NetNewsWire Enters New Era with Major Modernization Underway
After a year of retirement, founder Brent Simmons has significantly modernized the NetNewsWire RSS reader. Key updates include adopting Swift structured concurrency, improving performance, and fixing numerous bugs. This overhaul aims to enhance the app's stability and efficiency, preparing it for future feature development and ensuring its continued relevance.
Key points
- Founder Brent Simmons has spent the past year modernizing the NetNewsWire RSS reader following his retirement on June 6, 2025.
- The project involved 2,188 commits, adopting Swift structured concurrency and Liquid Glass UI, while porting parsers from Objective-C to Swift.
- Improvements include bug fixes, reduced battery and memory usage, and performance enhancements for feeds.
- The update also optimized iCloud syncing and addressed technical debt to pave the way for new features.
- Simmons aimed to strengthen the app's foundation rather than immediately adding new features, prioritizing modernization.
The open-source RSS reader NetNewsWire has undergone substantial modernization over the past year, led by its founder Brent Simmons. Following his retirement on June 6, 2025, Simmons dedicated himself to revamping the app's underlying technology.
With 2,188 commits logged, the development effort focused on updating the application's architecture and improving its performance. Key technical advancements include the adoption of Swift structured concurrency and the Liquid Glass UI framework, while ensuring compatibility with recent operating systems. Parsing engines for XML, HTML, and dates were migrated from Objective-C to Swift. Numerous bugs were addressed, alongside efforts to reduce battery consumption, memory usage, and improve overall responsiveness.
Further enhancements were made to feed handling, including support for Cache-Control headers to allow publishers to influence checking frequency, and optimizations to iCloud syncing. Simmons emphasized that the priority was to address technical debt and modernize the app's foundation before introducing new user-facing features, ensuring NetNewsWire's long-term stability and maintainability.
Sources
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