Recent user activities on RSSOwl
- POX added RSSOwl as alternative(s) to evalRSS
- op3nus3r added RSSOwl as alternative(s) to Pétrolette
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Although the development stopped/slowed to a halt, still the only desktop option to offer DECENT FILTERING.
It's insane I still haven't found anything else like it even after 5+ years of searching.
Only downside would be its speed.
I tried them all, but this is the best alternative to Google reader.
It works perfectly, no problems. RSSOwl is fabulous!
If I start RSSOwl 2.1.6 (installed on "C:\Program Files (x86)+IN\RSSOwl\RSSOwl.exe" or portable), I get the error-messages:
I use Vista 64 bit business, Java Platform 1.7, Java-Product 1.7.O_05, folder http://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se, Path C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe .
I started using RSSOwl after the Google Reader shutdown and since then it's my favorite feed reader. I tried many other web and pc apps (like Feedly, The Old Reader etc.) but only this one fulfilled my requirements - it's simple and offline. When you have over 100 RSS feeds subscribed you don't wanna see any fancy sliders or css effects slowing down your computer. One drawback is that RSSOwl downloads all the feeds at one time and slows Internet connection heavily.
Pro: I've tried many open source RSS readers on both Linux and Windows, focusing in particular on the cross platform ones. RSSOwl was the most powerful and configuralble in terms of how you can view/filter/group/search your feeds and feeds items, even more when the item contains information in the category, author fields. Plus you can many ways to organize the layout of the feeds tree, items and preview window.
Pro: You can easily configure it to be portable. After all it's Java. You can change the path of the configuration folder and its database to point anywhere you like, including the current directory.
Con: It's a bit tricky to have it running on a Linux machine that doesn't have Oracle JRE.
I think I will try this one too. Thanks for the input.
Reply written over 8 years ago
While RSSOwl is indeed cross-platform, and quite consistent in form and function, it does not synchronize settings between computers. The Google Reader synchronization is not always accurate either, with RSSOwl having marked some read that later show as unread using other Google Reader interfaces (e.g. web or Android app). Although there are a couple workarounds for making RSSOwl portable (for use on a USB drive for example), or for using it via a cloud storage service such as Dropbox, these methods are not reliable for attempting to synchronize settings across systems (i.e. Windows and OS X versions). With added support for settings synchronization RSSOwl would be an amazing RSS aggregator.