A new app called Current is rethinking the RSS reader, aiming to offer a reading experience that feels more like dipping into a stream of news, and less like a task to be completed. In doing so, the app could make using RSS feeds to consume news and information a more approachable experience for those who aren’t consuming news for work or consider themselves information junkies.
Current’s developer, Terry Godier, said he noticed that he always felt guilty when returning to his feed reader after a few days away. He attributed his feelings to how most readers were built to resemble email inboxes, with unread counts, and bolded text for new items.
“Email’s unread count means something specific: these are messages from real people who wrote to you and are, in some cases, actively waiting for your response. The number isn’t neutral information. It’s a measure of social debt,” Godier wrote in a blog post about how he came to create Current, which is a side project he worked on during his free time.
“But when we applied that same visual language to RSS…we imported the anxiety without the cause,” he said.
For those unfamiliar, RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a format that allows users to access updated information from websites in a structured format. For instance, new headlines and articles from your favorite news site would appear as new, unread entries in the RSS reader (aka news reader or feed reader) of your choice.
The format was hugely popular in the early 2000s until the 2006 arrival of Twitter shifted people to another platform for real-time news and information sharing. Within a few years, people were ditching Google’s popular RSS reader, Google Reader, in favor of Twitter’s 140-character posts. Another few years later, Google Reader shut down for good. (We still miss it.)
But RSS itself never died. In addition to being the underlying tool for podcast distribution, you can still use the format to syndicate from websites through RSS apps like Feedly, NetNewsWire, Inoreader, Reeder, and others.
Current, however, proposes a different RSS experience. Instead of structuring feeds as lists to be processed, or unread counts driven to zero, the app’s main screen is a river.
“You’re not watching content drift past like a screensaver. It’s a river in the sense that matters: content arrives, lingers for a time, and then fades away,” writes Godier.
Each piece of content ages differently, with items dimming before fading out entirely and becoming invisible. Breaking news, for instance, remains bright for three hours, while daily news articles may stick around for around 18 hours. Essays sit for longer (three days) and articles like evergreen tutorials remain in the river for a week. As you scroll through the river, you keep up with what’s new and interesting without the pressure of marking things as read.
When you set up Current, you pick one of five speeds per source: Breaking, News, Article, Essay, or Tutorial. As you read, you don’t have to physically mark them as read; instead, you just push cards off the screen with a long left swipe, or tap the release button at the end of the article you’ve finished, which brings you back to the river. (There’s also an undo button.)
Current also offers a number of other clever features that will thrill RSS enthusiasts.
It can fetch the full article text from the web even if the website itself is set to truncate its feeds (as many sites do to motivate people to visit), and you can mark sources as webcomics to unlock an image-first reader experience. You can also mute sources for a week and pin those you can’t miss to the top of the river.
The app adds some intelligence to your reading experience, too: if a site is flooding your feed, the app will prompt you to quiet or rate-limit them. It also notices when you regularly skip specific content or enthusiastically read it, and will suggest you to either remove feeds you don’t read often or pin those that you do.
Notably, Current lets you follow individual writers in a space called Voices, which differentiates blogs or newsletters written by individuals from feeds belonging to larger news publications. You can tap on any Voice to filter your feed to focus on just their content.
(You can potentially follow individuals within larger publications if their writers have individual RSS feeds. Here’s mine!)
Godier is interested in identifying voices behind the news, having authored a specification called Byline that adds author context to RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds.
“Voices” is just one of three built-in categories, which Current simply calls “currents” (hence the app’s name). There’s also the main feed, or “River,” and the “Read Later” category. You can even create your own currents (like “tech” or “design,” for example), or wait for the app to suggest some based on your reading patterns.
Overall, the app uses subtle touches and design elements like font choices, gestures, and themes to make the reading experience feel less stressful. That’s something even news junkies can appreciate.
Current is available as a one-time purchase costing $9.99 on Apple’s App Store for iOS, iPad, and Mac, and includes iCloud Sync and OPML import. There are no in-app purchases or subscriptions. A web version will be available in the future.
