Open source · No account needed

Your feeds, calmly. And only yours.

Perch is a privacy-first reader for RSS, Atom and JSON feeds — in your browser, on iPhone and on Android. Local by default, synced if you want, and never watching what you read.

Get Perch View on GitHub
  • Chrome, Edge, Brave & Firefox
  • iPhone & iPad
  • Android

Store releases are on their way; the code is ready to build today.

Made for reading

Everything a feed reader should be. Nothing it shouldn’t.

Reads like a book

Full articles load by themselves, in a calm, uncluttered layout with sans or serif type. No mode to switch, no button to press.

Local by default

Feeds, reading, notes and settings live on your device. No telemetry, no ads, and no account needed to read.

No scary permissions

The extension asks for no site access when you install it. It reaches only the sites you add, one at a time, unless you turn on automatic feed discovery.

Finds the feed for you

On any site, open Perch: it reads the feed links the page names, or tries the usual places. RSS, Atom and JSON Feed all work.

Yours to shape

Light and dark themes, your own accent and button colours, frosted glass and a background picture of your choice.

Open source, self-hostable

MIT licensed. Run your own Perch Server with a single script — or don’t run one at all.

Notes of your own

Write a markdown note on any article. Notes stay private and sync with your library; share one as text from any app.

Locked when you want

A PIN in the extension, and a PIN with Face ID or fingerprint on the phones, so a passer-by can’t open your reading.

No account, ever

Nothing to sign up for: no username, no password, no email. A sync chain links your devices with a code instead.

Sync chains

Sync without an account.

Start a chain on one device and scan its QR code on the next. Everything is encrypted on your devices with a key only they hold; the relay in between passes it on without being able to read it.

  1. 1

    Start a chain

    On any device: Settings → Sync → Start a chain.

  2. 2

    Scan or type the code

    Scan the QR code with the Perch app on your iPhone or Android phone, or enter the 28-character code in another browser.

  3. 3

    Read anywhere

    Subscriptions, read and starred articles, notes, theme and colours follow you. The devices in a chain list each other.

Rather not use ours? Run your own relay: the same Perch Server in relay mode, on any small server, then pick it under Settings → Sync → Relay. The QR code carries it to your other devices.

Privacy you can check

Built to know as little as possible.

Read the code
  • No analytics, no ads, no trackers — this page included.
  • We run no accounts: nothing to sign up for, no username, no password, no email.
  • Sync chains are end-to-end encrypted; even feed addresses are hidden from the relay.
  • No favicons are fetched — they would tell each site what you follow.
  • Articles render with scripts switched off.
  • perch.ws is served by Cloudflare Pages, which handles each visit like any web host. The sync relay (sync.perch.ws) doesn’t go through Cloudflare: your devices talk straight to it, and it keeps no access logs.
  • The relay is all we run, and it holds only encrypted records: a stolen disk would hold nothing anyone can read, and nothing that says whose it is.
  • Our server images are built and attested in public; the server tells you which commit it runs. See perch.ws/transparency.

Get Perch

Free, on every device you read on.

Chrome, Edge & Brave

Coming to the store soon.

Firefox

Coming to the store soon.

iPhone & iPad

Coming to the store soon.

Android

Coming to the store soon.

Your own server

Run Perch Server yourself: a sync relay of your own, or a server with a web reader, accounts and shared notes. One script on a small VPS, from the repository.

Setup guide

Questions and ideas

Ask, suggest and report bugs in the open, on GitHub.

Discussions

Find a quiet place to read.

Get Perch Star on GitHub