for Proton Drive.
