Feedly finally ditching Google Reader, going to the cloud

Alan Buckingham
Jun 17, 2013
Internet
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Feedly was built using Google Reader for its backend, but that is something that obviously must change before July 1 with Google Reader shutting down on that date. While saving CalDAV, it seems that the search giant will not show the same respect for its RSS app. With that looming death date, Feedly is working on its own backend and plans to begin moving to the cloud.

To prepare for this, you will need to be running the latest version of the app. On the desktop, you can go to http://www.feedly.com/index.html and manually re-install the app and restart the browser. The latest Feedly desktop number is 16.0.512. If you already have the app installed then you should be updated automatically on both computer and mobile devices.

feedly version 16

As for the new cloud-based backend, Feedly will be upgrading users over the next few days with a gradual roll out of this new syncing feature.

"Over the next 2-3 days you should expect to receive a green banner message (desktop) or a green card (mobile). This is the notification that your feeds and categories and up to 1,000 starred items have been successfully migrated to the feedly cloud and the articles you are seeing are coming from the feedly service".

The Problem

The one part that Feedly is not migrating from Google Reader is your history, which the company claims it too much data, so you have to expect that you are starting from a blank history and your unread counts will be reset. The company claims this is a one time issue. In some cases, there may be a gap of a few days in the saved items because migrating millions of accounts can take a few days. The company plans to finish the migration by June 21.

There are also a number of known bugs. For instance Feedly integration with twitter on iOS is broken if you do not use the iOS twitter app, some users have experienced an error when trying to mark a category as read, the list of categories is not properly sorted on iOS and Android when the app is first started and one user reported that only 7 of her 30 feeds migrated from Google Reader to the Feedly cloud.

The Bottom Line

The biggest problem at this point is that Feedly is a closed-ecosystem, with no way to export your feeds. If you moved here a while back then any feeds you added since the Google Reader days will need to be added again after you import your Google Takeout XML file.

The app also recently removed the ability to sort feeds alphabetically, making it difficult to sort and find anything easily. However, the service is beautiful and functional, otherwise.

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Comments

  1. Jojo said on June 18, 2013 at 2:18 am
    Reply

    How about a wrap-up/summary of GReader alternatives in the next week?

    I am still on GReader and like everyone, need to change to something else in the next 2 weeks.

    Google sucks….

    1. DaskM said on June 21, 2013 at 9:18 am
      Reply

      Hi Jojo,
      Checkout Noowit.com. You can import your feeds with just one click. Its not your average reader. Its still in private beta, but the team will be launching 1st of July for obvious reasons. The app is based on AI and biology. It learns what you like and gives you the content you want.

      1. Jojo said on June 21, 2013 at 11:47 pm
        Reply

        I’ll take a look at it, but I am not really looking for recommendations for new feeds. I have enough feeds now (probably too many, I think). I just want something that will work similarly to GReader.

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