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NetNewsWireSoftware

by Brent Simmons

Who uses, recommends or left NetNewsWire, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

7 people

Michael Lopp
Engineering manager who has worked at Apple, Netscape, Slack and Palantir; writes as Rands at randsinrepose.com and wrote Managing Humans.
liked

If I had to commit to a newsreader, it'd be NetNewsWire. If I had to commit to a productivity application, it'd be Things.

His written "Uses This" interview, covering his "coffee shop rig" and "home rig".

2010-07-09·usesthis.com ↗

Simon Willison
Creator of Datasette and co-creator of the Django web framework; writes about LLMs and data tools at simonwillison.net.
uses

I’ve got a GitHub actions thing that runs a piece of software I wrote called shot-scraper that runs Playwright, that loads up a browser in GitHub actions to scrape that webpage and turn the results into JSON, which then get turned into an atom feed, which I subscribe to in NetNewsWire.

Describing his Hacker News notification pipeline on the Data Renegades podcast.

2025-11-26·simonwillison.net ↗

Samuel Arbesman
Complexity scientist and writer, author of The Half-Life of Facts and Overcomplicated; scientist in residence at Lux Capital.
uses

I use NetNewsWire for the rapidly dwindling number of RSS feeds that I still follow (fewer than ten), as Twitter has supplanted my webpage discovery process.

His Uses This interview, on the writing and research tools behind his books and articles.

2013-06-04·usesthis.com ↗

Dan Cederholm
Web designer; founder of SimpleBits, co-founder of Dribbble, and author of Bulletproof Web Design and Handcrafted CSS.
uses

NetNewsWire for RSS reading, SnapnDrag for taking screenshots of application windows, iShowU for taking screencasts, Keynote for presentations, SuperDuper! for creating mirrored backups,

His Uses This interview, on a minimalist Mac web-design setup.

2010-01-07·usesthis.com ↗

Loren Brichter
Mac and iPhone developer; creator of Tweetie and of the pull-to-refresh gesture.
uses

NetNewsWire on my Mac, but Byline on my iPhone. Things on both. Instapaper on the iPhone.

The Setup (usesthis.com) interview, given shortly after Tweetie 2 shipped.

2009-12-03·usesthis.com ↗

John Siracusa
Programmer and technology writer known for his long Mac OS X reviews at Ars Technica; co-hosts the Accidental Tech Podcast and Hypercritical.
uses

Despite having all those web browsers, I do most of my web browsing indirectly via RSS/Atom feeds inside NetNewsWire.

His written "Uses This" interview, describing his Mac Pro setup, backup regime and software.

2009-07-01·usesthis.com ↗

John Gruber
Writer and creator of Daring Fireball, a long-running blog about Apple and technology; co-created Markdown.
uses

NetNewsWire for feed reading. My main web browser is the nightly build of WebKit.

His written "Uses This" interview, answering what hardware and software he works with.

2009-01-22·usesthis.com ↗

What they also use

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.