Fluent Reader

★★★☆☆

Fluent Reader is a simple, no-nonsense, modern-looking feed reader that runs locally on your desktop, so it can’t track you the way a web application could. It works great out of the box, and offers multiple ways to view posts including a grid-based card view which sets it apart from most news readers. Preferences are simple, and the only external action is to open an article in your default web browser, but you can set up rules for each feed. Displaying a QR code of the article URL so you can open it on a phone is a nice touch.

It’s an Electron app (with all the pros and cons that entails), so it can run on Windows, macOS and Linux. Available from both the Microsoft and Apple app stores, as an installer, or as a Flatpak for Linux.

Cloud sync is supported for a single account through any of FeedBin, Inoreader, Nextcloud News or anything using the Google Reader API.

I prefer the clean UI over RSSGuard’s complexity. But sometimes I find it a bit too simplified. I think NewsFlash (Linux) and NetNewsWire (macOS) hit a bit closer to the “as simple as possible and no simpler” mark. But they’re all in the same ballpark. And NetNewsWire doesn’t support Nextcloud (yet?).

Unfortunately I’ve had intermittent sync issues with Nextcloud on all three operating systems. (That’s critical bug #2.) I haven’t been able to determine whether the problem is with my server or with some of the feeds I follow, but I did report the bug as a starting point. But because of that, I can’t really recommend it for use with Nextcloud News.

Mobile

There is a corresponding Fluent Reader Lite app for both iOS and Android, but I haven’t tried it out yet.