Some months ago, I heard that there was a version of Reeder (my iOS RSS app of choice) being developed for OS X. I didn’t think too much of it, assuming that good mobile UI wouldn’t translate well to good desktop UI. Besides, I can plow through a lot of feeds¹ really quickly in Google Reader in my browser.

Last night I bought Reeder via the Mac App Store (app store link – $9.99). Wow. It’s really damn good.

UI

As expected, the UI is beautiful. You can choose from a couple different general views, one of which resembles a view similar to iTunes, Mail.app, etc. and the other is more like the Reeder’s look and feel on the iPad. With either view you have the ability to customize the color tones, textures, font opacity, and so on.

Keyboard Accessibility

One thing that would be critical as to whether I became a Reeder user was the level of keyboard shortcut integration. I plow through feeds at a rapid pace, my hand quickly using the keyboard to move through items, marking them as read (either automatically or manually), opening some items into a browser, and moving between my feed categories. Reeder doesn’t disappoint. It ships with single-key keyboard shortcuts for all imaginable uses including feed navigation, read/unread status, and navigation within the app. Here’s a screenshot of the default keyboard shortcuts – all of these can be changed if desired:

Integration With Other Services

Another key workflow piece (and one for which Google Reader is less than ideal) is services integration. Reeder ships with quite a few services offered:

For me, three are key. I use Instapaper to push long articles for later reading (usually on my iPad). Pinboard is my bookmarking service and how I queue links for my other people say posts. I also have the Twitter integration enabled so I can share interesting finds with my followers. Note that you can enable a custom keyboard shortcut for any of the services. This again allows me to quickly move through items without reaching for the trackball.

It’s a new Primary App

Reeder now has a global hotkey² and after just a few hours is now part of my information workflow. I’ll have to see how I feel after a few weeks but at this point I can see myself moving all of my RSS consumption to Reeder apps either on my Mac, iPad, or iPhone.