The RSS Renaissance: Why Indie Readers Are Thriving Again

It's 2026 and RSS is having a moment. After years of being dismissed as a relic of the early web, a quiet resurgence is underway — driven by reader fatigue with algorithmic timelines, a renewed interest in the open web, and a crop of beautifully crafted native apps that make following your favourite sites a genuine pleasure.

NetNewsWire sits at the centre of that revival. Free, open-source, and built by a team that clearly cares about both craft and privacy, it has become the go-to feed reader for macOS and iOS users who want something that simply gets out of the way and lets them read.

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Why Algorithms Pushed Readers Back to RSS

Social platforms promise to surface the content you care about, but the reality is a feed shaped by engagement metrics, advertiser priorities, and an opaque ranking system you can never fully audit. RSS is the antidote: a simple contract between publisher and reader where nothing is filtered, reordered, or withheld.

"An RSS reader is the only place on the web where chronological order is still considered a feature, not a bug."

The signal-to-noise ratio improvement alone is compelling. Once you curate your own subscription list, you read what you chose to read — and only that.

What Makes a Great Article Theme?

Native apps like NetNewsWire render articles using a local web view, which means designers can apply a full CSS stylesheet to every post. A well-crafted theme should handle all the common content patterns a blog might throw at it. Let's run through them.

Typography and Body Text

Good typography is the foundation. Body text needs a comfortable line-height, a sensible measure (line length), and enough contrast against the background. Custom web fonts can add real personality — TheChels fonts used in this theme give articles a warm, characterful feel without sacrificing legibility.

Lists — Unordered

The theme should style bullet lists clearly. Here are the qualities a good article theme needs:

• Readable body font at a comfortable size and line-height
• A clear visual hierarchy across heading levels (h1–h3 at minimum)
• Distinct, accessible link colours in both light and dark mode
• Sensible blockquote styling to distinguish pulled quotes
• Code formatting that doesn't break on long lines
• Responsive images that never overflow the container

Lists — Ordered

And if you're setting up NetNewsWire for the first time, here's the suggested order of operations:

1. Download NetNewsWire from the Mac App Store or the official site.
2. Sign in with an iCloud, Feedbin, or Feedly account to sync across devices.
3. Import an OPML file if you're migrating from another reader.
4. Install a custom theme by dropping it into the correct Application Support folder.
5. Set your preferred font size in Preferences → Reading.
6. Sit back and enjoy the chronological, algorithm-free reading experience.

Images

Images should be display-block, constrained to the container width, and separated from body text with a subtle border. Here's a placeholder image to verify sizing and border rendering:

And here's a smaller, floated image to check that prose wraps around it correctly when the .floated class is applied:

Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum tortor quam, feugiat vitae, ultricies eget, tempor sit amet, ante. Donec eu libero sit amet quam egestas semper. Aenean ultricies mi vitae est. Mauris placerat eleifend leo. Quisque sit amet est et sapien ullamcorper pharetra. Vestibulum erat wisi, condimentum sed, commodo vitae, ornare sit amet, wisi. Aenean fermentum, elit eget tincidunt condimentum, eros ipsum rutrum orci, sagittis tempus lacus enim ac dui.

Inline Code and Code Blocks

Inline code like font-family: TheChelsLight, sans-serif should be visually distinct from body text. Larger blocks should be formatted as preformatted text:

/* Basic NNW theme variables */
:root {
    --background: #f5f4f4;
    --primary:    #04100d;
    --secondary:  #005ca3;
    --links:      #295147;
    --accent:     #cec452;
}

This makes it easy to share configuration snippets, terminal commands, or code examples without losing formatting.

Comparing Popular Feed Readers

Not everyone will choose NetNewsWire. Here's a quick comparison of leading RSS clients to help you pick the right tool:

A Word on Dark Mode

Dark mode support is non-negotiable these days. A properly implemented @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) block should swap every colour token so that neither the background nor the text require squinting at either end of the day.

"If your theme only works in light mode, you've only done half the job."

The TheChels theme ships with a dark palette that swaps the warm off-white background for a deep midnight-blue, and softens all the accent colours accordingly. Toggle your system appearance to test both modes.

Testing URL Reference Citations

This section contains various types of URLs to test the reference citation system. Here's a regular link to NetNewsWire on GitHub and a plain text URL: https://netnewswire.com that should be converted to a link.

Testing tracking parameter removal with this URL: https://thechels.uk/projects/article?utm_source=test&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring2026 and a long path URL: https://www.someverylongdomainname.com/path/to/some/very/long/article/with/many/segments/that/should/be/truncated

Testing duplicate URLs - here's the NetNewsWire link again: https://netnewswire.com and another duplicate: NetNewsWire repo

Testing custom URL schemes for iOS apps: x://user/status/123456789 for X (Twitter) app, app://open/document/12345 for a custom app scheme, and shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=MyShortcut for iOS Shortcuts.

More test links: https://www.apple.com/newsroom and http://example.org/test (HTTP not HTTPS) and https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/TreeWalker?retiredLocale=pl

Wrapping Up

Building a custom theme for NetNewsWire is a deeply satisfying project. You get to apply real CSS typography work to a context where it genuinely improves someone's daily reading experience. Start with the CSS custom properties, get your font stack right, then layer in the heading hierarchy, list styles, table, and code blocks one at a time.

If you've created a theme you're proud of, the NetNewsWire community is welcoming — share it in the GitHub repo or the community forum and let others enjoy your work.

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