Back in the days of yore, there were search engine services that 1) searched the blogosphere, and 2) let you subscribe to your searches via RSS. Each search query had its own feed.
These services were great because you could get articles from outside the feeds you’ve subscribed to. Let’s say you like cats — you could have a search feed on cats and hear about cats from all quarters of the web.
It was a great idea! And super-useful. But these services all went away.
Until now — we’ve just learned about a new one called feedle.
To get a feed: go there, run a search, then click the orange RSS icon near the upper-right side of the page, then copy the RSS feed URL that appears on the left side of the screen to get something like https://feedle.world/rss/?query=cats, then add it to your RSS reader (NetNewsWire or otherwise).
Nice, right?
(The service appears to be new and ramping up. We’d bet that their index of sites to search is still growing.)
A few people have asked how to follow Twitter feeds in NetNewsWire. Here’s the help page. (This particular page is for the Mac app, but it’s the same process for iOS.)
And… another reader app — maybe the last we’ll hear about today, and maybe not — is Readwise Reader, which bills itself as an “app for power readers.”
Power readers are our favorite people. :)
Looks like it’s in private beta right now, but you can ask to get on their beta train.
Another new and interesting feed reader we’ve just learned about is FeedLand, which has a social component for sharing and discovering feeds.
In NetNewsWire 6 we added the ability to follow Twitter in NetNewsWire. It’s an RSS reader, not a full-blown Twitter client, but it does allow you to follow timelines, mentions, and searches.
We have no intention of removing this feature, despite Twitter’s troubles and poor prognosis. It’s more important than ever, we believe, since it helps people find their off-ramp from Twitter.
You may not want to engage with Twitter — maybe you’ve even deleted their apps from your iPhone, iPad, and Mac — but you might still want to or need to follow mentions, for instance. Totally understandable.
In our case, we have a search feed for NetNewsWire and we follow mentions. Though we’re happiest when people use other ways to get support, they do ask us for help on Twitter, and we can’t ignore that.
And we know we’re not the only people who, as much as we don’t like it, still need to pay some attention to Twitter.
PS We’re definitely not the only RSS reader with this feature. If you’re already using, or even just looking at, another RSS reader, and you need this feature, check to see if this feature is there. Good chance it is.
NetNewsWire 6.1 includes a new article themes feature. To pick a theme, go to the settings screen (via the gear icon at the bottom left of the Feeds screen) and scroll down to the Articles section.
You can also create your own themes — you can make the article view look exactly how you want it to.
Last week we released NetNewsWire 6.1 for Mac with a big new feature: themes for articles.
This is one of those features from NetNewsWire of Yore that we’re bringing back — it’s pretty fun, which is reason enough, but for some people it’s also an accessibility issue, and that’s a compelling reason. It’s an accessibility issue because a person can create or customize a theme with the fonts, sizes, colors, and layout that makes reading easiest for them.
To get more of an idea of what these themes are, check out Hans Schülein’s unofficial NetNewsWire Themes Directory, which shows the built-in themes plus some themes built by NetNewsWire users.
If you already use NetNewsWire, just do a Check for Updates. Or you can download NetNewsWire 6.1 and give it a go. (It’s free and open source — there’s no trial period or commitment or anything. Just use it if you like it.)
Other changes since NetNewsWire 6.0.3
Copy URLs using repaired, rather than raw, feed links
Restore article scroll position on relaunching app
Added Copy Article URL and Copy External URL commands to the Edit menu
Fixed a bug where using cmd-Q wouldn’t always quit the app as quickly as one might prefer
Disallow creation of iCloud account in the app if iCloud and iCloud Drive aren’t both enabled
Fixed bug showing quote tweets that only included an image
Added a hidden pref to suppress downloading/syncing on start: defaults write com.ranchero.NetNewsWire-Evergreen DevroeSuppressSyncOnLaunch -bool true
Video autoplay is now disallowed
Article view now supports RTL layout
Fixed a few font and sizing issues
iOS Note
We’re working on NetNewsWire 6.1 for iOS, which will also include the themes feature. It’s in TestFlight now, and we have a few bugs still to fix. Once it’s released you’ll be able to use themes in iOS, which is a feature even NetNewsWire of Yore never had. 🐣🐥
This was a false alarm due to corrupted test data — there is no syncing problem. macOS 12.3 and SQLite changes aren’t implicated in anything, because there’s no problem.
We are still planning to release NetNewsWire 6.1 for Mac pretty soon, but not today.
Update 2:30 pm Pacific: the below turns out to have been a false alarm, due to an error with test data, and not a syncing problem. The below is incorrect, even the parts about macOS 12.3 and SQLite.
A change to SQLite in macOS 12.3 breaks syncing of read/unread and starred statuses. This affects all syncing accounts — it affects iCloud and online services such as Feedbin and Feedly.
We have a fix for it — a one-line fix — and we will be releasing NetNewsWire 6.1 for Mac as soon as possible (hopefully today) with that fix.
This bug does not appear in iOS at this writing. However, we will be adding this fix to the iOS version too.
Change in how built-in themes work: they’re part of the app bundle and they’re not copied into the Themes folder. When a built-in theme changes in a new app release, anyone using that new version gets the changes to the built-in theme
Article themes. Several themes ship with the app, and you can create your own. You can change the theme in Preferences or by adding the theme switcher to the toolbar
Copy URLs using repaired, rather than raw, feed links
Restore article scroll position on relaunching app
Added Copy Article URL and Copy External URL commands to the Edit menu
Fixed a bug where using cmd-Q wouldn’t always quit the app as quickly as one might prefer
Disallow creation of iCloud account in the app if iCloud and iCloud Drive aren’t both enabled
Fixed bug showing quote tweets that only included an image
Added a hidden pref to suppress downloading/syncing on start: defaults write com.ranchero.NetNewsWire-Evergreen DevroeSuppressSyncOnLaunch -bool true
Video autoplay is now disallowed
Article view now supports RTL layout
The big new feature coming in NetNewsWire 6.1 is article themes. That feature was a big deal in the days of NetNewsWire of Yore, and we’re psyched to be bringing it back.
The best part about article themes is that you can make your own! They’re HTML and CSS.
(The article themes feature will also be in the iOS app. We’ll have a TestFlight beta for that soon-ish, we hope.)
