# News Explorer — user reviews

> 281 indexed App Store user reviews of News Explorer by Ron Elemans, rated 4.70/5 from 640 ratings.

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/news-explorer/id1032668306/reviews
- App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/news-explorer/id1032668306.md
- Rating breakdown: 5★ 520 · 4★ 77 · 3★ 19 · 2★ 7 · 1★ 17

## What do users think of News Explorer?

Overall sentiment: positive

**Pros**

- 🚀 Great app
- 👍 Fantastic RSS reader
- 🔒 Respects privacy
- 🚀 Smooth and fast
- 👍 Customizable
- 🚀 Seamless iCloud sync
- 👍 Excellent design and UI
- 👍 Intuitive and easy to use
- 👍 Comprehensive features
- 👍 Reliable and stable

**Cons**

- 🐛 Occasional bugs and crashes
- 🔍 Needs better search and filtering options
- 🔍 Limited theme and color options
- 🔍 Inconsistent behavior when marking articles as read
- 🔍 Needs better support for Mastodon and other platforms

**Commonly reported bugs**

- Issues with iCloud sync reliability
- Freezing and crashes on certain devices
- Inconsistent behavior when marking articles as read
- Rendering problems with some websites in Reader mode

**Most requested features**

- Ability to add custom RSS feeds
- Improved support for newsletters
- Option to translate articles
- Bionic reading mode
- Annotation and highlighting tools
- Tagging and advanced organization features
- Text-to-speech playback
- Improved Apple Watch app experience

## Newest reviews (18 of 281)

### 3/5 — Stale

*2026-07-25, version 2.2.11*

Needs AI summarization with apple models and preferably openAI based custom LLM. Otherwise this is behind the times and likely to be abandoned. SmartRSS did a great job with AI features. I prefer NE interface but it lacks the smartness. I’d even pay a one time upgrade to an optional AI feature set.

### 4/5 — Ein sehr solider RSS Reader

*2026-07-08, version 2.2.10*

Ich würde mir noch wünschen, dass man die Eckenabrundungen von Thumbnails einstellen und die untere Leiste mit dem Burger, Kreis und Stern, in der Artikelansicht ausblenden kann

### 3/5 — Heftige Verzögerung seit letztem Update + Problem auf iPad mini.

*2026-06-24, version 2.2.9*

1. Beim tippen auf einen meiner Nachrichten-Feeds dauert es einen kurzen Moment bis die Liste der vorliegenden Artikel letztendlich geöffnet wird. Das stört im Alltag ungemein, vor allem weil mein iPhone 15 Pro Max ansonsten sehr reaktionsschnell ist.

2. Auf meinem iPad mini 7 (A17 Pro) macht News Explorer im Hochformat noch immer Schwierigkeiten, da man nicht bis zur Hauptansicht mit den Ordnern zurückkehren kann (in dem man z. B. von links nach rechts wischt oder oben links auf zurück tippt), sondern nur bis zur Artikelliste des aktuellen Feeds. Ich kann also keine andere Quelle für die Artikel wählen, sondern muss dafür das iPad zuerst einmal in das Querformat bringen. Gerade als Reader eignet sich das iPad Mini hervorragend, aber leider nicht mit News Explorer.

### 4/5 — Great app, but one problem

*2026-05-27, version 2.2.8*

It’s the perfect app, but one thing I wish it did: if I try to add a specific YouTube channel to this newsreader, it cannot find the YouTube channel sometimes. I type in the exact channel name, and it brings me to some other YouTube channel or says the channel doesn’t exist. I wish it would let me add whatever YouTube channel I want

### 2/5 — Needs read later share

*2026-04-18, version 2.2.7*

A missing feature in this app is ability to share an article to it as a read later feature. It also needs some basic AI functionality such as summarizing an article which can use the built-in device AI or possibly my own, LLM.

### 4/5 — Won’t accept url

*2026-03-27, version 2.2.7*

I really want to like this app, however, it will not accept my self-hosted URL while other apps will. NE states it is an invalid URL. I then logged into the RSS feed on Safari and attempted to use the ‘add to news explorer’ extension, but that is nowhere to be found. There is a News Explorer button under ‘more’ that takes me to NE, but doesn’t load the feed. The extension also does not show up in Safari as available or needing enabled.

### 5/5 — News Explorer

*2026-02-27, version 2.2.5*

Stavo cercando un'app news reader che facesse al caso mio. Ne ho provate un paio gratuite, ottime, ma una era fin troppo minimalista (NetNewsWire) e l'altra sì bellissima a vedersi ma un po' dispersiva per le mie esigenze (feeeed). Non mi piace troppo usare app con abbonamento, quindi ne ho cercata una premium e la prima che trovato è stata News Explorer. Felicissimo dell'acquisto, è personalizzabile anche nei dettagli, ma senza il rischio di impazzire in decine di menù e sottomenù. Semplicemente perfetta.
I was looking for a news reader app that really suited me. I tried a couple of free ones—both excellent—but one was a bit too minimalist (NetNewsWire), while the other was gorgeous to look at but a little too scattered for my needs (feeeed). I’m not a big fan of subscription‑based apps, so I went looking for a premium one instead, and the first I found was News Explorer. I’m thrilled with the purchase: it’s customizable down to the smallest details, without the risk of getting lost in dozens of menus and submenus. Simply perfect.

### 4/5 — Peut-être la meilleure application pour se tenir informé

*2026-02-19, version 2.2.5*

J’adore News Explorer. Parmi toutes celles que j’ai essayé, c’est probablement ma préférée. L’application est très réussie et n’impose pas d’abonnement. Je lui mettrai cinq étoiles dès qu’elle sera passée au Liquid Glass.

### 5/5 — Best RSS feed app!

*2026-02-08, version 2.2.5*

This app is worth every penny! 
In case any of you reading are wondering this app does have pip mode for youtube videos. 

Works wonderfully. 
Built in reader mode,

### 5/5 — Great but for God’s sake, please change the next story button to the right side.

*2026-02-03, version 2.2.5*

I just downloaded this on my Mac and phone. I absolutely love it except for one issue. I’m right handed and when I hold my gigantic iPhone, I can’t use my right thumb to reach all the way across to the left side to hit up and down to show next or previous stories. It would be amazing if you could build in the ability to switch that based on whether you’re right handed or left-handed. Otherwise, this is the one app that stole me away from Reeder Classic ❤️😵‍💫

### 5/5 — Liquid Glass

*2026-01-14, version 2.2.4*

Hi could you adopt Liquid Glass design?

### 2/5 — Geht's nichts mehr

*2026-01-12, version 2.2.4*

Abstürzt sofort nach start. iPad

### 5/5 — Fantastischer RSS Reader

*2025-12-04, version 2.2.3*

Ich habe diverse RSS Reader ausprobiert – dieser ist der erste, der so konfigurierbar ist, dass er alle meine Wünsche erfüllt. Hervorragend ist auch die (englischsprachige) Anleitung, die zeigt, was und wie es geht. Mir persönlich ist auch wichtig, dass ich kein Abo abschließen muss, sondern dass es mit einem Einmalkauf zu einem absolut zivilen Preis getan ist. Großartige App!

### 5/5 — The Best Way to Follow All Kinds of News

*2025-11-22, version 2.2.2*

News Explorer is ten times more powerful and customizable and infinitely more affordable than our favorite fruit company’s expensive News+ service.

### 5/5 — Excellent news reader

*2025-11-10, version 2.2.2*

I recently started using News Explorer on the Mac after becoming more and more dissatisfied with the RSS reader I was using. It took next to no time to decide to buy the Mac and the iOS version. The reader views are fantastic, the iCloud syncing of feeds allowed me to stop using Feedly, and the ability to read comments on articles in app is great, particularly for Reddit feeds.

### 5/5 — Fantastic

*2025-11-08, version 2.2.2*

News Explorer is the new best RSS client in the Apple ecosystem, and my unexpected personal favorite when it comes to consuming content from Youtube and Reddit as well.

### 5/5 — Wonderful RSS app

*2025-11-04, version 2.2.2*

Rich functionality, near flawless iCloud sync, no intermediary RSS service required. Full screen video playback, smart filters. Everything I want from an RSS app (at last) without gimmicks.

### 5/5 — Fantastic

*2025-11-02, version 2.2.2*

I think News Explorer is the new 'best' RSS client in the Apple ecosystem, and might even be the best way to consume Subreddits now that Apollo is gone.

## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated)

### 1/5 — Anyone use us on an iPad?

*2026-03-10, version 2.2.7*

The experience is awful. It constantly opens up to a black screen. I have to kill the app and then it still opens up to a black screen. I guess eventually it’ll come back. I don’t know how anyone uses this on an iPad.

### 1/5 — Update erased half of added sources

*2025-12-30, version 2.2.3*

What have you guys done!??? i lost more than a half of my sources and i cant import my .opml backup?????

### 1/5 — Schrott

*2025-06-02, version 2.1*

Wenn man einmal ein Feed abonniert hat, bekommt man es nicht mehr los. Auf iPad gelöscht, auf iPhone und Mac wieder erschienen. Und so weiter.

### 1/5 — Awesome but some bugs

*2025-03-27*

Love the magazine style layout which isn’t even shown in the screenshots of the App Store however, I think it’s one of the best features of this app. It doesn’t grey out articles that are read unfortunately. Also there is no way to add an article while browsing Safari you can only do a feed, which is a big miss. App also closes when it’s reopened, loads prior view and clicking done. It should go back to the main screen instead of shutting down and closing it’s almost impossible to use.

Update: Aweful on iPad. Opens to a black screen or a prior article then closes—no way to return to main menu. Unusable on iPad

**Developer response:** Please contact support@betamagic.nl with more details about the last issue described by you so we can fix it. Thanks!

### 1/5 — Full text promised but doesn’t work

*2024-12-13, version 2.0.4*

Promises full text but doesn’t work on my feeds. Requested a refund but Apple refused. Unimpressed.

### 1/5 — New App

*2024-11-23, version 2.0.1*

Do not like it.

### 1/5 — L’applicazione era ottima, ora è quasi inaccessibile con VoiceOver

*2024-11-22, version 2.0.1*

Sono un utente di News Explorer dal 2019 e ho sempre apprezzato la qualità dell’app e le sue funzionalità, che mi hanno permesso di seguire le notizie in modo semplice e organizzato. Tuttavia, dopo l’aggiornamento alla versione 2.0, l’app è diventata molto difficile da usare con VoiceOver, compromettendo seriamente la mia esperienza.
Ho contattato lo sviluppatore, il quale mi ha risposto dicendo che il problema è stato aggiunto alla lista dei bug da risolvere. Purtroppo, la risposta è stata piuttosto generica: non mi sono state fornite tempistiche né dettagli concreti sulla risoluzione. Soprattutto, non sono sicuro che egli abbia compreso appieno l’importanza della questione per chi, come me, utilizza VoiceOver per accedere ai contenuti dell’app. Non si è neanche scusato per la frustrazione che tutto questo mi sta causando.
Oltre al problema già segnalato dei numerosi flick richiesti per navigare tra gli elementi (anteprima degli articoli, autore, data di pubblicazione, ecc.), specialmente nella visualizzazione timeline molti pulsanti non sono etichettati correttamente, rendendo difficile comprendere la loro funzione. Inoltre, sembra che più utilizzo l’app, più bug scopro. Ad esempio, se si sceglie la vista elenco per gli articoli, il supporto alle azioni rotore di VoiceOver è completamente sparito, rendendo difficile contrassegnare rapidamente gli articoli come letti, preferiti ecc. Tutto questo peggiora notevolmente l’esperienza, che risulta frustrante e poco pratica.
Non intendo assolutamente denigrare o sminuire il lavoro dello sviluppatore, che apprezzo per l’impegno nel mantenere aggiornata l’app, il mio obiettivo è piuttosto quello di informare altri utenti non vedenti della situazione e, allo stesso tempo, sollecitarlo ad avere una maggiore attenzione verso l’accessibilità ma, soprattutto, a dare risposte decisamente più concrete agli utenti. Anche se l’app possiede tutte le migliori funzioni del mondo, l’assistenza rimane sempre un punto essenziale, specialmente con un’app a pagamento come questa..
Spero che il problema venga risolto al più presto, affinché News Explorer possa tornare a essere l’app di qualità che ho sempre amato.

### 1/5 — Freeze

*2024-10-23, version 1.20.5*

Am I the only one who get freeeze all the time ?! I have to kill the app and launch it again. At least one time per day, sometimes more. 
I used to love this app. 😞

### 1/5 — Sync not working

*2024-09-19, version 1.20.5*

Background push notifications are not working correctly (last background push notification is days ago). Therefore the background sync doesn’t work. So the widgets also don’t get updated. Please fix asap. App is unusable in this state and not working as advertised. It’s the same for the Mac app. If the sync doesn’t work correctly, then you shouldn’t advertise it. Response to developer: How about not lying regarding features, pushing an update or at least commenting something useful? Imagine you expect positive reviews for features that don’t work. Ridiculous.

### 1/5 — Used to be leading edge, now trailing in a number of ways.

*2024-09-03, version 1.20.5*

When News Explorer came onto the scene many moons ago, it was a terrific example of a world-class RSS reader with support for a variety of things other readers couldn’t touch, and some great ideas behind a self-hosted/iCloud solution with rich notifications.

Since then, intermittent, but persistent bugs have eventually crept in as the author updated compatibility from iOS release to iOS release, but never took a step back to rethink things. As a result, you will see persistent issues if you’re a heavy RSS user, where navigating screens between articles will eventually lock up until you force-quit the app, or you notice a now very-dated UI language in the app.

Finally, one of the core tenets of this app is that it works across all of Apple’s platforms. That may sound like a good thing, but the support is far from capable. It’s a meaningless feature for tvOS and watchOS, for example - the UX and design is so poor as to make it nothing more than an afterthought.

This app was terrific in its heyday. It’s far from that now. It needs a serious redesign and rethink and needs to evolve. I hated leaving News Explorer for other RSS readers…but once you try an actual modern RSS reader with a modern UI paradigms (see Reeder for example), News Explorer just looks so dated. I want to come back to News Explorer - if/when the author takes the time to rethink this app and refocus it. Do NOT support a platform for the sake of saying you support it - provide first-class features.

## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated)

### 5/5 — Une application parfaite

*2026-07-08, version 2.2.10*

Je cherchais une application de remplacement de Newsify et surtout mettre fin à un abonnement mensuel ou annuel. Et je suis tombé sur NetNewsWire et News Explorer, elles se ressemblent presque comme 2 gouttes d’eau sauf que l’autre est gratuite mais manque de fonctionnalités et surtout n’affiche pas de miniature des articles pour être attiré à lire un article chose que News Explorer permet et on peut même customiser les miniatures le nombres de lignes affichés avant d’ouvrir etc…il ne lui manque plus qu’un moteur de traduction intégré ou un raccourci vers Gemini pour le faire par exemple et l’application sera parfaite

### 5/5 — Love Apple TV Support

*2026-06-08, version 2.2.8*

Excellent RSS reader that supports the entire Apple ecosystem. The Apple TV app is a standout feature and something no other RSS app offers, which I use for YouTube feeds. I’d love to see Top Shelf support added in a future update.

### 5/5 — It’s a great app

*2026-05-21, version 2.2.8*

The best bang-for-the-buck rss reader IMO. Not so modern in looks but for sure UI/UX paradigms are great. Feature set is complete and it provides much more functionality and flexibility than most of the competition. It even renders comments that people left for the article.

If only iCloud sync could be faster, but that’s a price you pay I guess for not paying another subscription for a RSS sync service.

The only thing I personally miss is footnotes inline rendering. Good example of this can be seen in NetNewsWire app.

### 5/5 — Very nice

*2026-05-03, version 2.2.8*

Lots of useful features, especially the full text retrieval. Would love to see a dedicated “read later” feed in a future update.

### 5/5 — La plus complète et innovante

*2026-04-11, version 2.2.7*

Cette version 2 est plus que parfaite pour moi :
Tags, notes, dossiers intelligents, filtres, galeries photos, réglages avancés des flux, intégration avec Raccourcis, gestion temporelle des flux, galeries d’images…

En intégrant désormais la possibilité d’effacement des articles anciens selon des périodes définies,  j’avoue que presque toutes les demandes que j’ai faites depuis plusieurs années ont été réalisées !
Bravo aux développeurs pour leur écoute. 

Pour ceux qui ne connaissent pas cette application, elle ringardise toutes les autres  applications de RSS et il faut savoir que certaines fonctionnalités avancées passent par des « appuis longs » sur des boutons ou sur les intitulés des flux. 

A noter que c’est aussi une des rares applications RSS qui fonctionne sur Apple TV (avec malheureusement de grosses limites inhérentes à TVOs).

### 5/5 — Besser geht nicht

*2026-03-21, version 2.2.7*

Habe schon mehrere RSS Reader getestet, bin richtig überrascht wie gut dieser hier funktioniert! Zusätzlich habe ich auch noch meine Podcast hier laufen, bin begeistert.
Die Synchronisation zwischen meinen Geräten ist auch problemlos. Kann die App einfach nur weiterempfehlen.

### 5/5 — Finally, a worthy contender

*2026-03-16, version 2.2.7*

I’ve been looking everywhere and trying so many different RSS reader apps. I’ve been on a quest to replace Inoreader since the price went up. It’s a great tool, but it’s just not worth that much to me. I don’t need all of the fancy bells and whistles they’ve added to it. I don’t need the AI. What News Explorer gives me is the right balance of features and functionality that work for me on all of my devices. It’s been a great tool for me. The interface is great. I’m so glad I found this!

### 5/5 — Mega

*2026-03-14, version 2.2.7*

mittlerweile läuft alles wunderbar, möchte den Reader nicht missen. Das Feeds nicht angezeigt wurden lag wohl eher am Anwender als an der App 😉

——
Gefällt mir gut, aber

- Feeds verschwinden einfach. 

Bitte fixen! Dann gibt’s auch mehr Punkte.

### 5/5 — Best for Me

*2026-03-09, version 2.2.7*

Ron, thank you for the great app…

### 5/5 — Wonderful RSS app

*2026-03-09, version 2.2.6*

Rich functionality, near flawless iCloud sync, no intermediary RSS service required. Full screen video playback, smart filters. Everything I want from an RSS app (at last) without gimmicks. The developer is a great guy, so responsive, helpful and friendly.

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*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 2026-09-01.*