MYSTERY TRAMP  Shrook has become my default RSS reader. Part of that, I'll admit, is by default. Vienna isn't quite there yet and I'm not ready to pay for a reader, so that lets out a dozen other candidates.

I like the way Shrook lets you cursor around the screen. I like it's four-paned interface, but I use a 21-inch monitor; it might stink on a much narrower monitor.

And I like how it doesn't try to display Web pages and leaves that to a browser.

I had some issues trying to set up my preferences. It crashed several times as I made changes, but once they were set up, Shrook has been solid.

mt  
(Version 2.72)

PENGUIRL  My initial impression of Shrook after being forced to leave NetNewsWire by it's new system requirements is that it's inability to import feeds in the same hierarchy they were exported in is a substantial inconvenience. Also the four pane window seems too busy and leaves each pane too narrow, I would like to have the option of a three pane widescreen layout that NetNewsWire and Vienna offer. I won't rate it until I've had a chance to reorganize the feeds and give it a proper run through.  
(Version 2.72)

THEBRIX2008  As with browsers, I keep moving between RSS readers (NetNewsWire, NewsFire, Vienna) ... but keep coming back to Shrook because of four reasons:

1. It has the most subtle and effective method of showing which feeds have updated most recently;

2. Although it demands a wide screen, because of the physical size of the single window, a lot is packed in without becoming unreadable, and the method of switching between feed listings, feed details and Web pages without using tabs is slick;

3. The new "highlight item changes" feature is better than NetNewsWire's;

4. It consistently has the fewest problems with parsing malformed feeds, of which there are unfortunately too many.  
(Version 2.7)

ROBERTS2424  A business associate and I have been having trouble with the Shrook Export command - OPML. We've been exporting one RSS feed and then wanting to import it into Shrook on another machine. Same Shrook version being used on both computers. The file will export but it can't import due to a "unrecognizable/corrupt" message. You can't import the list into any other RSS reader such as Vienna either. The developer has been contacted on several occasions and has never responded. It's proven to be a frustrating experience. As a result, our division has sadly dumped Shrook in favor of Vienna. We're having to rebuild the RSS list which will take a while, too.  
(Version 2.6.2)

TESLANAUT  Quite a nice RSS Reader. Just needs ability to change views and UI improvement.  
(Version 2.6.2)

EYEKEY  Quiet a time since my last Review...

Because the most used newsreader got free a while ago, I tried it also and several others.

Shrook is the ONLY reader which makes a difference between NEW and READ news. This is very important for me to immedially see which post is new and which I just have not read. I love that feature.

Shrook gets better with every Version, can´t wait for version 3!

Sorry for my bad English, it´s not my native language.  
(Version 2.6.1)

DEVNEVYN  Horrible UI (looks like a Windows app, very cluttered, too many panes, bad itunes-lookalike), flickering windows, buggy syncing feature (would keep bugging me about a sync conflict every ten minutes or so about four of my items no matter what I chose in the conflict resolution dialog), bad opml import, obnoxious dialogs all the time... Need I go on?  
(Version 2.6.1)

WEB-JIVE  Seems to crash with Leopard. Anyone else experiencing this?  
(Version 2.6)

EYEKEY  Great Software. I love it.

But same here, Dev. does not respond to emails. Let us hope, he reads them, because this rss reader has some bugs.  
(Version 2.54)

68KMLA  Just so people aren't fooled by this being listed under Freeware. It's not free to use the Shrook.com syncing feature, which costs a monthly subscription fee.

Still doesn't read an OPML file with group folders properly, and the dev hasn't responded to an email from three weeks ago.

I wouldn't bother with it since the only feature that set it apart (able to sync feeds with shrook server) now costs a subscription fee.

Back to Vienna for me.  
(Version 2.51)

ROBERTS2424  After having tried them all, dealing with all the good and bad points of each Shrook has remained the favorite. Vienna has run a close second. Now, that Shrook is freeware it stands to truly claim its throne. I don't proclaim that Shrook is perfect...but, it's better.  
(Version 2.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  A great RSS client, but it's still got some rough edges. One is that I can't figure out how to get it to leave the channel names as they were in the OPML file I imported from LiveJournal - so instead of seeing my friends' usernames, I see the clever descriptions they entered for themselves, and I can't tell who's who. Another problem is that this app needs an impossibly wide display - it puts the source list beside the channel list beside the item list beside the item view, meaning I have to squash everything horizontally. I wish there were a way to view things in separate windows, or even have a 'top' and a 'bottom' to the window.  
(Version 2.4)

ANONYMOUS  2.22 always creates a file "Importer" on my main disk. Please remove that.  
(Version 2.22)

PHIL  I love Shrook. I bought it several months back. I wrote the developer a feature request to auto-collapse the web frame after auto-expanding (when you view a web page). I got an almost immediate response say, "The auto-collapse was an oversight on my part, I'll get it in the next version." I hadn't heard/seen anything Shrook related for quite a while after that so I wrote him again on the issue a couple weeks ago. This time no response (I assume because the new version was almost here at that time). I was reading news last night when Shrook popped up an update message. I installed it and look - no auto-collapse. I have less of a problem with a developer being non-responsive than I do with one saying they will do something and then not doing it. Developer: Can you please fix this?  
(Version 2.2)

ANONYMOUS  Yeah, it's really annoying. I gave up and went back to the previous version and will stay with it until the developer gets it right.  
(Version 2.2)

ANONYMOUS  Why does Shrook keep trying to delete channels after I select the "no" option? It's driving me crazy. Once should be enough. That said, this is the best RSS reader I've ever used and I have used quite a few.  
(Version 2.2)

ANONYMOUS  The disk image is corrupted for me every single time I download it.  
(Version 2.13)

ANONYMOUS  I was excited about Shrook at first. It has a great feature set, looks beautiful and is highly configurable. However, I have been plagued with the application crashing. The more features I use the more often it crashes. The problem gets real bad with the built in browser but crashing is certainly not isolated to this feature.

Looking at previous posts it appears that stability has been an issue for quite some time. I would caution anyone interested in Shrook to give it a good spin before deciding to purchase.

I know we all hope the bugs will be worked out so maybe the developer will stop adding functionality and devote all of his time to stabilizing. This might already be the case and if so, I wish him all the luck in fixing the bugs that are causing so many application crashes.  
(Version 2.12)

ANONYMOUS  The initial problems from 2.1 seem to be fixed now, thankfully.

Otherwise, a nice update! ;)  
(Version 2.1)

DR_FUNK  The latest version won't load most of my feeds? Nothing displays when I click on 'Channels'

Looks like it's back to 2.05 for me....  
(Version 2.1)

ANONYMOUS  very nice, did not crash, but lines don't wrap properly which is quite annoying.  
(Version 2.0.5)

KELARA  Hey, auther. Shrook is good design, but now, only u have to do is make it stable. It's crush many times like everyone said. Only I did is import NNW's subscription and then it's freezed.  
(Version 2.0.4)

LEE PHILLIPS  I've been using it for about a week on OS X 10.3.3 and haven't seen a crash yet. Also, the indicators for new/seen/etc. seem to be accurate.

It does sometimes get busy in the background, but that's not for "no reason": it's doing its distributed checking thing and synchronising.

More notes:

http://lee-phillips.org/osx/newsaggregators.html  
(Version 2.0.4)

ANONYMOUS  Worked until I upgraded to 10.3; now I get nothing. Emailed developer twice; no help. I'm a paid-registered user, and it's pretty annoying.  
(Version 2.0.3)

ANONYMOUS  Crashed for me too -- 10.3.3 on G4 dual 533

GUI looked nice for the minute the app stayed alive.  
(Version 2.0.2)

JOHN JONES  MacUpdate says Shrook 2 works with OS X 10.2 or later, Shrook website says it requires 10.3, and alas, it just crashes for me here at work using 10.2.8. I'll have to try it out at home later.  
(Version 2.0)

DAVIDCRICKETT  Now it works, and whoa!  
(Version 2.0pre)

ANONYMOUS  Not working  
(Version 2.0pre)

DAVIDCRICKETT  You can space-tab through all your news sorted by the latest and greatest, like you cannot in NetNewsWire. Nifty! Works well with Panther except for one thing - the exact same thing why I didn't buy it this time... it takes a half up to one minute to close down! The author has responded on my bug complaint and said, that he will try another kind of saving it to a database (or something like that). Then I will reconsider... :-) Two star missing because of that.

In NetNewsWire, many times there's just this headline, which doesn't say anything. You have to click it, your browser opens, you see the rest. In Shrook, you just click at button, and you can see the site and what it's all about.   
(Version 1.3.2)

PETERME  It doesn't seem to work well with Panther (quitting Shrook just causes it to hang, and if you have it open for a while, it eats CPU cycles for no reason), and the creator doesn't seem to care. I think I'm done with Shrook.   
(Version 1.3.1)

SUBLINEAR  It's interface is sweet, but with 100+ subscriptions it gets pretty sluggish. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to update it's read/unread badges properly, often signaling unread messages when nothings new. Harrumff. I like it though...  
(Version 1.3.1)

EDHEIL  Not sure about this one yet. Gave it a try a couple revisions ago, and found that it didn't know how to handle all my subscriptions from NNW; some of them it kept claiming were new when they weren't. Trying out the new version but apparently it remembers me and has decided the 30 day timeout is up, so I don't get the "new/not new" feature. I guess that's better than refusing to work at all.

It's frustrating cause Shrook on the one hand offers such neat advantages (FAST RSS updating through the distributed checking feature -- that is very very very cool. The inline Webkit thing is spiff too), but the little problems really grate.

One thing that would really be nice to see would be to follow NNW in improving the keybindings: NNW eventually took a hint from Mail.app and made it possible to read through everything that was new by simply hitting the space bar repeatedly. That is a very nice ease of use feature that Shrook should consider stealing (since NNW stole it from Mail.app!)

It's kind of a drag continually comparing Shrook to NNW, but NNW has quickly established itself as the gold standard so comparisons are inevitable. And inevitably every tiny feature that NNW has that it lacks -- every RSS feed that NNW handles that it doesn't, every smart keybinding that NNW chose and Shrook didn't -- is gonna kind of stick out like a sore thumb.

Overall I want to keep my eye on this thing and probably one of these days I'll drop the $20 on it, either way.  
(Version 1.3.1)

MARK MEYER  The template feature is wonderful. I'm using some extended RSS documents and it was extremely handy to be able to show shook how to render the non-standard elements.   
(Version 1.3)

JEFF SCHULER  Great application!

I prefer it to NetNewsWire.

The facilities to load the web page for the item inline, and Channel preferences for default settings for this are great -- the only thing I find myself missing frustrated with is waiting for the page to load before being able to look at another item (spoiled by Safari tabs...)  
(Version 1.2)

YOLANDA  The best RSS reader that I've tried.  
(Version 1.1)

ANONYMOUS  I like this better than NetNewswire. The interface feels more pleasant, it stacks unread items according to how recent they are. But the killer feature is to be able to switch from the RSS feed to the website with the click of a tab, without even having to launch your browser - right within Shrook. This is so convenient!  
(Version 1.1)

ERIC WAHLFORSS  Extremely nice news reader. Just one minus for missing the shortcut for switching between RSS and web page view mode.  
(Version 1.1)

ANONYMOUS  NetNewsWire Lite is free and does the job. This may be good, but I can't figure out why I would need it.  
(Version 1.0)