Universal News Explorer 1.9.7 for iOS released

[Betamagic]

Update July 11, 2019
News Explorer 1.9.5 has been released, see post #33

News Explorer is a modern, easy-to-use newsreader that runs native on all your Apple devices, with automatic iCloud based sync of all your RSS, RDF, Atom and Twitter feed subscriptions, news articles, read statuses and favorites.

Some unique features:

• Supports RSS 2.0, RDF, JSON, Atom and Twitter news feeds.
• iCloud based sync across all your Apple devices.
• Built-in support to save news items to Instapaper and Pocket.
  
• Clean, stylish and distraction-free user interface.
• Themes and font adjustment support.
• Use Reader view to download and read the full version of articles.
• Timeline view shows your news items in an attractive newspaper-like way.
• Full text search.
• Spotlight support.
• Built-in image viewer to browse through all images of news items.
• Enhanced support for YouTube channel subscriptions.
• Easily add news feeds based on website URL’s with RSS and Twitter Auto-discovery .
• Built-in search feature to search RSS or Twitter feeds by keywords.
• Supports feeds with Basic and Digest HTTP Authentication.
• Handoff support, pick up where you left off.
• Optional Notifications and Background app refresh.

News Explorer product info page

The App Store version of News Explorer is an universal purchase app that will run on all your iOS devices (10.3 and newer), plus Apple Watch and Apple TV.

Download News Explorer on the App Store

 

[Betamagic]

News Explorer for iOS has been updated to version 1.5.1

This update contains the following improvements and fixes:

• Improved support for YouTube channel URL’s ending with an identifier
• Fixed a duplication issue with legacy YouTube feed data
• Twitter feeds within OPML files are now properly imported
• Enhanced handling of feed icons with problematic sources
• Improved validation when adding Twitter hashtag feeds
• Improved rendering of search results
• Action "Open next subscription" is now the default for setting "After marking all as read"
• Improved the performance of the Mark All as Read action by only processing subscriptions with unread items
• Improved generation of title and summary for Tweets in Twitter feeds
• Several bug fixes

More info in our blog: https://betamagic.nl/blog.html

 

[Betamagic]

News Explorer for iOS has been updated to version 1.6.

Major new features are:

• Support for the new JSON Feed syndication format.
• Enhanced auto-discovery when adding website URLs, to detect JSON Feed URLs (macOS and iOS).
• Implemented HTTP Conditional GET to minimise network traffic.
• Automatic detection of copied URLs when adding new feeds (macOS and iOS).

More info in our blog: https://betamagic.nl/blog.html

 

[Betamagic]

News Explorer for iOS and watchOS has been updated to version 1.6.1, with the following fixes and improvements:

• JSON feeds in an OPML file are now correctly imported
• Fixed a bug with feeds containing duplicate items
• Handling speed of 'Mark All as Read' has been improved
• Improved handling of items with equal identifiers belonging to different feeds
• Improved sync of Twitter metadata
• Extended date format support

https://betamagic.nl/products/newsexplorer.html

 

[Betamagic]

News Explorer for iOS has been updated to version 1.7, with the following new features:

New integration features

• The authentication needed to use the Twitter feed integration is now built-in. The Twitter feed engine no longer uses the shared Twitter account settings of iOS. The main reason for this change is the elimination of Twitter integration in iOS 11. More info on Twitter authentication in the Help page.
• You can now share news articles with Instapaper and Pocket, the two most popular read-later services, without installing any other third-party app. To enable sharing:
  • Tap on the new Configuration menu button on top of the subscriptions list
  • Tap on ‘Login to Instapaper’ or ‘Login to Pocket’.
  • You can share with Instapaper and Pocket via the share sheet or by performing a long press on a news item. This will give you quick access to sharing with Instapaper and Pocket.
• A new ‘Add to News Explorer’ sharing extension allows you to add feeds to News Explorer directly from the sharing menu of Safari and other browsers. This works also for YouTube channels and Twitter account web pages.
• YouTube playback has been extended with a new ‘Play YouTube in HD quality’ option in the Settings.
• The Settings are now accessible via menu item ‘Open Settings’ which is part of the new Configuration menu button in the subscription view. To navigate back from Settings to News Explorer, tap on ‘News Explorer’ on the top left in the status bar.
• The new Configuration menu button, represented by a three dots icon, replaces the previous Edit button. To put the subscriptions list in edit modus, tap ‘Edit Feeds’ in the menu of the Configuration button.
• You can now import and export OPML files using iCloud Drive, Dropbox or other compatible services, via the new Configuration menu button.
• The Add feed dialog will now also detect and handle Twitter account names and URLs.

New usability features

• The iOS edition supports now key commands when using an external keyboard. Hold down the Command key to see which key commands are available in the active view.
• You can now 'Mark Above as Read' and 'Mark Below as Read' in the articles list view and in the timeline view. Perform a long press on a news item to trigger a quick menu with the new mark options. You can also use the new ⌘ Command + ↑ and ⌘ Command + ↓ shortcut keys when using an external keyboard.
• You can now toggle between ‘Read’ and ‘Unread’ by simply pressing R on the keyboard.
• And you can now toggle between ‘Favorite’ and ‘Unfavorite’ by pressing F on the keyboard.
• The articles list will be automatically hidden when moving to portrait modus on the iPad. This behaviour can be adjusted in the Settings.
• You can now set the width of the articles list view on the iPad.
• You can toggle the toolbar and navigation bar visibility in the article viewer with a two finger tap gesture.

Other new features

• The Timeline shows now also news items without an image. You can configure this in the settings via a new setting ‘Show imageless items in the Timeline view’
• Notifications do now show images, when available. You can disable this in the Settings.
• The periodical iCloud cleaning is now done on a separate operation queue. This prevents endless long sync sessions when an iCloud cleaning is busy.
• Removed support for ‘Fast batch sync’. The more reliable ‘Instant item change upload’ is now the default. Other legacy sync settings are also removed. Make sure the sync priority is set to ‘Instant item change upload’ in older versions of News Explorer. This setting is automatically enforced by version 1.7, so normally you don’t have to bother about this.

System requirements
As a consequence of the mentioned technical changes, the minimum required versions has been changed to iOS 10.3. Synchronisation via iCloud still works with older devices running version 1.6.1 of News Explorer.

Feedback
If you encounter any difficulties with this new release, just send a message to support@betamagic.nl.

 

[max2]

Oh wow it looks incredible. Going to have to try it!


Is there a free trial on iOS ?

 

[Betamagic]

No, unfortunately not.

 

[Betamagic]

News Explorer 1.7.1 for iOS and watchOS is now available, with the following enhancements:

• Improved iCloud sync algorithm to handle data conflicts
• Improved support for VoiceOver in all main views
• Added support for Modified date field in JSON feeds
• The refresh button in the Timeline view acts now as a sync button
• Timeline view opens the selected channel in the subscription list
• Updated Readability engine
• Redownloading a feed will now also refresh the feed icon
• Twitter profile images are now rendered with a higher resolution
• Fixes an issue when maximising from split to full screen, with hidden navigation bar
• Compatibility improvements with iOS 11

 

[shandy4]

@Betamagic Would it be possible to add a setting to default to reader view on a per-feed basis?

 

[Betamagic]

Yes, this has been planned for a future version.

 

[shandy4]

Yes, this has been planned for a future version.

great! What's the ETA?

 

[Betamagic]

Somewhere next year. There are still some other areas we like to improve before we start with feed-level settings.

 

[Betamagic]

News Explorer 1.8 for iOS and watchOS is now available, with the following enhancements:

• Greatly improved iCloud synchronisation algorithm with semi realtime data exchange between active devices by using so called 'silent push notifications'. This should result in a more 'automatic' sync experience with less need to manual interventions.
  
• Read items are now displayed with 50% transparency, which makes it a lot easier to distinguish them from unread news items. The default transparency level can be changed in the Settings app.
  
• The article viewer will now show the external link of a news article, when available. Feeds like Daring Fireball (the JSON edition) and Drudge Report contain links to the original source article which are different from the link to the articles themselves.
  
• When an article contains an external link, it will be used to generate the Reader view. Unless this is disabled in the settings.
  
• The swipe menu of the news articles list has been enhanced. You can now swipe from the left to the right to toggle the read status, or swipe from the right to the left for other actions.
  
• The swipe menu of the news articles list has been enhanced. You can now swipe from the left to the right to toggle the read status, or swipe from the right to the left for other actions.
  
• The default swipe action to left direction will now open the original source of the news article in Safari. This is especially handy when using News Explorer on the iPhone.
  
• The list views now support large title display in iOS 11, unless this is disabled in the Settings.
  
• Special adjustments are made to prevent nasty issues on the brand new iPhone X.

More info can be found on the special blog page or product page.

 

[Betamagic]

News Explorer for iOS has been updated to version 1.8.2, with the following fixes and enhancements:

• The instant iCloud sync algorithm as introduced in version 1.8, has been tweaked to cover more complex synchronisation scenarios.
• The Twitter options has been extended with a new Download likes option. When enabled, all tweets that were liked by the account of the Twitter feed, will be downloaded in addition to the other tweets.
• Some feeds use links that are relative to the website internet address, like /pages/1234 instead of http://example.com/pages/1234. These links didn't work in News Explorer in the previous versions. This has been fixed and should work with RSS and Atom feeds.
• Version 1.8.2 adds a fix for using News Explorer for macOS and iOS without iCloud synchronization. This fix does not apply to the tvOS version, which for now remains on version 1.8.1.

More info can be found on the special blog page or product page.

 

[Betamagic]

News Explorer for iOS and watchOS has been updated to version 1.8.3:

New options

• Added a new option Auto fix invalid feeds. When enabled, News Explorer will try to parse feeds that are normally rejected. This takes more time and processor power, and is therefore default disabled. The current implementation is limited to parsing invalid configured Wordpress feeds.
• New option Auto hide navigation bar to auto hide the navigation bar in the article viewer when scrolling upwards, for a completely minimalistic reader experience.
• New option with the long name Use 'Mark as Favorite' as leading swipe action to adjust to order of the swipe actions in the news article list. This is especially useful for VoiceOver users.

Improvements

• Fixed and improved rendering of code within <pre> and <code> html tags.
• Fixed some other article rendering issues as well, mostly related to images.
• The image extraction algorithm has been improved and extended.
• The built-in Readability engine has been updated.
• The poster image returned by the Mercury engine is now displayed, when available and applicable.
• Improved usability of the feed list edit modus. The bottom action bar is now always visible, even when nothing is selected.
• The Add new feed dialog will now close after adding a hashtag Twitter feed.
• Fixed a crash related to privacy permissions to access the Photo library when saving an image.
• The preferences in Settings app have been slightly reorganised.

More info can be found on the special blog page or product page.

 

[shandy4]

Somewhere next year. There are still some other areas we like to improve before we start with feed-level settings.

Any update on when this feature will be arriving? News Explorer looks great - but this is the single 'must have' feature which is preventing me from moving over from NewsBlur.

 

[Betamagic]

Hopefully this year.

 

[Betamagic]

News Explorer for iOS and watchOS has been updated to version 1.8.4, with the following new features:

iOS:

• A new Black theme has been added to the Theme settings panel. This theme is optimised for the iPhone X OLED display, but is also usable on other iOS devices. With the 'Black' theme, all background colors in the main views are 100% black instead of gray tones and all fonts uses light-gray color tones.
• A new option Show small title has been added to the Article viewer settings. When enabled, the article header is rendered with a smaller font, which is especially useful on smaller iPhone screens.

watchOS:

• New Force Touch action Show Reader to generate a Reader view for the current article on the Apple Watch.
• New option Skip images in the Apple Watch settings on the iPhone. When enabled, articles are displayed without images on the Apple Watch.

More info about this version, including all other improvements and fixes, can be found on the release notes blog page or product page.

 

[Betamagic]

News Explorer for iOS and watchOS has been updated to version 1.8.5, with the following new features:

• Support for Dynamic Type. With this you can change the font size of the list and timeline views in the Settings app of iOS, via Display & Brightness > Text Size. The font size for the article reader remains adjustable within the article viewer.
• The feed icon can now be changed via a new left swipe Select Icon action in the subscriptions list.
• New Timeline View section in the News Explorer settings, with some new handy behavior preferences.

The update contains also the following improvements and fixes:

• Image viewer can now be closed with a swipe up gesture.
• The feed selector of the Timeline view does now show unread counters.
• Added a 2 hour sync time interval in the News Explorer settings.
• Fixed a bug with opening source links containing a hashtag character.
• Idem, when using the Reader view with source links containing a hashtag character.
• Fixed a problem with the default font, when using a font size larger than 14 points.
• After marking unread items with 'Mark all as Read' as read, the app navigates now to the start screen.
• Fixed a visual glitch when using the app with iPhone X in horizontal orientation.
• Fixed a visual issue when using the Mail sharing sheet.

More info about this update can be found here, and more info about the product here.

 

[Betamagic]

News Explorer for iOS and watchOS has been updated to version 1.8.7, with the following new features:

• Introduction of collapsible folders in the subscription list. By tapping on the right side of a folder header, you can collapse it. By tapping it again, it will expand to its original state. While collapsed, an unread counter will be displayed for all containing feeds.
• The subscriptions list features now asynchronously calculated unread counters with caching. This should result in more responsive scrolling, even during a sync session.

The following improvements and fixes are part of News Explorer 1.8.7 for iOS:

• You can now make the Timeline view toolbar visible by tapping on the date group header.
• Timeline view doesn't change the scroll position anymore when you navigate back from visiting an article.
• Added a menu item to the Settings menu, to open the News Explorer Help page.
• Improved support for iPhone X when using the Timeline view in landscape orientation. The content is no longer clipped by the infamous 'notch'.
• Fixed a visual glitch which occurs after rotating an article on the iPhone X from portrait to landscape orientation.

More info here, and of course on the product page.

 

[max2]

Is Movie Explorer ever coming to iOS ? Curious.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/movie-explorer/id802224528?mt=12

 

[Betamagic]

The Movie Explorer thread is here: Movie Explorer - A must have app for movie lovers

 

[max2]

The Movie Explorer thread is here: Movie Explorer - A must have app for movie lovers

Ok so is it?

Asked the question there too. Sorry.

 

[max2]

News Explorer for iOS doesn't seem to push notifications of new articles from my RSS feeds every 5 minutes like I have it set to

I know there won't be a new article every 5 minutes but there is new articles and they are not being pushed to notifications.

So far I only have 3 notifications.

Is this a bug or glitch ? Thanks.

 

[max2]

Notifications are not working at all on my iPhone