Two minimal Android RSS readers replace Feedly for a decade-long user, says report

RSS has been a tool the author has used for nearly half his life. Every morning he reads on a SIM-free Pixel 9a, and his OPML file holds all his subscription links. He values RSS because it gives him complete control over his information stream: he subscribes to independent blogs, large publications, Bluesky and Mastodon accounts, and even YouTube pages. Feedly, once a spiritual successor to Google Reader, has turned into more of a content platform over time. The app shows a curated list of top stories on launch, rather than his chronological feed; it pushes upgrade prompts and AI features; its free plan does not automatically show full text for truncated feeds; and its interface looks dated and less customizable.

Read You, one of the two replacements, is a free, open-source, ad-free reader that uses Material You design and supports Android’s dynamic color theming. Because it is not listed on the Play Store, users must fetch it from GitHub or the F-Droid store. The author praised its reading experience: no chrome around the toolbar or buttons, which disappear as soon as he scrolls, leaving just text and a few images. The app allows customization of font, font size, line spacing, and padding, and it includes an OLED black theme. For feeds with truncated articles, a long-press on the site name can automatically parse the full web text. Read You offers notification controls, feed folders, and text-to-speech. Still, the app is pre-1.0 and lacks a widget the author wants; sync is possible through Fever, the Google Reader API, or FreshRSS, though the author simply imports his OPML file.

The other app, FeedFlow, is described in the article as the dependable workhorse. The column does not provide further details about FeedFlow’s features.