Reader Notifier for Mac

Brief summary

Many people who rely on Google Reader know how quickly new items pile up and how useful it is to stay on top of unread articles. Reader Notifier is a small desktop utility that gives you quick control over your online feeds without opening the web interface, integrating with Growl for pop-up alerts.

How it appears on your desktop

• It sits in the menu bar and displays the number of unread items at a glance.
• From its dropdown menu you can refresh your feed list, open Google Reader in a browser, or add a new RSS feed directly.
• You can make it your browser’s default RSS handler so clicking feed links opens the notifier instead of the web reader.

Alerts, filtering, and behavior

• Growl notifications keep you informed about fresh items as they arrive.
• The app provides an option to hide or block specific items you don’t want to see in notifications.
• Occasionally, when the unread count becomes very large, the menu-bar badge may display an incorrect or seemingly random number.

Media and advanced capabilities

• TorrentCasting is supported: the app can attach media files (for example, torrents, podcasts, or videocasts) directly to feed entries so they’re immediately accessible from the menu bar.
• This feature can be particularly handy for staying updated on feed-based media without manually downloading files from the web interface.

Notes and caveats

• Overall the utility works reliably for most users, but watch for that intermittent badge-number bug if you follow many feeds.
• If you prefer minimal interruption, configure which alerts you want and use the item-blocking feature to filter out noise.

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• Minecraft: Java & Bedrock Edition (paid)