Building an iOS RSS reader
I felt the urge to build my own RSS reader for quite a while. However a lot of perfectly valid options exist, especially for iOS in my opinion.
For example NetNewsWire is a great piece of software and even better it's open source! Until now, I've been an avid user of the Reeder Classic. Two features, in particular, made it difficult for me to switch to any other client:
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Navigation/User Experience: I think Reeder truly excels in this regard.
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Instapaper integration: For my read-it-later needs I used Instapaper. Having my saved articles in the same application and enjoying the same reading experience as my RSS feeds was very important for me.
So why would I start and build my own client? As part of my ongoing effort to replace hosted services with my own self-hosted alternatives I decided to migrate all my saved articles from Instapaper to Readeck. Unfortunately no client exists yet which can both display RSS feeds as well as my saved articles from Readeck. Of course I could consume Readeck articles via a RSS feed but then I would not be able to mark them as read easily. Because of this and because I thought it would be a fun challenge I fired up Xcode and started a new project.
The current version is usable for my needs though it feels a bit rough around the edges. In terms of design and user experience I stayed close to the choices made by Reeder Classic and I incorporated the themes from the new cool kid on the block (Current). Please note this is a purely personal project. Yes I borrowed most of the themes from this application but I have no intention to ever release it publicly. It’s meant solely for my personal use. The combination of supported services (Miniflux and Readeck) means it probably wouldn’t attract many customers regardless.
In the upcoming posts I will share some of the challenges I faced building this application with SwiftUI and some interesting things I learned along the way. For now, all that’s left is to share a short demo video: