Skim Reader vs Tidings

Skim Reader: Read Smarter, Not Longer In a world of infinite scroll and endless content, your time is the ultimate currency. Skim Reader is the RSS reader that respects it. The Problem With Modern Reading You subscribe to 30 feeds. You have 200 unread articles. You have 10 minutes. What do you do? Skip everything? Skim headlines and miss the insights buried in paragraph seven? Feel guilty about the growing unread count? There's a better way. One Slider. Infinite Control. Skim Reader introduces something no RSS reader has done before: a compression slider that transforms any article to match exactly how much time you have. Drag left for a two-sentence summary. Drag right for the full article. Stop anywhere in between. It's that simple. - Glance: The headline in 10 seconds - Brief: Key points in 30 seconds - Summary: Main ideas in 2 minutes - Digest: Detailed overview in 5 minutes - Full: The complete article Every position is generated by on-device AI. No cloud. No subscriptions. No data leaving your phone. AI That Lives on Your Device Skim Reader runs a state-of-the-art language model entirely on your iPhone or iPad. Your articles stay private. The first time you open the app, you'll download a ~1GB AI model. After that, everything runs locally. Your reading habits are yours alone. It Learns How You Read Notice how you always want the full article from The New York Times but just the brief from tech blogs? Skim Reader notices too. The app quietly learns your preferences - by feed, by time of day, by habit. Open an article at 7am during your commute? It remembers you prefer Brief. Saturday morning deep-dive? It knows you want Full. You can disable this entirely in settings. But once you experience an app that just knows, you won't want to. Beautiful Typography, Zero Compromise Reading apps should be beautiful. Skim Reader uses carefully chosen typefaces optimised for extended reading: - New York for headlines - editorial elegance - Charter for body text - designed for screens - Your choice of fonts and sizes - Bionic Reading mode for faster scanning - Light and dark themes that don't strain your eyes Features That Matter - Add any RSS or Atom feed - paste a URL and it finds the feed - Full article extraction - even when feeds only provide snippets - Swipe gestures - mark read, bookmark, delete - All Articles view - see everything in one stream - Bookmarks - save articles for later - Pull to refresh - stay current - Open in browser - when you need the original - Haptic feedback - feel the slider snap into position No Subscriptions. No Ads. No Tracking. Skim Reader is free. No monthly fees. No "premium tiers." No advertisements. No analytics watching what you read. Who Is This For? - Professionals who need to stay informed but don't have time to read everything - Researchers managing dozens of sources - News enthusiasts who want depth without the time commitment - Anyone tired of the "mark all as read" guilt spiral - People who believe reading should be a choice, not an obligation The TL;DR for a Doomscrolling World I built Skim Reader because I was drowning in content. Every day, more articles. Every day, less time. I wanted a reader that adapted to me, not the other way around. Now I read more than ever - because I can finally read at the right depth for every article. Some get 10 seconds. Some get 10 minutes. Every one gets exactly what it deserves. Your time is valuable. Read accordingly.

Tidings is an RSS reader built for people who want to read, not manage software. Add a feed by pasting any site's URL — it finds the feed for you. Your articles land in one inbox, oldest first, and you triage them: read now, keep for later, star what matters, or sweep the rest away. Nothing is recommended to you, nothing is ranked by an algorithm, and nothing arrives that you didn't ask for. READS BEAUTIFULLY Articles are stripped to their text and images — no popups, no cookie banners, no newsletter modals. Adjustable type, light and dark, and it remembers exactly where you stopped reading, even after you change the font. WORKS OFFLINE Articles are downloaded and cached, so a subway ride or a flight is just reading time. Images come along too. SYNCS PRIVATELY Your feeds and reading state sync across your iPhone and iPad through your own iCloud account. There is no server in the middle, because there is no server at all. BRINGS YOUR FEEDS WITH YOU Import an OPML file from any other reader, and export yours whenever you like. Your subscriptions are yours to take. FEATURES • Automatic feed discovery — paste a site URL, not a feed URL • RSS, Atom, JSON Feed, and YouTube channels • Distraction-free reader with full-text extraction • Offline reading with cached text and images • Inbox, Read Later, and Starred — triage with swipe gestures • Mark Above as Read for fast sweeping • Remembers your place in every list and article • iCloud sync across your devices • OPML import and export • Full VoiceOver and Dynamic Type support • iPhone and iPad FREE FOR UP TO 10 FEEDS Everything above is included — the reader, offline articles, iCloud sync, YouTube feeds, OPML import and export. Nothing is crippled, nothing expires, and there's no trial countdown. If you outgrow 10 feeds, Tidings Premium removes the limit for a single one-time payment. That's the only thing it changes. NO ADS. NO TRACKING. NO ACCOUNT. NO ANALYTICS. NO SUBSCRIPTION. Tidings has no way to know what you read — it has no server to tell.