You can also search for "One handed mode" in the system settings ,lthat will pull down the notification shade when you swipe down on the gesture pill

Good job on releasing your project to the public! Making FOSS because you are frustrated/horrified with permissions of the existing apps is something that I can truly relate to.

You can use one of the bunch of RSS feed readers to do that. I haven't use it for years (basically since I lost everything I had on Google reader) so I cannot recommend you any apps