(Guide/Review) Readian News is an Android and web-based news reader that puts you in control

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

 

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.

 

Landing Page https://readian.io/

 

 

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