It’s somewhat amazing to see that despite its age, the RSS standard (RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is still not dead. Sure, there are fancier ways to get your daily information, but in terms of sheer control (no login required, no personal data collected), nothing beats RSS.
If you have a series of websites you usually tend to visit daily, then an RSS reader (or feed reader) makes a lot of sense. If you’re not against the whole idea of Electron apps, then Raven Reader should definitely be on your list of possible choices.
What makes Raven Reader stand out?
As mentioned above, Raven Reader is an Electron-based, desktop news reader. This means that it won’t surely impress you in terms of resource consumption, but rest assured, Raven Reader has other noteworthy tricks up its sleeve.
It also means that it allows you to personally curate articles from sources you trust and enjoy/read them in a sleek, modern, and distraction-free (no banners, no ads) environment.
If there’s one word that best describes Raven Reader that would be “flexibility.” You get various GUI themes, a lot of options when it comes to choosing the fonts and display style for your articles, as well as various ways of configuring the app’s layout (for example, you can hide entire sections that you don’t need).
It’s also remarkably easy to use. You just add the sources, organize them in categories (if you want), and that’s pretty much about it.
Other interesting features
The app can also synchronize with your cloud reader. It only works with a few platforms of this type which include Feedbin, Inoreader, and Fever. In addition, it supports any self-hosted RSS service supporting Google Reader API.
Other noteworthy features include a nifty offline mode, various social sharing, read-it-later options, and the fact that all potential configurations and credentials are AES-256 encrypted.
Verdict
All in all, Raven Reader is without a doubt one of the best RSS readers out there. It’s definitely not the most feature-packed, and the fact that it’s Electron-based means that it’s also not exactly lightweight.
Nevertheless, the thing that makes the app stand out is its flexibility. There’s very little you can’t do in terms of customization, and everything is easy to operate.
