Desktop App

Blogs Are Back,
on your desktop.

Read offline, get notified when blogs publish, and listen to articles — in its own window. Currently in beta.

Offline reading

Works offline

Articles are saved to disk, so you can read without an internet connection. The app also fetches feeds directly from publishers — no CORS issues to deal with.

Offline — 12 saved articles available

A Web Renaissance

Anil Dash · 8 min

Why I Blog

Tom MacWright · 4 min

The Small Web Is Beautiful

Benoit Bidiville · 11 min

Robin Rendle

The Secret Life of the Comma

3m ago

Manu Moreale

Intentional Browsing

1h ago

Tracy Durnell

Links and Thoughts, March 2026

3h ago
Last checked 2 min ago2 new posts
Background monitoring

Feeds checked in the background

The app checks your feeds every 10 minutes, even when the window is closed. New posts trigger a native desktop notification. You can also see unread counts in the system tray.

Native notifications
System tray with unread count
Text-to-Speech

Listen to any article

Built-in text-to-speech with natural-sounding voices. Pick a voice, hit play, and listen while you do other things. Supports 70+ languages and dialects.

During your commute
While cooking dinner
On your morning walk
Before falling asleep
Voice
Ava
Warm & Natural

The Art of Slow Reading

by Maria Santos · 12 min listen

4:1212:00

Get the app

Currently in beta. Takes about a minute to install, auto-updates after that.

Download for macOS

Universal build — Intel & Apple Silicon

Or install with Homebrew:

brew install blogsareback/desktop/blogsareback

Built in the open

The same web app you already know, running in its own window with native OS capabilities. Every line of code is public.

Open source

Read the code, build it yourself, or contribute. MIT licensed.

View on GitHub

Your data stays local

Saved posts, feed cache, and settings live on your machine. We never see what you read.

Minimal telemetry

One anonymous heartbeat per day with aggregate counts. No personal data, no feed content, no browsing history.

Questions

Not with the desktop app — it fetches feeds directly. The browser extension is still great if you prefer using the web app, though.

Yes. Updates are downloaded in the background and installed on next launch. You can also grab releases manually from GitHub.

Yes. Your blog list syncs between them. Use whichever you prefer, or both.

It's usable day-to-day, but you may run into rough edges. Updates ship frequently. If you hit a bug, the GitHub issues page is the best place to report it.

The installer is roughly 100-200MB depending on platform. It bundles its own Chromium runtime, so it uses more memory than a browser tab. The web app plus browser extension is a lighter alternative.

Get the desktop app

Free, open source, currently in beta.

Download for macOS