About NetNewsWire
NetNewsWire is a free and open-source feed reader for macOS and iOS. It reads RSS, Atom, JSON Feed and RSS-in-JSON formats, letting people follow blogs, news sites and other sources in one place without algorithmic feeds.
The project accepts bug reports and feature requests on GitHub and publishes change notes for current and previous releases. A community forum lets users talk to each other and help with testing, coding, writing and feedback. Contributors are asked to follow the code of conduct and to ask before starting any pull request, because the Contributing page describes a process that begins with a conversation.
NetNewsWire is written in Swift and licensed under the MIT license. It can be built and tested without a paid Apple developer account, using a local DeveloperSettings.xcconfig file for code-signing overrides, either created by the included setup.sh script or manually. The project asks supporters to help in ways other than sending money.
Key features
- Feed reader for macOS and iOS
- RSS, Atom, JSON Feed and RSS-in-JSON support
- Open Swift source code
- Community forum and release notes
- Buildable without a paid developer account
Good fit for
- →Following blogs and news without social feeds
- →Reading subscriptions across Mac and iPhone
- Built with
- Swift
- Tags
- rss-reader
- feed-reader
- macos
- ios
- swift
- json-feed
- news
NetNewsWire: questions and answers
- What is NetNewsWire used for?
- NetNewsWire is a free, open-source feed reader for macOS and iOS that supports RSS, Atom, JSON Feed and RSS-in-JSON. It is a good fit for following blogs and news without social feeds, and reading subscriptions across Mac and iPhone.
- Is NetNewsWire open source?
- Yes. NetNewsWire is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at Ranchero-Software/NetNewsWire and is written mainly in Swift.
- Is NetNewsWire free?
- Yes. NetNewsWire is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- Can I self-host NetNewsWire?
- Yes. NetNewsWire can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is NetNewsWire an alternative to?
- NetNewsWire is an open-source alternative to Feedly. Other open-source alternatives to Feedly include Fluent Reader, Miniflux and CommaFeed.
- Is NetNewsWire actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to NetNewsWire was on 2 October 2026. The project has 10k stars on GitHub.
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