NetNewsWire Is Back and Better Than Ever: A Year of Massive Improvements
If you follow the world of indie Mac and iOS software, you already know that NetNewsWire holds a legendary status. It's the RSS reader that helped define what a great feed reader could look like on Apple platforms, and for many power users it has remained an indispensable part of their daily reading workflow. But over the past year, something remarkable has happened: NetNewsWire has undergone a sweeping transformation that has taken it from a beloved-but-aging app to a modernized, actively evolving powerhouse. The driving force behind this renaissance is Brent Simmons, the app's longtime developer, who turned his retirement into a full-scale mission to bring NetNewsWire roaring back to life.
Who Is Brent Simmons and Why Does It Matter?
Brent Simmons is one of the most respected names in the Apple developer community. He has been building software for macOS and iOS for decades, and NetNewsWire is arguably his most celebrated project. When Simmons entered retirement, many developers in his position might have stepped back from active coding entirely. Instead, he did the opposite. Writing on his personal blog, Inessential, Simmons explained that his hope for retirement was simply to get a lot of serious work done on NetNewsWire — and that is exactly what he delivered.
This kind of sustained, passion-driven development from a seasoned engineer is rare. It signals not just code commits, but genuine care for the product and its community of users. When someone like Simmons commits to improving a piece of software during what should be his leisure years, the results tend to be exceptional.
The State of NetNewsWire Before the Overhaul
To appreciate where NetNewsWire is today, it helps to understand where it was a year ago. Simmons was candid about the situation: the app was in sore need of modernization, tech debt payoff, and bug fixes. Tech debt is a term developers use to describe the accumulation of shortcuts, outdated code patterns, and architectural decisions that made sense at the time they were written but become costly burdens as a codebase ages and the platforms around it evolve.
NetNewsWire had plenty of it. Apple's frameworks and APIs had moved forward significantly over the years, and parts of NetNewsWire's underlying code were lagging behind. Users were asking for new features — understandably so — but Simmons recognized that adding new rooms to a house with a shaky foundation is never a good idea. Before the wishlist features could be addressed, the groundwork needed to be solid. That kind of disciplined, long-term thinking is exactly what separates thoughtful software development from reactive, patch-it-and-ship-it cycles.
2,188 Commits: What Does That Actually Mean?
In the span of a single year, Simmons and the NetNewsWire contributors made 2,188 commits to the project. For those unfamiliar with software development terminology, a commit represents a saved set of changes to a codebase — it could be a bug fix, a performance improvement, a refactored module, or the addition of a new capability. Two thousand one hundred and eighty-eight commits in twelve months works out to roughly six commits every single day, including weekends.
That is an extraordinary pace for any project, let alone one maintained primarily by a single dedicated developer with community contributors. It speaks to a level of commitment and momentum that users can genuinely feel when they open the app. Things that were broken get fixed. Interactions that felt sluggish become snappy. Visual elements that looked dated get refreshed. The sum of thousands of small improvements adds up to something that feels meaningfully different and better.
What Kind of Work Was Done?
While the full list of changes across 2,188 commits is extensive, the categories of work fall into a few key areas that matter most to users:
- Modernization of the codebase: Updating the app's internals to take advantage of current Apple frameworks, Swift language improvements, and modern architectural patterns. This makes the app more stable, more performant, and easier to maintain going forward.
- Tech debt reduction: Cleaning up legacy code, removing redundant or fragile components, and replacing older patterns with cleaner implementations. This is the kind of invisible work that users never see directly but feel every time the app doesn't crash, hang, or behave unpredictably.
- Bug fixes: Systematically addressing the backlog of reported issues that had accumulated over time. A more reliable app is a more useful app, plain and simple.
- Foundation work for future features: Simmons used the metaphor of needing to do foundational work before adding new rooms. With that foundation now significantly stronger, the path is clear for new capabilities that users have been requesting.
Why NetNewsWire Deserves Your Attention Right Now
NetNewsWire is free and open source. It supports RSS, Atom, and JSON Feed formats. It syncs with services like Feedbin, Feedly, NewsBlur, FreshRSS, and iCloud. It runs natively on macOS and iOS with a design that feels at home on Apple platforms. And crucially, it has no tracking, no ads, and no subscription paywall. In an era when so many apps are moving toward monetization models that prioritize engagement metrics over user experience, NetNewsWire stands as a refreshing counterexample.
The past year of development has only reinforced that position. John Gruber of Daring Fireball, one of the most influential voices in the Apple community, noted that NetNewsWire was already one of his favorite, most-used, and most indispensable apps — and that it has now become much better and is improving steadily at a rapid clip. When someone with Gruber's discerning taste says that about a piece of software, it's worth paying attention.
The Broader Significance for Indie Software
NetNewsWire's resurgence is also a story about the health of indie software on Apple platforms. In a landscape dominated by large companies with massive development teams, the fact that a single committed developer can move a complex, multi-platform application forward at this pace is genuinely inspiring. It demonstrates that open source development, driven by passion and community, can compete with — and often surpass — commercially motivated alternatives.
It also serves as a reminder that RSS as a technology is alive and well. Despite years of proclamations about RSS being dead, displaced by social media algorithms and curated news feeds, a dedicated community of readers continues to choose the open, decentralized, chronological reading experience that RSS provides. NetNewsWire is the best tool available for that experience on Apple platforms, and it is only getting better.
Get Started with NetNewsWire Today
If you haven't tried NetNewsWire recently — or ever — now is an excellent time to download it and give it a serious look. Whether you're a longtime RSS enthusiast or someone looking for a cleaner, more intentional alternative to algorithmic social feeds, NetNewsWire delivers. Head to netnewswire.com to download the app for Mac and iPhone, explore the documentation, and even browse the open source repository if you're a developer interested in contributing.
With 2,188 commits and counting, the momentum behind NetNewsWire shows no sign of slowing down. Brent Simmons set out to spend his retirement making a great app even greater — and by every measure, that mission is succeeding.