Major New Features
- Automatic Webpage Text
For feeds that contain only article summaries, Unread can display the full article text from the webpage. You can switch between feed text and webpage text for any article. You can make webpage text the default for individual feeds. Unread will even analyze your feeds and default to webpage text for those that contain only article summaries.
Webpage text is not available for some websites such as TidBITS and The Loop that sell access to feeds with full article text. - Hardware Keyboard Navigation
Unread 2 includes full support for navigation via hardware keyboard. Unread 2 also adds an array of keyboard shortcuts for actions such as marking articles as read and unread, saving/starring articles, and switching between feed text and webpage text for an article. - Subscription Management
You can now subscribe to feeds and unsubscribe from feeds from within Unread. You can rename and reorganize existing subscriptions. Unread 2 also provides management of Feed Wrangler smart streams, Feedbin tags, Feedbin saved searches, Feedly categories, Inoreader folders, and NewsBlur folders. This feature is not available for Fever accounts. - Saving to Read-later Services
Unread 2 allows you to configure article actions: saving to Instapaper, saving to Pocket, saving to Safari Reading List, and copying an article link. These article actions are available in the tug left menu and via keyboard shortcut. - Custom Double Tap Actions
You can now customize what happens when you double tap an article in an article list. Double tapping can be made to toggle the read/unread status, save/star the article, save to Instapaper, save to Pocket, save to Safari Reading List, or copy the article link. - New Article List Layout
Unread 2 incorporates a new layout for article lists. The new layout is a little more compact, making it easy to navigate long lists of articles. It continues Unread’s tradition of not truncating titles or summaries with ellipses. There is also a new setting allowing you to exclude summaries from article lists. - Multiple Windows on iPad
Unread 2 allows you to drag any row in an article list or almost any table cell elsewhere in the app to create a new window. - Context Menus
Unread 2 adds full support for context menus with previews. You can now bring up a context menu and a preview of the appropriate child view by long pressing an interface element such as a link in an article, an article in a list, or a subscription in a list. - Alternative Icons
In addition to the new standard icon, Unread 2 offers a selection of alternative icons. There is one alternative icon matching the color scheme of each theme.
Minor Features
- On iPad, Unread 2 allows dragging and dropping links to other apps. You can drag an article from an article list to copy a link to that article. You can also drag a link within an article.
- Unread now incorporates iframe-embedded video from YouTube, Vimeo, and some other sources.
- By default, Unread determines font sizes automatically based on the system Dynamic Type setting. You can still customize font sizes in Settings.
- Unread now detects universal links and opens them in the appropriate application. For example, Unread will open links to YouTube videos in the YouTube app if it is installed.
- Unread now opens links to additional iTunes media types such as songs in an iTunes Store view.
- When the device is in low power mode, Unread will no longer cache images and will not cache webpage text.
- Unread will now cache poster images for videos and will consider them thumbnail image candidates for article lists.
- When images and videos are large enough, they now occupy the full width of the screen on an iPhone in portrait mode.
- In most themes the text and images of read articles in article lists now have slightly more contrast against the background color.
- When viewing a list of articles that excludes read articles, there is now a Clear Read Items menu item that will remove articles from the list that you have read or marked read since opening that list. This functionality is no longer available by shaking the device.
- The order and grouping of article lists is now set by swiping to the left and selecting Ordering & Grouping from the resulting menu. There are now three separate pairs of settings: those for article lists that only include saved/starred articles, those for article lists that only include unread articles, and those for other article lists.
- Unread will only cache images for articles that are unread or are saved/starred. Similarly Unread will only cache webpage text for articles that meet this criteria.
- When making a screenshot of an article, Unread now offers a full-page screenshot. This full-page screenshot is a PDF of the article.
Additional Changes
- Unread now downloads recent articles that were already read or marked read before Unread first saw them. The maximum age of read articles that Unread will retrieve is based on the Keep Read Articles setting. Additional limits apply depending on the syncing service. This functionality is not available when syncing with Fever. The default Keep Read Articles setting is now Three Days, even for customers migrating from Unread 1. The maximum Keep Read Articles period of time is now One Month.
- The Settings screen is reorganized.
- The list of starred/saved articles now always includes articles that are marked as read, even when the Hide Read Items setting is enabled.
- Sharing an article via the share sheet now better handles articles without titles, without known feed names, and without summary text.
- Sharing an article via the share sheet to Mail now creates an email message with the article title as the message title and with the link as the body text. No other summary information is included in the message template.
- When reading release notes for a version of Unread, you can pull up on the screen to read the release notes for the prior version and pull down on the screen to read release notes for the subsequent version.
- Notification messages now appear as bubbles of text animated from the bottom of the screen on all devices. Previously they appeared as bubbles only on devices that have software home indicators instead of home buttons.
- Captions under images and other figures are no longer centered.
- The short delay between navigating out of Unread and its badge number updating has been eliminated.
- All switch controls in Unread have been replaced by table cells where the value is turned on or off by tapping anywhere on the cell. The on/off indicator is a checkmark. This allows you to toggle an on/off value by tapping anywhere in the table cell instead of the much smaller touch target of the switch.
- Instead of marking an article read in your feed service account immediately after opening it, Unread will now wait until you navigate out of an article before marking it read in your feed service account. This makes it easier to find that article on another device before you are done reading it.
- The Strip All Break Tags setting has been removed. (If you miss it please tell me.)
- Hide Read Items is now on by default for new installations of Unread.
- The article view now uses WKWebView, Apple’s newer framework for displaying web content.
- If caching images for an article fails, Unread will reattempt to cache those images with decreasing frequency.
- Image caching is much faster.
- The Halloween theme has been renamed to Campfire. Long-time Unread customers may recall that Campfire was the theme’s original name. The theme has also been reclassified as a theme intended for Dark Mode instead of Light Mode.
- Unread no longer includes the Brony theme.
- The “View on Web” item is no longer available in the tug left menu for an article. That functionality remains available by tapping the article title or date in the article view and by keyboard shortcut.
Unread 2.0 requires iOS or iPadOS version 13.2 or later. Unread 2 is listed as a new app in the App Store. Unread 2 will automatically copy settings from recent versions of Unread 1 if installed on the same device. Unread 2 is free to download and try. To remove reading limitations, enable caching of webpage text and images, and allow setting an alternative icon, you can subscribe for $19.99/year (USD). This update required substantial updates to the privacy policy.