Get started with RSS on Windows

If you're someone who loves staying up-to-date with the latest news and posts from your favorite news websites and blogs, then RSS is definitely something you'll want to look into.

RSS is an open protocol that websites can use to publish updates. RSS readers understand how to collect these updates and then display them all in one single feed that's easy for you to check out. You can think of RSS readers as sort of an email or a podcast app.

In this blog post we'll explore some of the best RSS readers for Windows 11 and provide tips on how to get started with these tools. Whether you're a news junkie or simply want to stay on top of your favourite blogs, RSS readers are a must-have tool.

Criteria

This review is focused on native Windows RSS readers, with our main criteria being:

• Is it a native Windows app (as opposed to a web service)
• How easy is the app to use for those just starting with RSS as well as expert users?
• What are the organizational options the app offers, such as folders, tagging or search
• What kind of reading experiences does the app provide? Is there a built-in option for fetching full articles or offline support?

While there are more than a dozen of RSS readers available for Windows 11, each one with its own unique approach RSS, we've shortlisted 3 apps that are presented below.

Can I use Linkship with other RSS readers?

Linkship provides you with an RSS feed for your read-it-laters. As RSS is an open standard, all of the RSS readers work with Linkship out of the box.

Get started: Ark View

Ark View is a modern (or rather Fluent) RSS reader built from the ground up for Windows 11. Its elegant and simple design makes it the perfect companion for starting your RSS journey.

Upon first start, Ark View lets you easily subscribe to various websites from its curated collection of sites grouped around different topics, as well as search for websites you already know. From there on Ark View lets you see all incoming articles.

The article reader by default displays the content that's included in the feed. For feeds that include only a short summary, you can use "Extend", with it Ark View downloads the linked website and extracts the text article, without you having to load the rest of the site.

What's Extended view?

Because some feeds may contain only a short summary of an article, your RSS reader can try to fetch and parse the full article from the website. As extracting the article text from a website is a rather complex algorithm, it might not be always accurate.

You may have already come across a feature called "Reader mode" in your web browser, the idea behind Extended view is the same in Ark View and Newsflow.

Linkship's RSS feed always contains full text of your links so you don't necessarily need an RSS reader with this functionality.

Once your library starts growing, you can organize your subscriptions into different categories. Keep in mind that Ark View doesn't have an "All unread articles" view, but rather you will have to check each category individually.

Ark View
Free, subscription to remove ads

Pros:

• Displays articles in split view
• YouTube videos display

Cons:

• No OPLM import
• No keyboard shortcuts

Switch it up: Newsflow

Newsflow is another good RSS reader that's easy to start with. With a wide variety of list layouts and customizable notifications it's a good choice for everyone that wants to follow news in real-time.

Newsflow's many list layouts with large thumbnails and easy to read text make it a great choice for visual thinkers. You can easily switch between a grid view that offers a visual at-a-glance overview of the latest news, or to a mobile-like layout with large, full-width, thumbnails that's great for narrow windows.

Newsflow does not offer traditional folders for grouping your feeds but rather uses a concept of pinned [in the sidebar] categories and non-pinned ones. Within a category you can see all the articles from feeds that are part of the category, but you can't see updates from individual feeds.

For those that like to always keep a tab on latest updates, Newsflow can display rich notifications in your Windows sidebar. You can directly open the link, mark as read or defer an article from the notification. Additionally, Newsflow has a handy shortcut for subscribing to Google and Bing News of selected keywords.

Newsflow
Free

Pros:

• Gallery view
• Rich notifications

Cons:

• Embedded YouTube videos do not load
• Navigating categories can be confusing
• Opening articles can be sometimes slow

Level up: QuiteRSS

While QuiteRSS might look like it belongs to another era (project was started in 2012), it packs a powerful punch of features and customization options for aspiring news junkies and those alike.

What sets QuiteRSS apart from other readers are its extensive organizational and configurational options.

On top of organizing your feeds in folders, just like other readers, QuiteRSS also lets you tag individual articles as you read them. With this option, it can be easy to find articles you've read in the past, or even use QuiteRSS as a bookmarking tool.

Additionally, if you subscribe to more than a dozen feeds (or just a few noisy ones), the built-in Filters option lets you hide articles that match certain criteria: for example you could filter any article that mentions Tesla from The Verge. This way you can easily cut the noise out of your reading list.

When it comes to reading articles, QuiteRSS can either display the text that's embedded in the feed, or it can load the full web page using an embedded web browser. The built-in browser comes pre-installed with AdBlock, thus helping you focus on the article itself.

QuiteRSS
Free, accepts donations

Pros:

• Configurable browser position and layout
• Article tagging
• Keyboard shortcuts

Cons:

• No RSS discovery for new users
• Can't fetch article's full text