The best apps for keeping track of all your favorite news feeds, streams, sites, and sources!
Looking for the best iPad apps to help you keep up with all the latest news? Reading on the iPad is an amazingly enjoyable experience, and news feeds are a great way to get amazing stuff to read. Put them together and what do you have? The best of all possible reading worlds. Apple no longer provides the online Safari news reader, which made opening feeds right in the browser a breeze, but there are a ton of great App Store apps that can help you get your RSS fix, but which is the best one for you? That's where iMore comes in! These are currently the best news and RSS apps available for iPad!
Reeder 2
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Reeder 2 syncs with Feedbin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler, Fever, and Readability. Just sign into your account and all your news feeds come down, or If you want to add feeds manually, you can do that as well. The interface is simple, easy to use, and gorgeous in its own way. Reeder 2 also supports pretty much every sharing option you could want, including all the popular read it later services, and themes are available for reading in any environment. Since Reeder 2 is a universal app, buying it for iPad gets you the iPhone version as well.
If you value simplicity but still want complete control over your news feeds, you want Reeder 2.
- $4.99 - Download Now
Unread
Unread is a gorgeous RSS and news feed app that supports FeedWrangler, Feedbin, Feedly, Fever, and NewsBlur. What makes Unread so great is that the way it presents news is undistracting and beautiful. You can customize the theme and text to suit your personal reading preferences. After that, the Unread app itself gets out of the way to let you enjoy your content. Unread was also built around gesture navigation so you can swipe your way anywhere without reaching to tap on-screen buttons. It's one of the most well thought out news apps available. It's also available for iPhone so you get the same experience across the board.
If you want the most intuitive and beautiful news reading experience the App Store has to offer, get Unread for iPad.
- $4.99 - Download Now
See also:
- Unread for iPhone - $4.99 - Download Now
Mr. Reader
Mr. Reader is one of the few news apps for iPad that has managed to create an amazing balance between design and feature set. Use the settings menu to tweak settings until your heart's content but all of that gets out of the way while you're reading. Many themes are available including light and dark options for day and night reading. Mr. Reader supports Feedly, BazQux Reader, Feedbin, FeedHQ, Feed Wrangler, Fever, InoReader, AOL Reader, SubReader accounts. Gesture support also lets you quickly swipe between or out of articles in portrait view.
If you aren't worried about iPhone support and want a great experience with as many features as one app can possibly cram in, look no further than Mr. Reader.
- $3.99 - Download Now
Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance is designed to be used with the Feed Wrangler service and will appeal to anyone who likes control over the organization of their news feeds. Beyond that, Reconnaissance is also a great way to quickly filter through many articles quickly due to its unique flick gestures. Just flick and article up to mark it as read, or flick it downwards to send it to the read it later service of your choice. Reconnaissance is easy to use and has a minimal interface that stays out of the way, which many people will appreciate.
If you use Feed Wrangler as your RSS service and prefer minimalistic news reader apps, Reconnaissance is the best choice.
- $2.99 - Download Now
Faast
Faast is a subscription based news and RSS app that goes way beyond just refreshing your news feeds in the background. Tell Faast what you want to know about and it can deliver real time push notifications for breaking news that's important to you. Not only that, you can link up social accounts and receive customized notifications for those too. This makes Faast a great tool for journalists and anyone else in a professional where breaking news is extremely important. Faast is subscription based so how much you'll pay will depend on how many sources you need notifications for. If you want to try out the service first, you can do so for free for two weeks. Your subscription gets you access to your Faast notifications on both your iPhone and iPad.
If you need real time notifications for breaking news in your industry, stop what you're doing and download Faast right now.
- Free with subscription - Download Now
Newsify
Newsify provides Feedly account support or manual entry which then syncs with iCloud. Starting with the obvious, Newsify is more of a magazine style experience than it is an RSS feed. Newsify does have a list view though which can be accessed inside any feed in order to display a simpler way of scrolling through articles. There's no denying the interface is nicely done and manages to balance magazine style with quick reading. There's also a dark theme included for night time reading.
If you're a casual news browser and either use Feedly or don't mind entering feeds manually, the magazine style interface of Newsify is one of the best ones available.
- Free with IAP - Download Now
Flipboard is a magazine style news app that gets smarter the more you use it. One of the most compelling features of Flipboard is the personalized magazine feature that lets you save articles to your own collections. It's somewhat of a Pinterest of sorts for news articles. Start a collection of articles for home improvement tips or for gift ideas. The point of Flipboard is that there's less upkeep on your end as Flipboard starts to recognize your reading habits. Flipboard also links up with all of your social accounts for a true all in one news reader.
For casual readers or hobbyists that like to save articles or prefer magazine style reading, Flipboard is hands down the best choice.
- Free - Download Now
Your picks for best news and RSS app for iPad?
These are my favorite apps when it comes to reading news stories on the iPad but we know you guys have your favorites too. Do you use one of the apps mentioned above or something else? Sound off in the comments and let us know!
Note: Originally published, December 2013. Updated, August 2014.
