# Elytra — Simple & Private RSS Reader > Privacy-focused RSS feed reader with native rendering and cross-device sync. (iPhone/iPad app by Nikhil Nigade.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/elytra/id1433266971 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Nikhil Nigade](https://appshunter.io/developer/1422296034) - Category: News, Productivity - Price: Free with in-app purchases - Rating: 3.50/5 from 8 App Store ratings · 45 written reviews indexed - Age rating: 12+ - Requires: iOS 26.0 · 55 MB - Languages: Korean, Dutch, German (Germany), European Spanish, American English, Italian, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified, China), Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan), French (France) - Released: 2018-09-06 - Data updated: 2026-08-21 - Monetization: subscription - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/elytra/id1433266971/reviews.md ## What is Elytra? Elytra is a privacy focused RSS Feed reader. Elytra is the first Feed Reader on iOS & macOS to bring native text & image rendering to the Article Reader. It’s fully featured, customizable and ever evolving. An active subscription is required to use the app (14-days free trial) PRIVATE: Your account is automatically setup and is completely private. No passwords to remember. Elytra does not collect any personal information from you. PRIVACY: Elytra strips out all tracking scripts and tracking pixels from articles to ensure your reading habits are always kept private. MODERN FEED FORMATS: Elytra supports both XML and JSON feed formats. PUSH NOTIFICATIONS: Get real-time updates from your favorite blogs which support the WebSub protocol. LOCAL NOTIFICATIONS: Get near real-time updates from blogs which do not support push notifications. LOCAL BOOKMARKS: All your bookmarks are locally available to read and refer even when you’re offline. NATIVE RENDERING: Elytra renders articles using native features of iOS to bring inclusive features like Dynamic Type, Voice Over for Accessibility and reduce usage of tracking scripts. IMAGE LOADING: Elytra provides various image loading options so you can save on mobile bandwidth and load images you deem necessary. SYNC: Elytra supports cross-device sync using its API. Access your feeds on your iOS Devices, Mac devices as well as in the browser. SEARCH: Search for a feed, then an article and then snippets within the article. Elytra is the first RSS Reader to support search within articles. APPEARANCE: Elytra supports both Light and Dark themes. You can choose between various Serif and Sans-Serif fonts or even custom fonts you have installed on your device. LINKED HEADERS: When the Article Author goes through the trouble of linking headers with IDs, it only makes sense that Elytra enables you to share direct sections with your friends & family. MUTE FILTERS: Clean up your feeds from unwanted topics, spoilers, and noise. WIDGETS: Elytra supports four unique widgets across all platforms to bring your favourite feeds and updates to your homescreen. ——— Elytra cannot connect to or sync with other RSS Syncing or Aggregation services. ——— Terms: https://elytra.app/terms/ Privacy Policy: https://elytra.app/privacy/ The Mac App is also available on the Mac App Store. ## Key features - Privacy-focused design - Native article and image rendering - Cross-device synchronization - Search within articles - Customizable appearance - Mute filters - Widgets ## Pricing and in-app purchases Base price: Free. **Subscriptions** | Subscription | Price | Period | | --- | --- | --- | | Monthly Subscription | $0.99 | per month | | Yearly Subscription | $10.49 | per year | | Pro - Monthly | $1.99 | per month | | Pro - Yearly | $20.00 | per year | **One-time purchases** | Purchase | Price | Type | | --- | --- | --- | | 1 Month Subscription | $0.99 | one-time | | 3 Months Subscription | $2.99 | one-time | | 1 Year Subscription | $12.99 | one-time | | Free Trial | Free | one-time | | Lifetime Subscription | $54.99 | one-time | ## Recent user reviews (10 of 45) All indexed reviews: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/elytra/id1433266971/reviews.md ### 1/5 — Don’t waste your time *2026-03-04* Still a buggy mess after being on the App Store for years. Wasted my money on the lifetime premium and regret it deeply. Wouldn’t even sync with my iPhone or iPad. ### 1/5 — Elytra is a Broken App Charging Premium Prices for No Good Reason *2026-03-03* Save yourself $55 and get an RSS feed reader that actually works. I recommend NetNewsWire which is free or News Explorer which is a modest $5. Both Sync across your iCloud seamlessly. Elytra is a broken app which cannot handle its own basic intended functionality. I will add an RSS feed, refresh to Sync, and then the RSS feed will disappear. Articles won’t download correctly it only downloads the title, author, and thumbnail. That’s if anything downloads at all. Syncing across iPad and iPhone simply does not work, period. I emailed the developer and they were not helpful. I regret buying the Lifetime, it is simply wrong to charge $55 for an app like this that does not work. I would give this 0 stars if I could. Fellow RSS feed lovers, I hope my bad experience is not in vain and it encourages you to stay far, far away from Elytra. -PKG ### 4/5 — Super App *2025-12-28* Man kann alles einlagern **Developer response:** Thank you so much! ### 5/5 — ABU *2025-11-07, version 2025.10.1* JAFOR ### 5/5 — Best In Class *2025-08-08, version 2025.5.0* Been a user of Elytra for over 6 years, still one of the best feed readers on the App Store. ### 1/5 — Et là, c’est le crash… *2024-09-17, version 2024.9.1* L’application crash à chaque action. C’est inutilisable. 🤷🏻‍♂️ ### 1/5 — Not Private *2024-01-16* They’ve mentioned “private” and “privacy” so many times in the app description, and yet the app collects data according to the privacy label. That all one needs to know about how well this app will work. **Developer response:** Hello, please note that the required data collected is only sufficient for syncing your data. It is in no way linked to your personal data. No personal data is collected from you to begin with. Hence, I can assert that the privacy labels, when read in context, are correct. Please refer to the app’s privacy policy for more details. If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to respond to them, please email me at support@elytra.app. ### 1/5 — Can’t use. Stole my money. *2023-10-31* This app has not worked since the day after I downloaded it. How can you keep updating the app and not fix the crashing and bugs ### 1/5 — Poor developer but great design *2023-10-22* The dev is awful for shipping and then charging for an app that has so much bugs. I would not even advise you try your luck to see if the app would work for you, instead take a look at reeder as they are much more polished. ### 1/5 — Can’t use. Stole my money. *2023-09-24* I had this app months ago and it worked for a little while but then started crashing upon launch so I uninstalled. I decided to reinstall last week or so and I paid the subscription, it worked for a day, and now it’s crashing upon launch. ## Frequently asked questions about Elytra ### What does Elytra do? Elytra is a privacy-focused RSS feed reader for iOS and macOS. It allows you to subscribe to your favorite blogs and websites, read articles with native rendering, and receive real-time updates. The app prioritizes user privacy by stripping tracking scripts from articles and not collecting personal information. ### What are the key features of Elytra? Key features include native text and image rendering for articles, robust privacy measures like stripping tracking scripts, cross-device synchronization across iOS, macOS, and browser, advanced search capabilities within articles, customizable appearance options with various fonts and themes, mute filters to clean up feeds, and home screen widgets. ### How much does Elytra cost? Elytra requires an active subscription to use the app. A 14-day free trial is available. Specific pricing details for the subscription can be found on their official website or the App Store. ### What devices is Elytra compatible with? Elytra is available for iOS devices (iPhone and iPad) and Mac devices. It also supports access through a browser, allowing for cross-device synchronization across all these platforms. ### What are common use cases for Elytra? Common use cases include staying updated with news from multiple sources without intrusive ads or tracking, managing personal blogs and niche content, discovering new articles through curated feeds, and accessing saved articles offline via local bookmarks. ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 2026.7.0 — 2026-07-05 New - Text in article paragraphs can now be selected across multiple paragraphs. - Code blocks now display in a dedicated horizontally-scrollable cell with syntax highlighting, a monospace font, and a rounded background, matching the experience on macOS. - Code block text is now selectable. - Tapping the cover image now opens it in Quick Look. - Tapping an image in a gallery now opens it in Quick Look. Improvements - The article reader now uses TextKit 2 throughout on both iOS and macOS, improving text layout correctness and performance for complex scripts. - Code blocks in the article reader now use the same modern text engine as body paragraphs on iOS. - The macOS article reader no longer manually manages the text layout stack; paragraph sizing is now driven by live layout geometry instead of a string-measurement approximation. - Cover images now appear behind the navigation bar on iOS 26, matching the transparent glass look. Scrolling up to the cover works as expected with no anchoring or jumping. - Code blocks in articles can now scroll horizontally as expected. - Article list cells are now properly reused as you scroll, reducing memory use in long articles. - Cover images in articles now share the image cell pool with inline images, reducing memory use when browsing long articles. - Code blocks in articles now appear fully highlighted immediately when scrolled into view, with no rendering delay. - Improved app launch speed by fixing CoreData model validation issues that were slowing startup. - Improved reliability of deep link and URL scheme handling, including links opened from notifications, Spotlight search results, and third-party apps. - Article images now span edge-to-edge on iPhone, while text content stays within comfortable reading margins (respecting the readable content guide on iPad). - Cover images for articles load at the top of the article view, above the title and author, and the view automatically scrolls to position the cover just below the navigation bar. Fixes - Fixed code blocks in articles blocking vertical scrolling when a touch started on them. - Fixed GIF images not loading or displaying in the article reader on iOS. - Fixed image cells retaining the previous image's height when scrolled and reused. - Fixed scrolling to headings and footnotes targeting the wrong row when an article has a cover image. - Moving a feed to a different folder now rolls back correctly if the network request fails. - Fixed a bug where footnote and link highlight positioning in the article reader could silently revert to the legacy text engine, causing mis-positioned popovers on iOS. - Tapping the status bar to scroll to the top of an article now works correctly on all article layouts. - Fixed a potential crash when tapping on images in articles where the image URL needed to be resolved against the article's base URL. - Fixed a potential crash in the article header when the selected font preference was not recognised. - GIF images now load correctly when the cell is scrolled off-screen and back during the download. - YouTube and video cells no longer accumulate hidden thumbnail images across reuses, preventing a gradual increase in memory use. - Fixed a potential crash when quickly switching between articles while a full-text fetch was still in progress. - Fixed blockquote text rendering at the correct reduced opacity. - Fixed rare crash when image dimensions were not yet available during initial layout. - Fixed an issue where tapping a YouTube video link with extra URL parameters (timestamps, share tracking) could fail to play the video. - Tapping an image in the article reader now opens it correctly in Quick Look, instead of showing a blank preview with an unrecognised file type. - Images that are not currently visible on screen now load correctly when browsing through them in Quick Look. ### 2026.5.0 — 2026-06-10 - Fixed a crash that could occur on first launch after installing the app - Improved stability when adding, moving, or removing feeds and folders - Fixed a crash that could occur when removing a feed from a folder - Fixed a crash that could occur when unread counts were being updated ### 2026.4.3 — 2026-04-26 - Fixed sidebar unread counters not updating after recent migration - Fixed memory leaks pertaining to the sidebar cells - Fixed streaming for certain media services - Fixed Unread Articles widget displaying articles in wrong order instead of newest first - Fixed widgets not updating when articles are marked read or unread due to a race between saving CoreData and reloading widget timelines - Fixed widgets showing stale articles after a sync by ensuring all data is written to disk before WidgetKit reloads timelines - Fixed widgets not refreshing after background syncs - Fixed Spotlight search results not reflecting feed metadata changes (custom titles, etc.) when no new articles were synced - Fixed a potential race condition in the sync task that could have allowed two concurrent syncs to start ### 2026.4.2 — 2026-04-12 - Fixed a rare crash that sometimes occurred when syncing new feeds - Fixed a crash in the Sidebar when feed or folder lookups failed by adding a database fallback and removing unsafe initializations - Fixed an issue where marking articles as unread would incorrectly decrease unread counts instead of increasing them - Updated data models to use Swift 6 Observation for efficient state updates ### 2026.4.1 — 2026-04-08 Fixed a rare crash that sometimes occurred when syncing new feeds ## Apps similar to Elytra | App | Rating | Price | Category | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [Cupfeed : News & RSS reader](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/cupfeed-news-and-rss-reader/id1608040212) | 4.0 (5) | Free | News | | [FeedFlow - RSS Feed Reader](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/feedflow-rss-feed-reader/id6447210518) | 4.4 (35) | Free | News | | [Wire: RSS News Reader](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/wire-rss-news-reader/id1438331258) | 4.5 (13) | Free | News | | [Heartfeed RSS Reader](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/heartfeed-rss-reader/id1078754321) | 4.8 (90) | Free | News | | [Artykul – RSS Reader](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/artykul-rss-reader/id1618798027) | 4.6 (11) | Free | News | | [RSS News Ticker](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/rss-news-ticker/id1548190121) | 4.6 (11) | Free | News | ## More apps by Nikhil Nigade - [Pockity](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pockity/id1475098830) - [InTransit](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/intransit/id6756531079) All apps by Nikhil Nigade: https://appshunter.io/developer/1422296034 ## Related topics [nikhil nigade](https://appshunter.io/ios/topics/nikhil-nigade) --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-21.*