Iven News Reader, a Lightweight Feed Reader

We’re always on the lookout for apps made by active XDA community members! If you’ve made such an app, let us know by contacting any portal writer.

When Google brought down the axe on Google Reader, a lot of people had to look for alternatives for RSS news aggregators to get their daily dose of information. Over time, more and more good alternatives started flowing in, filling in the void that once was.

Iven News Reader is one of those alternatives, focusing on a lightweight approach in delivering RSS feeds. Developed by XDA Senior Member ivn888 and his teammate EnricoD, Iven News Reader allows you to navigate various feeds in a quick, easy and hassle free manner.

The app supports various Material Design elements such as navigation views and responsive toolbars on even pre-ICS devices. There are also options to choose a dark theme, enable navbar tint as well as immersive mode (Kitkat and above). One can also enable webview usage in the app, which adds the ability to open webpages from within the app. This helps as you no longer need to leave the app for an external browser when you intend to read the full article. To add cherry on top of the proverbial cake, the app is 100% free and is released as open source under the GPL, allowing anyone to view the source code and make modifications according to their needs.

In my usage of the app, I personally liked the hassle-free approach used by the developer, as the news are presented right after the splash screen, even upon first boot of the app. However, a slightly glaring shortcoming is that I could not find any way to add or remove feeds. This essentially restricts your field of interests and choice of feeds to the developers wishes. Although, being open source, adding a feed or removing one is easy, this factor still limits the recommendability of the app to a person who is not keen on meddling with code and compiling apk’s.

With all being said and done, the app is very impressive for being a day old app from a hobbyist. There’s plenty of room for improvement, and the developer knows that. We hope the app continues to move along forward and works towards fulfilling its potential.

Check out Iven News Reader in its forum thread or on the Play Store, try it out and be sure to leave some constructive feedback.

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