On iOS and macOS, it's hard to beat NetNewsWire.
On Android, I use Feeder.
On Windows and Linux, go for QuiteRSS.
I know this is the FOSS community but I personally recommend inoreader. It has great usability through its keyboard shortcuts and the ability to pull the full article from the website without clutter (similar to reader add-ons).
If anyone knows a FOSS alternative with similar features, I'd like to know.
Same here. I also really like that they sync YouTube subscription and allow to follow Facebook pages, so I barely ever need to open these two websites.
Web or iOS. I don’t care at all about feed discovery and am not in a position to self host. Probably should have said both things up at the top 😅 but on the bright side, people who do care ended up getting some recommendations they can use!
Newsboat
I am not one of these terminal wizards. I do heck of a lot in the terminal, though. One thing I never thought I'd do in browse RSS feeds.
But, a few years back I was in a situation where my only working computer was a Raspberry Pi so I found myself using Newsboat and I realised the big deal.
I'm using feeder on android. It's really simple, but has all the necessary features imo. It's on f-droid and is getting updates.
I got started with RSS using a TUI program on unix, whose name I forget. But then Google came out with Reader (and Listen for podcasts). When they lost interest and dropped them, I exported my OPML and switched to apps I could find on f-droid. Now I back up my OPML scrupulously and am currently happy with Feeder and Antennapod; Google taught me I didn't want to depend on someone else's server for something like this; it's too important. If ever I find I want some feature that requires a server, I'll self-host something (Nextcloud?), but I seem to be well enough served by purely local clients.
If you don't mind selfhosting, miniflux is pretty nice.
Really lightweight, downloads the full text if possible (instead of just the first paragraph), etc.
Thunderbird has all I need for RSS, newer style readers I find tend to be lacking in some way.
I test out a few readers, but my fav is actually newsboat for the Linux terminal. gfeeds is an okay graphical reader though.
On Android I barely use curator, and when I had iphone, I liked simplerss.
If you've got a selfhosted nextcloud, install the news app/extension and use the respective nextcloud news app on android. It's great and you don't loose your subscriptions, favourites and read status when changing phone or reinstalling...
I use Fluent Reader but I have to admit it's a bit janky in terms of UX. It also doesn't have built in feed discovery like inoreader but at least its (ad)free. It does its job well enough.
In case anyone's looking at this 3 months later, I finally got down to getting an RSS Feed Reader and downloaded NetNewsWire on my iPhone.