Sign UpSign In
Google Reader API
Integrations & Sync

Use Your Favorite RSS App

While Lion Reader’s web interface is designed to be a great reading experience, sometimes you want to read on a native app — on your phone during a commute, on a tablet on the couch, or in a desktop app that integrates with your OS. The Google Reader-compatible API makes this possible by letting third-party RSS reader apps sync directly with your Lion Reader account.

The Google Reader API is a widely-adopted protocol originally created by Google Reader before it was shut down in 2013. Since then, it has become the de facto standard for RSS reader sync — nearly every RSS app supports it. Lion Reader implements this protocol as a thin translation layer over its existing services, so everything stays in sync.

Compatible Apps

Any app that supports the Google Reader API should work with Lion Reader. Some popular options include:

  • Reeder — A beautiful RSS reader for iOS and macOS
  • NetNewsWire — A free, open-source reader for iOS and macOS
  • FeedMe — A popular RSS reader for Android
  • Read You — A modern, Material Design reader for Android
  • NewsFlash — A GTK4 feed reader for Linux

What Syncs

The API provides full two-way sync for everything you’d expect:

  • Subscriptions — All your feeds appear in the app, and you can subscribe or unsubscribe from within the app
  • Read state — Mark articles as read on your phone and they’re read everywhere
  • Starred articles — Star articles from any client and they sync across all your devices
  • Tags/folders — Your Lion Reader tags appear as folders in compatible apps, and you can create, rename, and delete them
  • Unread counts — See accurate unread counts per subscription and per folder

Setup

Setting up is straightforward. In your RSS app, look for “FreshRSS” as the service type, then enter:

  1. Server URL — Your Lion Reader instance URL with the FreshRSS path (e.g., https://lionreader.com/api/greader.php)
  2. Email — Your Lion Reader email address
  3. Password — Your Lion Reader password

That’s it. The app will authenticate using the ClientLogin protocol and start syncing your feeds immediately. No API tokens or special configuration required.

How It Works

The Google Reader API is implemented as a set of Next.js route handlers under /api/greader.php/reader/api/0/ (with authentication at /api/greader.php/accounts/ClientLogin). Rather than duplicating business logic, each endpoint is a thin translation layer that converts between the Google Reader wire format and Lion Reader’s existing services layer. This means behavior is identical whether you’re reading through the web UI, the MCP server, or a third-party app.

One interesting challenge is ID mapping. Google Reader clients expect signed 64-bit integer IDs, but Lion Reader uses UUIDv7 (128-bit). The API derives a deterministic 63-bit integer from each UUID by extracting the 48-bit timestamp and 15 bits of randomness. This preserves time-ordering (so clients sort correctly) and is fully reversible without any extra storage.