Feedly - Smart News Reader Reviews

by Reader Not Viewer

Somehow y’all managed to make the most opened app on my phone utterly unusable.

I don’t know which 4,000 users you consulted but they should just go download twitter or use apple news if they want more pictures than words. The most intriguing aspect of your app for me was the ability to immerse myself with readable content from a multitude of sources. Even just comparing the amount of articles displayed on screen in list type from old to new you can see Feedly was LITERALLY dumbed down with the update.

Whoever was in charge of the new version of Feedly needs to be fired, that panel of 4,000 people should not be allowed to download the classic version, whoever was being snarky and committed the typo in the description of Classic version needs to be demoted or at least a reprimand letter, and promote or at least give a bonus to whoever saved your company from falling to newsify by putting out the Classic version. The second you change or mess with the classic version you will begin the timer to your company’s demise.

by Very Concerned Long-term User

I cannot believe anyone could even like the new way that you set this up it’s awful I have been using your app since you first started I have always loved your app cannot believe that you changed it to this garbage it is complete utter garbage so glad that you still have the classic version it is very fortunate in my search for a new RSS reader I found that you had not totally give up on the old version I’m very happy and hope that you will keep old version around I don’t even see why people are even using Feedly it is on usable it’s worthless I do not like it at all and don’t understand why people would want you to change the best app for reading stories on the web I will definitely switch to Apple news or Flipboard before I ever use Feedly it is terrible Understand I very rarely ever review anything but I had to when you changed one of my go to favorite apps for years for total garbage. You should have made this a new app and seen how many ratings it got on its own to put it under all the good ratings of the old app is totally unfair I don’t understand what you guys are doing but if you continue on this path I am very scared that you’re going to go out of business when you’ve got something good why change it be like apple abandoning the iPhone for A piece of paper and a pen what you’re doing just makes absolutely no sense

by Rattleheadxyz

When I heard about this app, I thought I would be great. But after using it, I just don’t see the point. Seriously, if the devs can contact me and explain why this is any better than simply visiting the websites individually, please do so! I guess I was under the impression that I would be able to truly customize exactly what appears in my feed. Here’s an example, I like video games, so I selected Kotaku as a feed source. But I wasn’t able to get any more granular than that. I wanted to have Kotaku content, but only for subjects that interested me. For example, I wanted Kotaku content for God of War, but I didn’t want any Kotaku content for Fortnite. Feedly doesn’t do that, instead I just get everything from Kotaku always. The same as if I was just visiting the website without this app. So, what’s the point? What’s the advantage? [Shrugs] I just don’t get it. If I could filter keywords or tags, etc to truly customize my feed, that would be great, but as it stands I see no value in Feedly.

by Greenvino

I have grown accustomed to seeing this message that says something like, “JavaScript is not supported in this browser.” If I really wanted to know what was in that blank space on the screen, I open in Safari or something and there it is. I dug deep into phone and app settings and found no suggestions online that fixed it. They “browser” problem is really just specific to this app.

Lately, some content is now showing up where it used to be blank, which would be an improvement—only now a finger swipe over that part of the page is being translated into a finger tap. A long 10-second freeze later, a random site opens up where the image of a purse or whatever can be purchased. Only I never tapped the image. Ugh. Been experimenting to make sure it wasn’t just my “technique.” Nope, it’s not me. And to make matters worse, this app then freezes entirely after that. I can’t open the next item in my feed unless I close and open Feedly entirely. It’s so weird and ridiculous. And I’m still seeing the “JavaScript not supported” message pretty often, so that problem is still there as well. Why can’t all this silliness be fixed once and for all?

by Hippohumongous

Currently they're not labeled at all. If you want to search articles, you'll get a message overlaying the search results telling you "get Power search!". But what if i just want regular search? 🤔 There's no button to close the overlay, making me think power search is the only way...and it takes me to a window sign up for Pro. This also happens on the desktop version btw, so I think this is more deception than bad design.

Another example is when they announced the revamp with new features and we can filter out articles by phrases or keywords. But there was no option for me to enable this in the settings and after a bit of searching, found that this is a Pro only feature, WHICH they neglected to mention in the blog post. Nice.

I'm not against companies wanting to make money and I think subscription models are appropriate for online services like this app (that have to run on servers in order to work). But users should have a choice and we should not be deceived by Pro only features. Things like search, have it grayed it and label it Pro Only. Done. This whole thing was irritating enough for me to shell out $5 for Reeder. Good riddance.

by Hzievshxkajz

I really wanted to like Feedly, but there are two issues: 1) It’s slow. It takes WAY too long to add news sources. Each time you add one you have to wait 5-10 seconds, so if you read a lot of news you could spend an entire afternoon just adding news sources. Tap. Wait. Tap. Wait. This is made a lot worse by the fact that other news aggregators like Flipboard and Apple News allow you to add a news source within a split second. 2) I don’t want news to be separated by category. Show me all the news from all categories all in one long feed. You can do this if you open Feedly , tap the button on the left side, tap All Feeds, and then wait another 5-10 seconds. But there isn’t any way to set this as the default reading option. I don’t want to change this setting every time I open Feedly . I wanted to move away from Flipboard after many years because I think their magazine idea is stupid and distracting, but I guess I will stick with it and hope they get rid of that feature.

by GregV8

I’m not the one who is sour about every new version of every product. Generally, I like when things evolve and move forward. However, I think this app missed the point. The old version was just so much more “comfortable” to use. I find that swipe gestures in this new app are much more strict and unforgiving. It’s literally painful to operate Feedly because you have to get the angle of the swipes so precisely otherwise they won’t work.
I just now switched back to the older style “this app Classic” app which works wonderfully.
There is one feature I miss from the classic app - that is the ability to search across all articles. (For the record, the new version doesn’t get it right either.) I am syncing with Google and have an extensive set of feeds, neatly organized. I’d like to be able to find older articles by searching for key words.
The pro subscription feature is not interesting to me. Would be OK paying a one-time fee to upgrade, but not willing to make ongoing payments, especially not one this high.

by LeeGeeeeeee

*update* I just updated to this latest release. I have to give you props for listening to your users. I don’t know about others but it looks like you have at least addressed my biggest concerns. Of course my needs don’t sound as complex as what a lot of people are doing. Just want to be able to attach to several feeds, read my news and not have to jump through hoops to do it. I might actually be able to use this version. I will at least give it a try.

I loved this app, read it everyday. It was clear and simple to set up and use. Now it’s practically indecipherable to me. Developers just seem to want to make changes whether they are actually improvements or not. Making an app more complicated to use is definitely not an improvement. How do I go back to the old version? Switched to this app classic. I wonder how many of the few positive reviews of the new version are actually posted by this app employees, because I have a hard time believing that anyone would like having to go through more steps to get the same results. For instance, old this app click on an article go immediately to web page. New this app, it takes you to another page that may have two more lines of information. Then you have to click again to go to web page. What a boneheaded change. I sometimes think developers live in their own little universe and don’t really think through how things are going to work in the real universe.

by Catalogue Michael

Sometimes change is necessary to move the product forward so that is relevant to new users.

But let’s be honest, this rollout was done very poorly. A lot of the things many people miss about the old version actually are available in the new one if you dig into the settings. But unfortunately this app didn’t see fit to provide any instruction on how to find them.

They have been very responsive on Twitter, which is good. And some of the things I can’t do anymore have been replaced by arguably better features. Unfortunately it was annoyingly hard to figure out how to use these new features and cost me way too much time.

For what it’s worth I would recommend rolling out changes incrementally rather than overhauling the whole system all at once.

Two last points:

1. One thing this app did correctly was to make their old version available in the iTunes Store. It is called this app classic. So everyone who’s complaining about the update can simply download Feedly .

2. Give an optometrist a call. Both your day and tonight settings are not ideal for the eyes. There’s a very simple contrast and color palette you can implement that would be much better for day and night. This is one of the things I was really hoping would be fixed in the new version.

by CAS3000

I use this app daily and have truly loved Feedly but these new UI changes are a HUGE step backwards. Amongst other problems the new layout renders a process that used to be more dynamic incredibly boring. On a phone it might not be so bad and probably makes a lot of sense, but the limitations on an iPad are pretty miserable. The randomness of layout and variation of image sizes used to give more of a magazine like reading experience and now what’s being presented has all the charisma of the results of a Google search. PLEASE undo this or give more options to return to what it was prior. Haven't given up on Feedly yet given how long I’ve truly enjoyed it BUT can’t imagine continuing to use it for too long in this form.

Originally gave this a single star but am raising my rating slightly. I still don’t like the bulk of the changes in this new version but I do appreciate that the developer has given us the option to use what I think is a preferable UI in another app now called 'classic'. That said, I wish the new app had been something one opted into with the old one simply renamed rather than throwing users into something so different via an 'upgrade' like this. Moves like that always make me a little distrustful of developers and less likely to opt into in app purchases, etc. That said, the ability to download 'classic' addresses that distrust a bit.

by RedneckButlerBoy

I’ve used this app ever since Google shut down Reader and some of the new UI updates are frustrating. First, I can no longer press and hold to add to read later. I don’t want or need the extra steps to add it to folders, that just makes for extra unnecessary steps. The second is not having an option to jump straight to the Safari browser. Some webpages I just know aren’t going to work for me in the browser in Feedly . An example that comes to mind is the free apps of the day that BGR puts out. Clicking on links to Feedly Store is better done through Safari so I don’t have to reload the page each time. The last thing that really bugs me admittedly doesn’t hurt the functionality but I very much dislike the pictures being on the right. It just doesn’t look right. I prefer the pictures on the left with the text preview on the right.

by Zinnia419

I love seeing everything in one app. However, I’m very confused. Why is it that many articles get cut off and make you open the rest in an external link?? I never want to do that, this app was supposed to help me keep everything in one app. It’s frustrating to click stories and keep having to keep leaving them mid-read.

I need a way to either “turn off” articles that cut off like this and never see them in my feed, or see them labeled somehow so that I know not to click those.

I also don’t like the double-tap to close article feature because I do this by accident all the time, then I have to open the article again and scroll down to where I left off since it doesn’t remember where I left off, since it doesn’t anticipate this user error happening so often.

by KimiTX

Because when I’ve just read a comic or a fun article about skin care or whatever, that would be fine, but when I’ve just read a dark, depressing news item about people dying or the economy tanking, it is SUPER jarring and weird to see a happy smiling ‘toon congratulating me for reading all the things. And it’s more often that second situation that the first, so...please.

I wrote a similar review a few years back when y’all decided a chipper cartoon dinosaur was what people needed after they finished reading the news. I discovered that one for the first time literally after reading about a hate crime, and it was awful. The dinosaur went away quickly and I can only assume it was because others felt much as I do. The only comics I need in my this app are the ones I subscribe to. Please no smiley congratulatory cartoon figures, anywhere. Or at least give us an way to opt out of that. All that’s needed is the green check mark. Less is more.

by TigerSaint

this app is my preferred RSS reader. I like the layout and the ads don’t bother me much. I don’t subscribe to the pro features because I have no need for them. It’s basic and that’s all I need. But there are some annoying bugs. First, and this started in the last few months, is that Feedly will show the option to arrange sources non-alphabetically, it doesn’t actually let you. You go to move a source and Feedly snaps it back into alphabetical order. Seems kinda dumb to let users rearrange the sources but not keep them there. It used to happen only when adding a new source, but just the other day Feedly started alphabetizing my existing sources. Not cool. Second, it’ll randomly give a “no connection” error and throw you out of whatever you were reading, even if you have a perfectly fine connection. I also don’t like that there’s no support link on their website; I’d rather email them about these bugs instead of posting them here.

by Kuanyin888

I used this app through the browser on my computer... But one recent change to Feedly makes it much less useful for me: the ability to turn sideways and get a "landscape" view was useful when reading small text and for enlarging small images.. the only workaround is to open the page in a browser (generally Chrome, because Safari seems to have the same issue now too) and when returning to this app the place in my feed is now lost. This is intensely frustrating and slows down my ability to use this tool to go through my feeds on my phone. I'm starting to avoid it, in fact, and it's reduced functionality is making me question whether I'm going to keep it on my phone.. on my tablet it's not as big an issue and the browser page is still great. Wish Feedly we're better...

by Venkman '84

Cleaner UI than any other news app on iOS, better privacy policy, ad-free even in non-premium. Aggregates articles and RSS feeds from any publication worth reading. The base version has a great set of features. It’s simple and it works.

One minor quibble: I’d have no problem paying for premium if I could just pay a one-time fee instead of a monthly subscription. Or maybe $60 for a two-year membership. I’m not against the idea of paying the developers in order to keep Feedly user-supported and ad-free at all levels, but I am against the idea of paying an $8 a month fee indefinitely for a service I know I want to stick with. The free version meets my needs better than the paid version of any other app, but I think the subscription model is holding this app back.

by Cbkosc

Contrary to recent criticism, the new UI is fine. There are settings which allow for some personalization or, go back to something close to the old version. this app is a good app.

A big change is that features that were once free are now a charge which is also ok, they deserve to make money for their efforts. The problem is the cost. I use Pocket and this app allowed me to save articles to Pocket with one touch. To have that same functionality they are now asking me to pay $72 per year. That’s a lot for one feature considering with a few swipes I can share to Pocket for free. Please reconsider your pricing structure. Also, I would have preferred to contact you privately about this but you do not provide any support information in your app. If support is only available to subscribers then say so in Feedly .

by Heiscook

Had a very unpleasant user experience in places where you have intermitting wireless connection like subway, underground, etc. You’re not able to “mark an unread” and often get a blank screen with timeout, it then will forget your progress and you have to scroll all over again and again.
While this was also not ideal with previous app(now classic) but much better. In this implementation this is hardly ever usable in such conditions. And this is a place where you do not have much options left for self entertainment except lets say mostly reading but still have to spend a substantial amount of time a day.

Also would like to see “keep as unread” as a button while swiping articles and do not exit to list view when you hit “keep as unread” at the bottom, so you can continue swiping or even swipe to next article automatically.

by Whyzhou

[Update] I found followed the instructions from developer support, it fixed it briefly but just after a few more sessions the flashing began again. Very frustrating.

This used to be my favorite app until an annoying bug started showing up a few versions ago. I thought it would be horrible enough that new versions would fix it... No luck. As you scroll up from the list or card views, it does a double flash which is super annoying. Lately it's been doing it even when I click on the settings gear icon. Most annoyingly there's no in app support to submit a bug report.

by Bumblybreak

I love the look and feel of the update in the phone format, especially the infinite-scroll. That must have taken a bunch of work! However, I was used to clearing a page of news articles five(ish?) items at a time and initially hated the new interface because it only let me clear items individually in magazine view.

Now that I discovered “long pressing” a news article and the “mark above as read” feature, I’m absolutely in love! this app took my weird, hacky way of reading/clearing and made it super efficient; I just scroll/browse articles and clear/long press from time to time. This fits the mental map of how I use Feedly perfectly and I’m amazed they added this feature.

The one improvement I’d make is to onboard the “mark above as read” feature more organically. When this app sees that I’ve marked a few items in a row as “read”, teach me about the “mark above as read” feature. I only discovered it out of frustration/disappointment that my old way of clearing articles was gone. There’s too much to learn in a big “onboarding” walkthrough.

I was initially very disappointed in Feedly , but now that I know all the features, I’m absolutely thrilled at the visual refresh and usability improvements. Keep up the great work folks!

by MattZombieBear

Love Feedly , but any five star app need “Sign in with Apple”.

Displaying a Sign in with Apple button in your app or website means that people can sign in or sign up with just a tap using the Apple ID they already have, and skip filling out forms, verifying email addresses, and choosing passwords. Sign in with Apple provides a new, more private way to simply and quickly sign into apps and websites while giving people a consistent sign-in experience they can trust and the convenience of not having to remember multiple accounts and passwords. In cases where you choose to ask for a name and email address, people have the option to keep their email address private and share a unique, random email address instead. For developer guidance, see AuthenticationServices.

Sign in with Apple makes it easy for people to authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID and has two-factor authentication built in for an added layer of security. Apple does not use Sign in with Apple to profile users or their activity in apps.

by Gwakie

I've read some of the backlash and some do have valid points. Overall I think the developers addressed the usability on the iPhone. With the screens getting larger and larger and with most folks being right handed, the UI changes make sense. They've made it a lot more usable with a single have. The UI transitions are nice. Being able to tie an article to multiple boards at once is also nice. I'd like to be able to swipe it away when I'm done though, in the same vain of making it more usable by not having to reach the top button to close it.

On the iPad I've noticed better support for the  pencil where it was barely usable before. Thank you!!! I do miss the way the articles and images changed sizes and layouts when switching between landscape and portrait mode though, it felt more dynamic and engaging.

Overall I love the changes. Great job guys!!!

by Jbrandonf

I’m adjusting, I dislike it less than when I first updated.

I miss Safari webview but I’m getting on. One thing that I don’t like is the swipe up to close article function. Sometimes I like to jump right into an article and since the browser button is no longer at the top, I have to scroll down to the Visit Website button. But when I scroll quickly I can’t easily tell I hit the bottom of the article and the one extra swipe causes me to close the article.

Now I have to tap on the article again and scroll slower to get what I want. What happened to being able to turn off swipe up to close? Or maybe giving an extra rubberband snap effect or two before close when someone is speed scrolling?