What Cove Reader Is
Cove Reader is a native Mac RSS reader built around a different premise: what you subscribe to is worth keeping. Instead of behaving like an inbox that quietly purges old items, Cove is a local-first library. Whole articles live on your Mac, readable offline, searchable, and yours until you delete them.
There is no account, no subscription service, and no reading profile. Articles are fetched and extracted on your machine, and the app requires macOS 15 or later. It is free while in beta.
Full Articles, Not Teasers
When a feed only sends a preview, Cove fetches the rest so the complete article is waiting in the reader. If both versions exist, one toggle flips between the publisher's layout and a clean reading view — instantly, with no reload. When a page can't be retrieved (paywalls, broken sites, slow servers), Cove hands you the preview and a link rather than pretending the teaser is the whole piece. Technical feeds get proper treatment too: code arrives formatted and highlighted, and headings, lists, and tables survive intact.
An Archive That Stays Put
Saved articles are never auto-deleted and never purged to free up space. Removing a feed offers to keep its articles, which move to an Archive and stay one click from coming back. Search covers your whole library by title, author, or feed name, and the query never leaves your Mac. Subscriptions import from other readers in one click — folders and all — and export just as easily.
Clips: Keep the Sentence
Sometimes the thing worth keeping is one paragraph inside an article. Select a passage, press H or use the right-click menu, and it joins a library of saved passages, each one a click from its source. Clips are highlighted where you left them in either reading view, and saving one doesn't mark the article read or starred. Each clip takes a plain note, and quotations can be copied alone or with a ready-to-paste citation. If a passage can no longer be found, Cove keeps your words and tells you the location is unavailable instead of pointing at lookalike text.
Calm Reading Tools
- Set aside — switch on "setting older unread aside" and pick how old is old; those articles stop counting against you while staying unread, in place, marked with a dotted ring. Nothing is marked read or deleted.
- Listen — articles are read aloud using voices already on your Mac, with the current paragraph highlighted and a compact player. Optional extra voices download once and run entirely offline.
- Keyboard fluency — J and K walk the list, Space pages through a piece and on to the next unread, with real menus and shortcuts throughout.
- Quiet by design — no streaks, badges, or guilt mechanics; unread counts can shrink to a dot or switch off entirely.
Local MCP Server
Cove includes a built-in MCP server, off until you enable it in Settings. An agent on the same Mac can list feeds and folders, fetch unread or starred articles, read everything Cove kept of an article, and mark items read or manage subscriptions. It answers only on your Mac, requires a token Cove generates, and stops the moment the app quits. Any MCP-speaking agent can connect via a configuration block copied from Settings.
Honest Limits
Cove is Mac-only: there is no iOS app and no sync, so anyone who needs mobile or cross-device reading should look elsewhere today. Beta means the core is stable for daily reading while the 1.0 feature set is still landing. On-device AI is planned before 1.0 and will keep the same local-by-default rule. Pricing for 1.0 is not yet decided.