RSS reader Feedly blames week-long slowdown on a bug, not its AI shift
Feedly, the world's largest standalone RSS reader, has suffered over a week of technical problems including a severely slow web app, which the company says stems from a software bug rather than its pivot toward AI. Users have also complained about a broken iOS app and an unannounced shutdown of the classic mobile version.
Feedly, widely considered the largest standalone RSS reader with 15 million users, has been struggling with technical issues for more than a week. Paying subscribers have described the web app as "unusably slow," and some say their support requests have gone ignored.
Feedly rose to prominence after Google shut down Google Reader in 2013, and it now surpasses competitors such as the web-based Inoreader and several desktop RSS apps in size.
Users on Reddit reported the app running extremely slowly, calling it effectively unusable. Separately, Feedly's iOS app, including on the iOS 27 beta, has reportedly stopped working, and the company's classic mobile app—used by a small group of loyal customers—was shut down abruptly weeks ago without prior notice.
Company denies link to AI pivot
Feedly has recently been expanding into AI-driven services aimed at businesses, helping them track cyber threats and other tailored intelligence. This shift raised questions about whether the company remains committed to its core RSS user base.
Feedly CEO Edwin Khodabakchian told TechCrunch that RSS functionality remains a priority, noting that the company's cyber threat intelligence community also relies on the news-reading feature. He said the web app slowdown was traced to a bug related to using the "Mark as Read" function on accounts with many folders. A fix was released on Friday, though the company is still verifying whether it resolved the issue for all users.
Regarding the classic app, Khodabakchian said it was retired two weeks ago because it no longer met certain iOS and Android requirements. At the time, it had only a few hundred active users, who were not notified before the shutdown. He added that the company was previously unaware of the iOS app problems but promised a quick fix.
