So Google I/O is happening in San Francisco this week, and everybody's timeline is full of confetti cannons and people getting hyped about Google Play Music All Access and whatever new coat of paint they're putting on Google+. Good for them. Meanwhile the thing I actually use every single day, the thing that's been quietly organizing my internet reading habits since roughly forever, dies in six weeks. Google Reader shuts down July 1st. They announced this back in March and I did what I do with most deadlines, which is nothing, for two straight months.
I finally sat down last night and actually moved my stuff. Figured I'd write down how it went since I know at least a couple of you reading this are also still procrastinating on it.
The panic-free version of what I did
I've got somewhere around 140 feeds in Reader, split across maybe a dozen folders (work blogs, comics, a folder just called "junk" that I never look at but can't bring myself to delete, that kind of thing). The migration itself took maybe four minutes, which honestly made me feel dumb for waiting so long.
I went with Feedly. Not because I did some exhaustive bake-off — I looked at NewsBlur too and it seemed fine, and Digg's rebuilding their own reader but it's not out yet — but because Feedly's the one my coworker was already using and wouldn't shut up about. You install the browser extension (I'm on Chrome, there's a Firefox one too) or grab the iOS app, sign in with your Google account, and it just pulls your entire Reader subscription list over. Folders intact, unread counts intact, no OPML file wrangling required. It genuinely just worked, which is not a sentence I get to type about software very often.
Feedly's been talking about something they call "Project Normandy," which is their plan to build their own backend infrastructure so they're not just a skin sitting on top of the Reader API. Smart move, because right now that's exactly what it is, and if they hadn't started that work back when Google made the announcement in March, all of us would've been migrated onto Feedly just in time for Feedly to break too. As of today they're saying it'll be ready before July 1st. We'll see.
The part that annoyed me
The default view is this card-based, magazine-style layout with big thumbnail images, and I hated it immediately. I don't want a magazine. I want a list of headlines I can blow through in ten minutes over coffee, which is literally the entire appeal Reader had for me. Took some digging in the settings (it's under the little gear icon, then display density) to switch it over to a "Title Only" list view that's at least in the neighborhood of what I'm used to. Still not identical: the keyboard shortcuts are close but not the same, j and k still work thankfully, but s for star doesn't do what I expect anymore.
One thing I'll give them credit for: the iPhone app actually does offline sync properly, which is something Google never bothered to build into an official Reader app in however many years that thing existed. I was always using third-party apps like Reeder anyway, so this part's a wash for me personally, but if you were reading Reader straight from Google's mobile site, Feedly's app is a real upgrade.
If you haven't done this yet
Do it now instead of two months from now like I did. A few concrete things:
- Export your data through Google Takeout while you still can, even if you migrate to a reader service, it'll give you an OPML file plus your starred items, and it's better to have a backup sitting in a folder somewhere than to assume the migration tool will always be flawless.
- Check what folders you actually still care about before you import them somewhere new. I found two folders I hadn't touched since 2012 and just deleted the feeds instead of dragging that dead weight into a new service.
- If you use IFTTT recipes or anything else hooked into your Reader shared items, those are going to break regardless of what reader app you pick, since the "share" and public feed features are part of what's getting shut off, not just the reading UI.
Not going to pretend I've got strong feelings about which reader app wins long term. I just wanted my feeds to keep working past July, and for now they do. Ask me again in six weeks.