Field Notes · 12 min
Why slow software feels faster
Latency, attention and the small joys of tools that wait for you.
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 your iPhone and on the web. Local by default, synced if you want, and never watching what you read.
- Chrome, Edge, Brave & Firefox
- iPhone & iPad
- Web, at app.perch.ws
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.
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 worth sharing
Write a markdown note on any article. It stays private until you share it as a page of its own.
Locked when you want
A PIN in the extension, and a PIN with Face ID on the iPhone, so a passer-by can’t open your reading.
No email, ever
Accounts are a username, a password and a recovery code you keep. Forgot your password? The code sets a new one.
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.
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1
Start a chain
On any device: Settings → Sync → Start a chain.
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2
Scan or type the code
Scan the QR code in the Perch app on your iPhone, or enter the 28-character code in another browser.
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3
Read anywhere
Subscriptions, read and starred articles, notes, theme and colours follow you. The devices in a chain list each other.
Want to share a note? A Perch account is just a name for that: a username, a password and a recovery code. No email, and it doesn’t touch your library.
- No analytics, no ads, no trackers — this page included.
- Your password never leaves your device: Perch derives a key from it with Argon2id and sends only that.
- 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 app (app.perch.ws) and the sync relay (sync.perch.ws) don’t go through Cloudflare: your devices talk straight to our server, which keeps no access logs.
- app.perch.ws keeps no libraries and no email addresses: a stolen disk would hold usernames and notes people chose to share.
- Our server images are built and attested in public; the server tells you which commit it runs. See perch.ws/transparency.