RSS Guard

★★★★☆

A cross-platform feed reader that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Extremely customizable. It can be installed with either a full or a simplified web engine for reading articles in the application. You can choose a specific web browser to open posts externally, and can set up other applications on the system as tools that can open article urls. Sync the list of feeds separately from the articles in them. Even change the database backend. But all that comes at the cost of clutter.

It’s a local application, so it’s not tracking you or inserting ads or anything like a web-based application might. But you can sync it with various cloud accounts including Nextcloud News, Feedly, Tiny Tiny RSS, and anything using the Google Reader API (FreshRSS, Inoreader, etc.). So you can keep track of your subscriptions and read/unread articles across devices. You can set up multiple cloud accounts, too. They just show up as more top-level folders.

Update: The trouble I had syncing with Nextcloud was resolved by, of all things, generating an app-specific password to use with RSS Guard instead of just logging into my Nextcloud account normally. (Thanks to the author for reaching out and reminding me to file a bug report – even though it turned out the bug wasn’t in his program!*)

Since fixing the sync issue, I’ve found RSS Guard to be solid on all three OSes. (Yeah, I’m one of those weirdos who runs all three on a regular basis.) If you’re the kind of person who likes to set things up just right rather than stick with the basics, this is the one to go with.