spians

As a maintainer of an RSS reader app which has its own inventory for suggested feeds, one of the uphill battles is sudden removal of RSS support from various sites. I have a list of feeds which are updated once a month and everytime some sites (both niche and big ones) drop RSS support (Reuters and YouTube removing option to export subscriptions as OPML are major blows in last few months).

The reason for these removals is also never given. If you look at those sites now, you'd feel RSS support never existed and nobody used them. So the reason for removal could be anyone's guess. Perhaps RSS icon didn't look good with other social media icons on home page, server serving the RSS feed shut down and no one bothered to check, forgot to add RSS option in new design/refactor or some PM didn't find RSS feed engaging enough and actively killed it.

These are still four more steps then what it takes to directly install from the Play Store. Most people would view any of these four steps as hurdle.

And you won't need to go to the settings the next time, it'll just work.

You will still have to find the apk when there is an update, download it and confirm install. There are still three steps to update the apk compared to Play Store's one tap (or even zero clicks if automatic updates are on). Only "Allow installing from this source" step is removed when updating the app.

We have created a privacy focused, ad-free, material designed RSS reader app for Android - Plenary. No login/account creation required. No analytics/trackers. No ads. No servers to store your data.

Main obstacle when introducing new users to the world of RSS feeds is the discovery of new feeds. Plenary tries to solve this in novel ways:

Local News:

Select a country and Plenary will show a list of top news sources for that country. Tapping on any news source will open a webpage containing all the RSS feeds available of that source.

RSS Assistant:

Create RSS feed from top sites such as Reddit, Google News, YouTube, Medium, Wordpress, Wikipedia, Tumblr in 2-3 simple steps (some of the assistant options are part of Plenary premium)

Recommended Feeds:

Curated list of more than 200+ recommended feeds spread across various categories which include Programming, Technology, Web Development, Android Development etc

There is also full support of OPML import/export. So if you are already using any RSS reader, it's simple to get started.

Plenary can also be used as a complete offline article downloader app (similar to Read it later apps) and a Podcast player. Other features of the app include searching, filtering, backup/restore on Google drive/Dropbox, YouTube playback support, custom syncing intervals, notifications, multiple theming options etc.

Please try them out and let us know your feedback!

You can disable these annoying prompts by going to https://myaccount.google.com/permissions and disabling "Google Account sign-in prompts". Ideally it should have been user opt in but Google followed dark pattern here.

You can try my app Plenary - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spians.ple... which perfectly suits your needs. It doesn't have ads or tracking and doesn't require an account. Plenary is combination of RSS reader and offline article downloader with built-in support for podcasts. Check it out and let me know if it works for you!

You can purchase Plenary premium to support the app development. Premium will give unlock many features such as

- Pure black theme

- Automatic cloud backups

- Ability to directly open specific links in another app

- Unlimited feeds

- Quick actions in notifications

- Internal YouTube player

- More accent colors

- More fonts for reader screens

You can be get premium features by purchasing Plenary lifetime premium or subscribing to any of the subscription plans (monthly, quarterly or yearly)

Hi,

Thank you for trying out Plenary.

1. Plenary doesn't use Chrome as the browser (it uses Android WebView that uses chrome engine internally). We didn't go with custom tabs as we wanted more control on the interactions with WebView. You can open links externally or within the app (If you have premium, you can open your preferred domain urls externally as the main action).

2. Are you talking about opening article externally as the main action?

3. Sure we will improve the algorithm to find the image and also look into removing the placeholder if image is not present.

4. It would be great if you can elaborate more on "zoom slider for the front page grid". Yes, Plenary is currently not fully optimized for tablet experience. That is one area we need to work more on.

5. Because of the way Plenary is designed, everything it does; from fetching, combining and storing feed data to showing it to the user; is done on your mobile device. Catching duplicate content links is hard to implement in this case because that logic will also have to reside on the user device.

6. Same as point 5. Trend analysis is not possible because everything is done on your device. We don't have any server to store any user data.

Thanks again for your detailed feedback. Really appreciate it.

No, Plenary is not open source

Hey HN,

We've created an RSS feed and offline reader app for android that doesn't show ads/track your activity. The app is a combination of a feature rich RSS reader, minimalist podcast player and an offline article downloader (similar to read it later apps). The app has novel ways to add RSS feeds and has an offline first strategy.

Please try out the app and let us know if you have any questions or what you'd like to see in coming versions!

Yes I agree, could've been clearer upfront about it being a premium feature. Thanks!

Interestingly parent’s plug is a dark pattern to avoid dark patterns!

Sorry I didn't find any dark patterns here. If you can elaborate more on this, that would be really helpful.

It’s also surprising that even on HN, a place where many people write software for a living, people are avoidant of advertising paid features.

Exactly! A lot of users want privacy focused - no ads apps. But many of them are hesitant to pay for it. For them, all apps should be FOSS (that means relying on good will of the developer that he will have motivation to maintain the app regularly or relying on some bug foundations) and no dev should generate revenue from their apps.

Yes, I have been using your feed and it's amazing. Thanks!

Thank you for trying it out. Plenary has monthly, quarterly and yearly subscription options and even has a lifetime purchase plan. That is the way support the development of the app so that it doesn't have to rely on ads and works without any intrusions to users. That is the point of this post, right?

Yup. RSS is the way to go for browsing Reddit without all the dark patterns.

Self plug - you can try my app Plenary on Android (no ads/trackers) - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spians.ple... that has Reddit as one of the RSS Assistant option. It basically creates RSS feed for subreddits, users, search terms etc for you.

Also from the same blog

We know that playing nice with others isn’t exactly your MO, but if you can’t offer people an open platform that brings everything together into one place and makes their lives dramatically simpler, it’s just not going to work.

Not exactly related but how is Microsoft's approach to Teams any different than Google's approach to Google Chat (or Hangouts Chat) that also is component of G-suite?

Secondly, with the kind of minuscule market share DDG has, they or their users can hardly get impacted by a couple hours' block

I would like to know the exact market share of DDG in India.

Also people who use DDG use it as their search engine. It would impact that "minuscule" percent of people the same way the majority of people would get impacted if google.com was banned for a couple of hours.

If anything, Indian govt. made them a favor by making them more famous

Really?

I for one don't recall #DDG ever trend on Twitter in recent history

So it's not that minuscule market share?

This has led to a regular number of collisions between foreign tech companies and India regulators, whether it be Facebook’s attempts to introduce Free Basics or WhatsApp payments, increasing restrictions on Amazon and Flipkart’s e-commerce operations, or most recently, the outright banning of TikTok on national security concerns.

It should be cleared that all of these are isolated events and have nothing in common as for the reason.

- Facebook's Free Basics was a direct threat to net neutrality.

- WhatsApp payments are working fine now. There were many issues between their beta launch and the actual launch after almost two years but most of them were related WhatsApp's inability to comply with local data protection and storage law. (UPI related data must be stored in India IIRC).

- Restrictions on Amazon and Flipkart has more to do with their anti competitive practices (promoting the seller in which they are the main stakeholders) and the pressure from retailer unions.

- Banning of TikTok (along with all the other Chinese apps) is largely because of the recent tensions between India and China due to clashes at Ladakh border.

Also this piece talks about privacy when discussing US and Europe model but doesn't mention it for China and India. We all know about data sharing of Chinese apps with CCP. But nobody is talking about the personal data protection when using Jio apps. I did some basic analysis and found the apps built by Jio platforms to have worse privacy policy then their US counter parts (and even their Chinese counter parts in some cases).

Yes this is the way for these companies to enter into India's emerging market, but it's getting worse for the end consumer. A lot of "Tech Gurus" in India are suggesting Jio apps as a replacement for the banned Chinese ones (to ride the wave of nationalism). But the problem is, Jio Apps have some of the worst privacy policies I have come across (even worse than their Chinese counter parts in some cases). Users in India are not aware of this fact. It will be too late and everyone will be locked into Jio platform ecosystem before the masses realize it (think of something like Cambridge Analytica scandal at India's scale with one of the Jio Apps as a platform).

So out of $10 billion that they announced to invest in India in next five to seven years, 45% of it is in Jio? Jio is already on the way to monopolize the telecom sector and with all the investments Jio Platforms has got in past four months, this doesn't look good for Indian tech sector.

Here's the RSS feed of the blog

https://github.blog/feed/

I am using https://github.blog/category/engineering/feed/ for engineering category

I mean it happened with the same company just a few months back.

Foxconn canceled $5 billion investment plan in India because of a land deal - https://www.gsmarena.com/foxconn_cancels_plans_for_5_billion...

Honestly there are no perfect solutions to this. There are cross platform frameworks (React Native, Xamarin etc) that you can try but you'll definitely hit the wall when trying to access low level native APIs. Kotlin Multiplatform seems to be the step in the right direction. It has first party support on Android and works seamlessly for Android apps, but it's too early to tell for the other platforms. In an ideal scenario, you can share the core business logic using Kotlin Multiplatform and then implement UI and platform specific stuff using native APIs (or something like Flutter (again, not production ready)).

Hey HN,

We've created an RSS feed and offline reader app for android that doesn't show ads/track your activity. The app is a combination of a feature rich RSS reader and an offline article downloader (similar to read it later apps). The app has novel ways to add RSS feeds and has an offline first strategy.

Enjoy the app and let us know if you have any questions or what you'd like to see in coming versions!

This "Not approved by Government or Public Health Organizations" rule seems to apply to all the indie apps except for the apps built by mega corps

- Twitter app asks users to follow Covid-19 related news as the first item in their home screen after login (and has a separate tab for news related to Covid-19 in Search screen).

- Reddit official app asks users to subscribe to /r/Coronavirus (that subreddit is not moderated by any government).

- Quora android app has a banner at the top that is similar (follow Coronavirus Space - all the content in that topic seems to be generated by users).

- YouTube app currently has a featured video related to Covid on my feed from one of their official Spotlight channels.

I'm sure Facebook has something similar to follow news related to Covid.

So there's no consistency of banning non-official speech on Covid-19

Also this is not the first time it happened. Same thing happened to

- A meme generator app because one of the memes contained word Corona (https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/fn0wzl/app_with...).

- An RSS reader app for showing news related to Covid (https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/ggb3s7/a_week_s...)

- A self improvement app that curates articles (https://reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/gem317/our_app_was_...)

And in all of these examples, app seems to be restored after talking to someone at Google. Shouldn't that be the first thing done by the Google play team (before suspending the app) instead of dev losing all the installs and revenue for the time the app is suspended?