For some of us, reading news and other information from RSS feeds is an important part of our daily tasks. For quick, diverse and personalized reading, it has become an indispensable tool.
While leading readers offer a wide variety of functionality, JellyReader stands out in its ability to store your feeds in the cloud and allows you to access RSS feeds offline.
JellyReader can be added to Google Chrome as an app, and you can access it from the Apps icon on the left-hand corner of the browser.
You can choose whether to connect using Dropbox or Google; each one offers a means to store your feeds in your Google Drive or Dropbox account.
After logging in, you can start adding feeds by clicking on the plus (+) sign on the left-hand sidebar. Click Submit to confirm adding the feed. The content should appear in the middle column. Click on an article to view it on the right-most side of the page.
To delete a feed, click on the minus (-) sign on the left-hand panel.
The content can be filtered in three ways: Unread, Today and Starred. Unread items will be everything you haven’t clicked on. Today shows only recent articles published on that day. Starred articles are created when you click on the Star button found on the top of each article in the right-most pane.
In addition to starring an article, you can also delete it (the button is right below Star).
As long as JellyReader was able to load your feeds properly, it will be able to show them to you even without an Internet connection. It will not, however, pull up external links found in articles, including the Read More link for RSS feeds that only displays article excerpts instead of the entire content (see example below).
In this regard, it is highly recommended that websites that contain full articles in their feeds are used for JellyReader.
It is important to note that while JellyReader will work without an Internet connection, this only applies when you’re already logged in and not before. You would still need connectivity when you first use the app to connect to Google or Dropbox.
This being said, JellyReader is not a full offline service, but it is a great back-up in case you get disconnected from your network in the middle of browsing your feeds.
Another thing to note is that all feeds are deleted a day after they are loaded, so you need to Star items you wish to save.
Despite its simple and limited features, JellyReader can be a great alternative, especially when you expect to be in locations without Internet connectivity. It provides a back-up for important feeds you want to read offline or simply keep as reference.
However, the offline functionality is extremely conditional (you have to be online to log in to Dropbox or Google), so hopefully there would be a fix for that. Nevertheless, offline RSS browsing is a great concept and JellyReader is off to a good start.
