News Explorer 17+
Newsreader with iCloud sync
Ron Elemans
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- $4.99
Screenshots
Description
News Explorer is a full-featured yet easy-to-use RSS, JSON, Atom, Reddit, YouTube, Podcast and Mastodon news reader with iCloud synchronization between Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV.
Full iCloud Sync
• News Explorer syncs your feeds, filters, folders, articles including statuses, notes and tags, across all your Apple devices.
• Synchronization is based on iCloud, so there is no need to login or to sign up into any other service, it just works out of the box.
Smart Filters
• Filter your news according your own conditions and preferences, easily accessible from the feeds list.
• Filters customizations are synced across all your devices.
Automatic Reader View
• Use automatic Reader view to download and read the full text version of truncated feed articles.
• News Explorer makes use of multiple parsers to offer the best Reader view results.
Article Comments
• Read article comments from other readers directly in the app.
• Works with RSS feeds that has comment feeds per article, YouTube feeds, Reddit feeds and Hacker News feeds.
• Also works with most feeds from websites that use Open Web comments.
Article Notes
• Create rich text notes, directly in the context of the article.
• Notes are synced via iCloud together with the related article.
Feed Settings
• All aspects of a feed like title, source link or icon, can be adjusted at any time in the Feed settings dialog.
• Disable the feed temporarily or permanently.
• Override app settings for syncing, downloading comments and reading articles.
Feed Prefilters
• Prevent the app from downloading articles you don’t want to see or read.
• Prefilters are synced via iCloud, and can be easily configured on feed level in the Feed settings dialog.
Article Inspector
• Inspect metadata, tags, media, notes and comments of an article in the Inspector panel.
• View and add custom tags in the Metadata panel.
• Browse and download media, including podcasts, in the Media panel.
Article Tags
• Article categories of RSS articles are displayed in the Inspector panel as tags.
• Can be extended with your own tags.
• Custom tags are easily recognizable, and are synced via iCloud.
• Tags can be used as conditions in filters.
Local Account
• Add feeds to News Explorer that only exists on your device by activating the Local account option.
• The local account option can be used in addition to or instead of syncing with iCloud.
Reading Features
• Mark items as favorite for later reading.
• Navigate with one click to the original content.
• Full keyboard navigation.
• Full text search in the List and Timeline view.
• Mark as read while scrolling as option.
• Image viewer to browse through all images of articles or feeds.
• Built-in support to share articles with Instapaper or Pocket.
• Share news items via Email, Messages and other sharing services.
Configuration Features
• Countless settings to tweak layout, fonts, behaviors and more.
• Import and export feeds via OPML.
• Add new feeds via the Search new feeds dialog or Add feed dialogs.
• Organize your feeds by assigning them to folders.
• Multiple themes, tint colors and app icons.
System Features
• Option to index articles with Spotlight.
• Handover articles between iOS, iPadOS and macOS.
• Local notifications for feeds selected in the Feeds Manager.
• Widgets: with adjustable sources and font settings.
Multi Platform
You only need to buy two apps to cover all Apple platforms:
• News Explorer for Mac is available on the Mac App Store.
• News Explorer for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV is a universal purchase app, available on the App Store of the mentioned devices. On visionOS you can use the iPadOS edition of News Explorer.
Support
• News Explorer has an extensive help page on https://betamagic.nl/support/newsexplorer/help.html.
• If you still have questions or need support, email us at support@betamagic.nl.
If you like News Explorer then feel free to leave a review or a rating in the App Store, it helps a lot!
What’s New
Version 2.0.1
Version 2.0.1 fixes an issue for some users with the Quick Setup dialog, which appears after running version 2.0 for the first time.
This fix contains all new features from version 2.0:
Sidebar
• Smart filters are now fully customizable and extendable.
• The sidebar is now used for both the List and Timeline view.
• Use the filter field at the bottom of the sidebar to easily find a feed if you have a lot of them.
• Feed problems are displayed in the sidebar with warning badges.
• Last sync date is now optionally always visible at the bottom of the feeds list.
Article viewer
• Read comments of other readers on articles directly in the app.
• Add notes to articles, which are synced via iCloud.
• Toolbar of the article viewer on the iPad can be extended with quick access buttons
• Articles can be opened in separate windows on the iPad.
Feed settings
• The new Feed settings dialog let you adjust every aspect of a feed.
• Use Feed prefilters to prevent downloading uninteresting news.
• Inactive feeds can now be deactivated, to speed up syncing time.
Inspector panel
• The new Inspector panel let you inspect article metadata, tags, media, notes and comments.
• Article categories are displayed in the inspector as tags and can be extended by your own custom tags.
And more
• Syncing with iCloud has now a Modus setting which can be set to Standard or Client.
• Instead or in addition to iCloud syncing, you can now also use a local storage account.
• Themes are completely rewritten and include now a new Sepia theme.
• The tint color used by each theme can be overruled in the app settings.
• Mark as read while scrolling is now also available as option for the Timeline view.
• Updated split view implementation with 3 panel support on the iPad plus inspector panel.
• Last but not least, a new app icon!
Ratings and Reviews
Internet Zen
Big pros: 1. Everything is just smooth, clean, and works so well. 2. Keyboard functionality on Mac is handy. 3. The appearance customization is excellent. Menu bar, dock icon, notifications, thumbnails, lines of text, spacing, etc is all so great. 3. The timeline view is handy for certain use cases, like viewing news broadly or browsing movie releases. Features I'd request for the future (to keep up with other reader apps and the personal knowledge management trend): 1. Custom read/unread keep dates for different folders. 2. Subfolders, please!!! You'd be a pioneer for RSS readers. 3. Bionic reading. 4. PDF import. 5. Highlights/annotations, with a smart folder of all highlighted articles. 6. The ability to copy all highlights or sync them to note apps like Obsidian. 7. Rules/filtering, like including or excluding specific keywords. 8. Newsletter functionality, like an auto-generated email to be able to send newsletters to the app. 9. Text to speech audio that works during phone lock. Auto-jumps to next post. 10. Tagging, such as manually setting them when adding the RSS. 11. Reading progress for abandoned articles. Maybe in the post preview or in their own top folder/section, with the percentage that is complete for the post. Thanks again for everything in the app so far, it's a pleasure to use!
Great RSS app
This is a highly customizable and useful RSS app. Syncing works well across devices. It would be nice to have a few more theme color options, and also to be able to specify which themes to use when the system is on light or dark mode (currently the switching is rather limited between a subset of themes). There are also a few UI peculiarities:
The back button has different text depending on the name of the currently active folder/feed: “News Explorer” with an arrow when the name is long, “Back” and an arrow when it’s medium length, and just a back arrow when the name is long. It would be nice if it were just consistently a back arrow. It would be helpful to be able to set the margin for articles as well.
It’s also somewhat distracting when loading articles from a feed that is set to use a Reader mode because it shows the RSS content briefly while loading. Some sort of loading animation or a blank screen would be less distracting while the Reader view is loading in such cases.
I’d appreciate an option to show the Mark as Read button. In the lower left/right of the article list (at least on iPhone).
Overall it’s a really great RSS app, and I’m glad to have found it.
Finally. This is it.
Wow. Finally. I'm a UI snob. I've used RSS since it was developed. I've used the iPad since is was introduced, and instantly I realized it was the perfect RSS reading device. And now, after all this time, I've finally found an app that meets my expectations. I wanted something that uses as much core Apple technologies and UI style as possible. I wanted flexible themes text sizes. I didn't want the UI to be "unique". The best design is "invisible" meaning you don’t notice it because you're fully engaged with your task, and it's not getting in your way. This is it. It's not without fault. Putting feeds in folders is a total pain. But that's something you do rarely. I'm giving it a pass and 5 stars because it is much better than the competition, and allowed me to drop an aggregator subscription. I even had an excellent interaction with support (the dev himself) when I couldn't figure out my OPML file. He showed me what I was doing wrong. Bravo.
App Privacy
The developer, Ron Elemans, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Diagnostics
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Ron Elemans
- Size
- 44.1 MB
- Category
- News
- Compatibility
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- iPhone
- Requires iOS 18.0 or later.
- iPad
- Requires iPadOS 18.0 or later.
- Apple TV
- Requires tvOS 18.0 or later.
- Apple Watch
- Requires watchOS 6.2 or later.
- Apple Vision
- Requires visionOS 2.0 or later.
- Languages
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English
- Age Rating
- 17+ Unrestricted Web Access
- Copyright
- © 2024 Betamagic
- Price
- $4.99
Supports
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Family Sharing
Up to six family members can use this app with Family Sharing enabled.