- Must be able to grab my feeds in a timely manner.
- Must be decent to look at. (I can't stand ugly designs.)
- Must have a compatible Android app, that's fairly intuitive to use.
- Must have decent sharing options.
Here are the ones I tried, and what I thought of them:
- Feedly - This is a popular choice, and looks pretty, but I really disliked many of their UI decisions, especially on the Android app. I could not figure out what I was doing, and I also didn't like the original requirement of installing a Chrome extension.
- CommaFeed - Advantage of being open source; it looks pretty much like an even cleaner Google Reader. However, there's no app.
- TheOldReader - A Google Reader clone. Slow as molasses, and kind of ugly.
- Flipboard - I don't like Flipboard. It doesn't work as an RSS reader, and the UI is baffling. A lot of the feeds I read are text-heavy, and valuing images over text is not a priority for me.
- Bloglovin - Big with fashionistas, this feed reader is pretty but inadequate.
- TinyTinyRSS - Self-hosted solution - too complicated for me to set up, and I wanted an app, so this one didn't happen.
- Inoreader - Tried this one out, and forgot about it. I think it was too slow for me.
- Hivereader - This one comes from Francis Cleary, one of the original "sharebros". This reader is slick and pretty, and contains the internal sharing feature we all loved so much in the original Google Reader. It's still a little buggy, though - for example, I can't figure out a way to indicate the last post is read, and it doesn't seem to update feeds very often. I really the Pocket integration. There's no app, though it's on the way.
- FlowReader - FlowReader is the current winner for me. It's pretty, it grabs feeds, and it'll grab my Twitter feed as well as my Google Reader feeds. It could grab my Facebook feeds, too, but I don't feel like granting Facebook more access to my life. Also, the Android app works really well, and they've worked out the syncing issue that was bugging me earlier. It's still a little buggy, though - the "save for later" feature on the site doesn't seem to be working. However, it's working on my phone, and I'm happy about that. (Update: looks like site's been hacked. I might have to wait this out.)
Want to try other readers? Here's a short and incomplete list:
Conclusion: currently it's a tossup between Hivereader and Flowreader. The biggest reason Flowreader is edging out Hivereader for me is because the Android app works fairly well.
