Why do RSS readers need accounts and algorithms now?
I’ve been using RSS readers for years and honestly, lately a lot of them just feel kinda bloated to me.
I don’t really want recommendations, “smart” feeds, accounts, AI summaries or random banners everywhere. I just want to open the app and read the feeds I subscribed to. Feels like that was the whole point of RSS back then.
A lot of apps also seem to push more and more tracking or ads into the experience. I get that developers need to earn money somehow, but sometimes it barely feels like RSS anymore tbh.
So after getting annoyed one too many times, I started building my own small Android RSS reader.
It’s called CKfeed and the whole idea behind it is pretty simple:
no account, no tracking, no ads, no algorithm deciding what you should read. Just your feeds in one place. I also added a homescreen widget because I personally use that all the time for quickly checking headlines.
Still working on improving it, but I’d honestly love some feedback from people who still use RSS daily. Curious if others feel the same way or if I’m just getting old lol.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ckfeed.rss
Anyway… just wanted to share it with people who still care about RSS 😄