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Google Reader Notifier / permanent page

Wouldn't it be nice if you could have a piece of Mac software that displays the unread items of your Google Reader account? Wouldn't it be nice if it matched the design of the official Google Notifier? Direct access, to your online digital life, right from the menubar of the most advanced operating system to date - Mac OS X Tiger?

Well, now you can.

Note: Google Reader Notifier is a private open source project utilizing the unofficial Google Reader API, and is in no way related to the fine people at Google Corp.

Downloads

Download the current version 0.96 of Google Reader Notifier
If the above should not be working, a mirror is provided for you.
Developers can grab the source code here, licensed under GPL

Google Reader Notifier is delivered to you for free. However, it takes a lot of time and effort developing for the Mac, so please support with a donation if you like this application, so that I can afford upgrading TextMate, buying Leopard and so on.

Requirements

Google Reader Notifier requires Mac OS X Tiger.

Changelog

Version 0.96

Fixed a bunch of smaller issues that provoked problems for certain users, thx to all who contributed (Bjarke, Chris and more).

Version 0.95

Implemented ability to open all listed items at once

Total unread items displayed in menubar/tooltip

Threading implemented (more responsive UI)

Subscription window will close after new subscription is sent

Fixed UI mixups and other small issues

Version 0.85

Memory bug fixes

Smaller bugfixes

Subscription feature works better, even when verification is turned off

Ability to turn off tooltips

Version 0.75

Made subscription through browsers and feed:// work

Corrected bug with growl & and " etc.

Added "subscribe feed" button

Corrected font-style of statusitem no. count to match Google Notifier

Added optional-click to mark single item as read (and possibly star it too for later viewing)

Implemented check so that mark all as read will cancel if new unread items are online

Other small bugfixes

Version 0.65

Growl notification support introduced (set maximum notifications in prefpane)

Password is now stored in Keychain (thx Eli!)

Various interface improvements

Option to let all requests go through https (secure line)

Version 0.50

Timeout of 10 seconds and error-icon introduced

Toolbar tips and snippets on all items introduced

Title of items are now grey and downsized

Introduced minimal function mode

Mark as read appears when only 1 item is available

Mark as read works when label is used

Preference pane rearranged

Version 0.38

Fixed bug (crashes) on non-intel machines

"Go to reader" now uses https

Version 0.37

New top-nice dmg package (thx Gio!)

Added "mark all as read" feature

Much easier on googles servers when authenticating

Newest items on top now

Version 0.33

Minor rearrangements and cleanups

You can now turn off sound notifications

Ability to choose how many items to display 5-50

Version 0.30

Added preference pane login

Various bugfixes

Version 0.22

Urgent versioncheck fix

Version 0.20

[bling] sound added

Bugfix in marking items as read

Version 0.10

Initial version released, based on GROSX

Disclaimer and other Information

This software is open source under the GPL license. It basically means that you can do whatever you like with the source code, but you have to keep it open source, and released under GPL if you redistribute it.

If this piece of software somehow breaks your computer, I cannot be held responsible. However, it is highly doubtful that it could ever do any harm.

Screenshots

Troubleshooting

One user has noted that upon new releases, he sometimes had to erase the preference file to avoid crashes. I still haven't located this bug, but please report back if you have the same issue. Preference file is located at ~/Library/Preferences/com.bay.googlereader.plist

Known issues

Currently none

Help

Google Reader Notifier is provided as is. It should be fairly easy to understand the application and as such it does not need a help file. However, this section is for things perhaps not so obvious for the ordinary user:

I want to be able to choose more than one label to look for!
Well yes, while that is a mighty fine idea, Google Reader Notifier is made with the philosophy of as little post-processing as possible (to keep your computer clean of unnecessary CPU-cycles). So as long as Google does not have the option of viewing several labels at a single time in the Google Reader interface, it will not be a feature of Google Reader Notifier either. However, as a workaround, you can just make a new label and add it to all the feeds you want Google Reader Notifier to check. It is indeed possible for one single feed to have multiple labels.
I want Google Reader Notifier to startup automatically!
Okay then, you should go to System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items, and then drag the Application icon into the list.
I want to disable growl notifictions!
Go to System Preferences -> Growl, and uncheck the box at Google Reader Notifier. Expect never to be bothered again.
I want [insert something here] to be implemented!
Well that's probably a nice idea, but I won't know until you let me know! Please do so, find a link to the contact page below.

Please help if you can

If you are of a creative nature, and want to make new menubar icons (or enhance the existing once) please send me suggestions! Especially the BW image displayed when no unread items exists is a bit rough.

Contact and About

Google Reader Notifier is made by Troels Bay, an independent developer living in Europe. Please donate if you enjoy.

Please do not use the comment function for bug reports.

31 Oct 2006

Eugene Gordin

14 Nov 2006

Thank you for this program. Is growl support in the works? That was one of my favorite features of GROSX.

Troels Bay

14 Nov 2006

It is. However it is unknown when it will be available.
Update: It is available now, in build 0.65.

Jon Hicks

20 Nov 2006

It would be great if the .app could pass feeds onto Google Reader by setting it as the default RSS reader!

Troels Bay

20 Nov 2006

It's in the works ;)

Jon Hicks

20 Nov 2006

Excellent!

Andrey Sorochan

22 Nov 2006

Fine thing.
Now we want it on PC. ;)

Kyle

26 Nov 2006

Awesome application, thank you so much for creating it!

Is it possible that in the next update that you could add in the ability to have it launch at system startup?

Thanks!

Troels Bay

27 Nov 2006

Hi Kyle, check the help section.

Ben

5 Dec 2006

Great work. This has been added to my top ten OSX apps!

zohar

7 Dec 2006

Hey - nice app!
Do you think it would be possible to change it from Google Reader to Netvibes Reader? (www.netvibes.com)

Troels Bay

10 Dec 2006

I won't make a netvibes.com version. But thx for the suggestion.

sam

10 Dec 2006

thanks for implementing some of my requests :) that's very nice :)

sam

10 Dec 2006

subscribe to feed doesn't work in Camino : "feed/http://www.xxx.com/blog" has no items.

Troels Bay

10 Dec 2006

Are you sure that xxx.com/blog does indeed contain a real feed? From where I can see it doesn't.

sam

11 Dec 2006

lol of course not, i just meant it was doing that for any website :)

It's in fact working fine, I just thought it would be like Google Reader (the website) = detect rss feeds on a given url .

If I type the exact location of the xml file, it works fine :)

thanks !

Troels Bay

11 Dec 2006

Yeah, in the upcomming versions, I'll try to make the subscription feature much better. As for now, consider it a pilot-feature :D

Chirs Hota

11 Dec 2006

Hi,

I just upgraded to .75 and it is working good, except that the icon is no longer appearing. Instead, the default OSX "application" icon shows up.

Thanks for an awesome product!

chris

Troels Bay

11 Dec 2006

Hi Chris, I'll look into that :D Thx

Chris Hart

12 Dec 2006

Great app, is there any plans to allow sharing direct, rather than having to go the reader to click the share button?

Troels Bay

12 Dec 2006

No current plans of introducing the sharing feature.

Phil Bowell

13 Dec 2006

Just wanted to drop in and say thanks for keeping this lil app up. Thanks also for implementing Growl support as I requested. I look forward to using this for a long time to come.

Troels Bay

13 Dec 2006

Hi Phil
Great to get comments like this. Thx :)

craig

16 Dec 2006

perfect, thank you!

gillo

18 Dec 2006

I find the GRN an excellent tool, however it often hangs when I mark all items as read in the menu. And I'm not using labels...

Mariko

1 Jan 2007

Hello,

Could you add an "Open all in windows" feature? I find myself clicking every new item at times.

Thanks so much for this awesome software!

Troels Bay

2 Jan 2007

Hi Mariko. It's in the works. Thx for your support.

Brad

5 Jan 2007

Any chance of developing this as a Dashboard widget?

KZeni

8 Jan 2007

I have realized that even though I am entering the correct password for my google account, it still doesn't work.
My password contains lower/uppercase letters, numbers, as well as symbols.
If you were to find out what is wrong, i'd be thankful.

Troels Bay

9 Jan 2007

Its a problem with some of the symbols...

AK

11 Jan 2007

Thanks for the update today but where has the ''mark as read'' button gone? That was the best feature if the feeds didn''t look interesting.

Troels Bay

11 Jan 2007

Hi AK. It should be there, if you have more than 1 item (otherwise it''s easier to just option-click to mark the item as read). On the other hand, if there are more unread items online than in the menu, I''ve disabled the mark all as read option, under the assumption that you actually want to read your feeds before you mark them as read. Thx for the support.

Andrey Sorochan

14 Jan 2007

Any chance to see this fine app on PC? :)

Gio

21 Jan 2007

in stead of opening each item in a new window, open each item in a new tab? great for camino :)

Troels Bay

21 Jan 2007

Hi Gio! Unfortunately it is not possible to specifically let the requests open in new tabs instead of windows. You''ll have to grab the new beta of Camino and set the settings appropriately to have new windows open in tabs.

Markus Dehmann

22 Jan 2007

Where is the "Mark all as read" feature in the newest version? It was really useful!

Troels Bay

23 Jan 2007

Hi Markus,
When there are more unread items in GRN than can be displayed in the men, it is disabled (with the message, "More unread items exist online"). When there is 1 or less, it is not displayed at all.

Vidar

30 Jan 2007

Thank you for making this app available to the community!

I have one small feature request, though: I''d like to set a different sound for RSS notifications than I have for mail notifications. I know I can turn off sound notifications for the reader, but if I could just set a non-obstrusive sound ... that would be fantastic.

Again, thanks!

maya

6 Feb 2007

there''s no "mark as read" option if there''s only one reader item.

Troels Bay

6 Feb 2007

Hi Maya, true. It''s not needed because you can always option-click on one item to mark it as read.

alex

11 Feb 2007

[Wrote a support question]
[deleted by Troels Bay, don't use comment function for support]

Eric Hamburg

19 Feb 2007

There is currently a bug when using GR in Safari since they started allowing embedded videos so I am now using Firefox to view GR until Google fixes it. It would be nice to have an option in your notifier to specify the default browser so when I select "Go to Reader" it would open up Firefox.

Troels Bay

19 Feb 2007

Hi Eric. It''s a nice idea, but unfortunately OS X does not allow me to make such choice for the user (without using some scripting or nasty hacks that you do not want me to use). GRN currently uses the browser that you have set as your default OS X browser.