Made for iPhone, iPad and Mac
RSS and Mastodon, in one reader
Beacon
Bring RSS feeds and Mastodon accounts into one reader. Read it as a timeline that keeps your place, or work through what is unread.
A look inside
Beacon in use.
Mac
iOS
iPhone Duo
Ready for the outer display, the open canvas and the space in between.
Widgets
Fresh reading at a glance. Your unread count and the newest stories, sized for every Home Screen.
What it does
The open web, back in one place.
Paste a link, get a feed
margin-and-pixel.example/blog
- RSS
- Atom
- JSON Feed
- Mastodon
Paste a site or feed address and Beacon looks for RSS, Atom or JSON Feed. You choose what to follow.
Follow people, not just sites
Aisha Khan@aisha@sable.social
34m
6am on the pontoons. shot the whole roll into the light coming under the awnings and only checked the meter once, at the end, out of guilt
Folders and Smart Folders
- Design Systems
- Weekend Reading
Group feeds however you think, and save any search as a Smart Folder that stays current.
It remembers your place
Come back to the exact article you left off at instead of facing another unread inbox.
Fresh without asking
Choose your refresh interval
Refresh on demand or let Beacon check for new articles. Feed health flags failures and quiet feeds; background timing depends on the system.
A proper reading view
Margin & Pixel · 6 min
The quiet return of neighbourhood radio
The transmitter sits in a back room above a launderette, and for three hours every evening it reaches about four streets in either direction.
New York100%Comfortable
OPML in and out, any time
On the Home Screen
Tidies up after itself
Old items clear on your schedule; saved ones are never touched.
Handles arrive as feeds
Add a Mastodon handle and it arrives as a feed, replies included.
Drivable from the keyboard
…and many more, on Mac and on iPad with a keyboard.
On-device intelligence
Ask about what you’re reading.
Open an article and ask Siri to summarise it, or ask a question about it. Beacon answers from that article, on your device, through Apple Intelligence.
- The whole article, not the visible part. Ask about a paragraph you scrolled past and Beacon still has it.
- It tells you when the article does not answer the question. Answers come from that article and nothing else, so “this doesn’t cover it” is an answer rather than a guess.
- Siri’s full reasoning, if you want it. An opt-in hands Siri a whole article for open-ended questions, comparisons, or carrying it into another app.
Summaries and article-grounded answers are processed on your device. The full-article Siri handoff is off until you enable it and may be processed on Apple’s servers.
Siri and Shortcuts
Refresh before you sit down.
Beacon's reading actions work from Siri and the Shortcuts app, so the queue is current before you open it and filing an article takes one step.
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Siri
-
Shortcuts
- Refresh feeds. On a trigger, an arrival, or a phrase.
- Find articles. Returns a list a shortcut can act on in turn.
- Read and saved state. Mark, save and clear without opening Beacon.
Twelve actions in all, plus the Unread widget for the Home Screen and Lock Screen.
Why it exists
Built for people who choose their own sources.
Beacon treats reading as something you choose to do rather than something that happens at you. No ranking, no suggestions, no reason to keep scrolling once you are finished.
It is made for people who have run their own feed lists for years and know exactly what usually breaks.
Support and contact · Version history · Privacy
Questions
A few useful answers.
Can I bring my feeds from another reader?
Import an OPML file to bring in subscriptions. Beacon fetches their articles after import. OPML transfers the feed list, not the other reader’s saved article archive.
What if the reading view misses part of an article?
Switch between Reader and Feed, or open the publisher’s original in your browser. Reading-view help explains full text, typography and what can remain available offline.
Do I have to clear an unread inbox?
Choose Timeline or Unread. Timeline remembers your place; Unread gives you the familiar inbox. Your feeds, stars and folders remain the same.
The rest of the family
