RSS Menu App Reviews

Wishlist of bugfixes/enhancements: 1) Theres a visual glitch sometimes when mousing up-and-down over the list of items. 2) For some reason, if anything else on my system has triggered the discrete GPU on my MacBook Pro (hooking up to an external display, for example, or running an application that requires the discrete GPU), then RSS Reader hops on the bandwagon, too, insisting that it requires the discrete GPU, preventing my system from switching back to the integrated graphics after Ive quit the other apps or disconnected the external display. Quitting/relaunching the app gets it to properly use the integrated graphics, but thats REALLY annoying, especially if I dont remember that I needed to do it until my battery is half-gone. 3) Id like to be able to remove the "Mark all as Read/Open all unread" items from the top of the submenus 4) The item preview submenu needs to be a lot bigger (or resizable). Its also buggy and rarely actually properly displays content. 5) Not sure how youd do this, exactly, but Id like to be able to selectively open items without closing the menu (so, be able to just click*click*click and open the 3 specific things I want to read, without having to navigate back through the menu for each one). I know thats what the "Open all unread" is for, but sometimes Im only interested in 3 of the 9 unread items. 6) Direct import of Safari bookmarks wouldve been nice. I figured out a way around it, but it was a PITA. 7) If I integrate it with Google Reader, Id like to be able to put those feeds at the top level, vs having them all stuffed inside yet another submenu. Good app, I just think it could be better with some enhancements/bug fixes!

So I install this much-heralded app. It erased all my feeds that I spent forever getting just right. Thats it. Turn it off. Delete from my Mac. For $2.00 is it is probably worth it provided you have all the time in the world to reconstruct all your stuff again.

Thank you for this update, it works perfectly for me! Im a loooooong-time user of RSS Menu and have always preferred it over anything else out there. The simplicity of quickly scanning feeds in minimal space, the fact its always on top in the menu bar, no app switching required - why would anyone want to use Google Reader or similar?

This has to be one of the most frustrating applications I have ever seen in 25 years of using the Mac. Downloaded the new version with great expectations and I still cant rename a group, I hope it doesnt lose all of my stuff when I restart ot log out. If this ever works it will be a great boon to those of us who rely on RSS feeds.

Unfortunately, the new version does not fix what has turned out to be a show stopper for me. RSS Menu occasionally stalls on trying to parse a feed and pegs the CPU off the scale. This happened occasionally in the previous version, but I thought it would be corrected by now. Today, it came close to locking up my machine again. I was able to shut it down with the Activity Monitor, but after nearly losing my work, Ive decided it isnt worth the bother. Ill use an online system and just open the page when I want to review feeds...

First, the <description> field is totally ignored, in favor of loading text from the <item> link. Second, the <item> link does not use the <a> tag within a page, so only the top text from a page (which may continue many separate items) is displayed. This application is completely useless. If I could ask for a refund, I would.

The developer DOES NOT respond and for that reason I am writing this review. Frankly the developer gave up on Snow Leopard and it worked OK in Lion but on Mountain Lion it wont even launch. It was a waste of money but thank goodness it wasnt much. NOW it fails since it depends on GOOGLE READER which is defunct! It won’t import feeds from OPL oit is useless!

When it’s working, this little application is good. Simple idea, implemented nicely. But it doesn’t handle at least one situation gracefully. When woken up from sleep or in some other situation where it looses its connection to the internet, the lists of “unread articles” goes nuts. As in, articles previously read are marked as unread, seemingly randomly and usually profusely. This makes it impossible to see which articles are genuinely unread from which ones are being falsely reported as unread, so you end up marking them all as unread just to clear the decks. It’s a relatively minor issue, and sporadic rather than consistent, so while annoying when it happens, it shouldn’t put you off the measley two bucks the application costs. Easily worth it.