Replacing Google Reader with Feedly
In just a few days, Google will kill Google Reader. Moving to Feedly is extremely simple – do it now, before it’s too late and your precious feed setup is lost! Just go there and hit “login” and the migration is done.
This post is not about coding or software development, it’s about feed readers. From my statistics I know that 80% of my subscribed readers are using Google Reader. It used to be 90% before Google announced that they would kill Reader. That means 80% of you have to make a decision in just a few days or you’ll loose your feed setup. I was a Google Reader user too and decided to make the switch about a month ago and picked Feedly.
Migrating to Feedly
Migrating to Feedly from Google Reader is really simple since Feedly used to run on the Google Reader backend. Just go to http://feedly.com and sign in with your Google account and you’re done. All subscriptions are automatically imported into Feedly and available once Google Reader is killed.
I like the site, but it’s in the Android App I’m doing most of my reading.
The Android App
Feedly’s Android App took a few days to get used to, but now I really appreciate it. Compared to the Google Reader app it has a few features worth mentioning
- Smart scrolling – the feed list is organized in pages and a small swipe changes to the next page, like flipping a page in a book. When flipping through a lot of unread items it’s way better than scrolling a list. It’s much easier to read when the page doesn’t move but rather moves page-by-page.
- Configurable direct link following – per feed. Perfect for those feeds that only contains small excerpts, they can go directly to the web page.
- Web page opens inside Feedly reader. One tap on the back button and it moves back to the feed list directly.
- Content extraction for web pages: Zoom in on the part of the page containing the actual content and hit a button. Now only that part of the page is extracted and rendered in a font that suitable to read on the device. No more struggling with mobile hostile layouts.
Google Takeout
Just to be on the safe side, it might also be a good idea to use Google Takeout to export your feed settings to a local file.
More Reading
These are my thoughts on Feedly. Their own thoughts can be found in From Google Reader to the Feedly Cloud: Summary of the last 100 days.
The opinions in this post are entirely my own and I’m in no way affiliated with Feedly. I’m just using it – and since I think they’re doing a great job to replace Google Reader they’ll get some free promotion from me.
- ← Code or Configuration or Configuration in Code?
- Automatic Marking of Required Fields with EditorEntryFor →
Eric on 2013-06-25
I wanted to try Feedly but I was not going to give them my Google credentials. I replaced Google Reader with The Old Reader. It isn’t bad.
Anders Abel on 2013-06-25
You won’t give Feedly your Google credentials. They’re using OAuth which means that you send your password to Google and then you’re presented with a page from Google where you grant Feedly access to your Google Reader data.
The process of authenticating to third party sites using Google is designed so that the third party site won’t get your Google credentials and will only be able to access those parts of your Google data that you allow.