Readian News is an Android and web-based news reader that puts you in control

Martin Brinkmann
May 10, 2021
Updated • May 10, 2021
Apps, Google Android
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Readian News is a brand new news reader application for Google Android devices and a web news reader. It puts users in control when it comes to news sources and topics to follow, which is unlike most news readers as many limit sources to a selection of mainstream media sites or RSS feeds.

Mainstream media has its uses, but these news publications ignore lots of topics and interests for the most part. Want to keep up on what is happening with the Cyberpunk 2077 game, Mozilla Firefox's Proton design refresh, or your favorite football player, Simon Engelmann, who is playing in Germany's fourth division? Then you cannot use these mainstream sites, but you can use Readian News for that.

First, the basics. The app is free, but a premium version is planned. Readian News supports feeds but also tags and blogs that you can subscribe to.  The web version requires a free sign-up, the Android version does not require any sign-up and can be used right after installation.

You may pick a few common suggested tags on start, e.g. programming, science or technology, to fill the news list with articles right away. The step can be skipped and you may add specific tags of interest to the application instead. Articles with matching tags are then pushed to the reading list.

While you can pick a broad tag like technology, you could also select Firefox, Windows 10, date compression, or Cyberpunk 2077 mods, as topics of interest. Besides tags, which are pulled from supported sources, it is possible to add blogs or feeds to the news list to follow these as well. You may only add one feed at a time currently, but OPML support could be introduced in future versions.

Adding blogs is very easy, as you just have to type the root domain, e.g. ghacks.net, to add it to the news reader. Specific feeds, e.g. a comments feed or author feed, need to be added with the full path though.

The news stream displays news based on the topics that you are subscribed to. One interesting feature of Readian News is that it does not restrict the source language. It starts with English but you can add other language sources, e.g. German, French or Japanese, to include sources that publish in these languages to the mix; this is ideal for users who speak multiple languages or want news from different regions of the world.

You can toggle between news from blogs and feeds that you are subscribed to and all news; the latter includes news that match tags that you are subscribed to. Options to filter news by "today", "yesterday" or "week" are provided as well.

The application supports two designs. Classic displays large thumbnails  and titles but less content above the fold, the compact design smaller thumbnails and titles but more news articles per screen. An ultra-compact design that only puts article titles on the screen could be a good addition, but is not supported right now.

All tags and the source of articles are displayed in the news listing, and you may subscribe to those or use the muting function to block articles from a specific source or tag from appearing in the news listing.

Articles are opened directly in the application. While the application itself comes without advertisement, sites that it opens may display ads. There is no ad-blocker unfortunately to take care of that in the Android version, but you can open articles in another browser and also add them to the reading list for future access.

Verdict

Readian News offers nearly everything that I like when it comes to news applications: it is free, without ads, does not restrict sources, and gives you granular control over all news items, including options to mute sources or tags that you are not interested in.

If you are tired of reading stories from a few dozen sources only, this is an application or web service that you may want to try, as it puts you in control and does not discriminate smaller publications.

A premium version is in the planning phase, and it is critical that the developers hit a homerun when it is first announced and released. Ideally, it would not limit the current feature set but add nice-to-have features to the application that make some users want to upgrade. Features like offline reading lists, even support for quick batch downloads of articles for offline reading.

I contacted the developers to better understand how the sourcing of news and tagging works, but have not received an answer yet.

Now You: which news readers or apps do you use?

Summary
software image
Author Rating
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5 based on 8 votes
Software Name
Readian News
Operating System
Android
Software Category
News
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Comments

  1. Mark1 said on May 12, 2021 at 8:01 am
    Reply

    Android App
    Privacy by Exodus: 6 trackers found

    https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/176863/

    6 trackers
    We have found code signature of the following trackers in the application:

    Facebook Analytics

    analytics

    Facebook Login

    identification

    Facebook Places

    Facebook Share

    Google CrashLytics

    crash reporting

    Google Firebase Analytics

    analytics

    See you never.

    1. Sermilion said on May 12, 2021 at 11:17 am
      Reply

      As you can see, we don’t track anything, those are Google and Facebook. We can’t build app without Google Services. Facebook is used for login. This is also states in our privacy policy.

      1. Osine said on June 26, 2021 at 7:43 pm
        Reply

        Hello,
        I see what you mean but many guys develop without any GAFAM services. Here is an example: https://f-droid.org/fr/packages/com.nononsenseapps.feeder/

        Just say that you use them since they are comfortable but they are not mandatory.

      2. Sermilion said on July 15, 2021 at 3:35 pm
        Reply

        We use the minimum. I wanna know when my app crashes, what’s my audience likes, how many installs/uninstalls. Facebook and Google login was something a lot of people requested so we added those. The bottom line is that we, Readian News, do not collect any info from users. We don’t even require you to be registered.

        If you are using an Android phone, Google already collects anything they want. So even if I removed google dev tools, nothing would change.

  2. DComedian said on May 10, 2021 at 11:40 pm
    Reply

    I use the free version of Inoreader. I like it enough that I’ve paid for the Pro version in the past, in order to support its development, but I think that they’ve now made that too expensive when there are so many other options available.

  3. NoThanks said on May 10, 2021 at 11:33 pm
    Reply

    Installed and quickly uninstalled. Sorry. No OPML. I don’t want to read other’s feeds. I want to add my own. Without needing an account and all that other useless stuff.

    1. Sermilion said on May 11, 2021 at 10:32 am
      Reply

      Also, not sure what you mean by “I don’t wanna read others feed”. You don’t have to read anyone’s feed. You add your own sources and read from them. You can enable “Only My Sources” setting and you will only get articles from blogs you subscribed too.
      Thank you.

    2. Sermilion said on May 11, 2021 at 10:28 am
      Reply

      Hello friend. You actually do not need account if you use our Android application web app is a comoa ion app for Android app, and it has less functionality. And we have support for importing OPML, but it seems to be broken for some users, we are working on fixing it.

  4. Sermilion said on May 10, 2021 at 7:41 pm
    Reply

    Hey, thanks for writing this article. I am the developer of Readian News. In regards to how we get articles: users follow their favorite websites and when that happens, we parse RSS feed of that site. ur website database grows together with the community – the more users we have the more websites are available to everyone. Tags are extracted from the articles themselves. It is pretty easy and straightforward at the moment. But we hope to grow and find a data scientist that would utilize machine learning and AI in order to have our own tagging and improve suggestions.
    Thanks again. Feel free to contact us directly at support@readian.io if you have any questions.

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