Unread 2.5 Expands Unread’s Free Tier and More

Unread 2.5 is available. This update significantly expands Unread’s free tier and more.

Expanded Free Tier

This update removes the reading limits that were in place before purchasing a subscription. Until now, Unread without a subscription was essentially a free trial that became less functional after a certain amount of use. That was as I intended, but now I want more people to use Unread.

Adjusting some settings on home screen widgets now requires purchasing a subscription:

• You now need a subscription to configure a Recent Articles widget to show articles from a specific feed or folder.
• You now need a subscription to configure a medium or large Unread Counts widget to show unread counts by folder, or to show unread counts in a specific folder by feed.
• You now need a subscription to configure a small Unread Count widget to show the count for a specific feed or folder.

Article actions such as Instapaper and Mail Link now require a subscription. If you enabled article actions in a prior version of Unread but have not purchased a subscription, those article actions will continue to work without a subscription until the next feature update.

Settings that require a subscription are marked as such on the Settings screen before a subscription is purchased.

Default Email App Support

If Apple Mail is not configured with any accounts and iOS is configured to use an alternative email app as the default, Mail Link will use that alternative email app.

The Mail Article action still requires Apple Mail. There is no way to send rich text to an alternative email app. The Article Actions settings screen no longer lets you enable Mail Article if Apple Mail is not setup with an account.

Additional Improvements

• Unread now renders iframe elements from most feeds. This change will not apply to articles already downloaded to the device before installing this update.
• This update improves the formatting of tweets quoted in articles from Substack feeds. This change will not apply to articles already downloaded to the device before installing this update.
• This update fixes compatibility issues with the Display Zoom accessibility setting.
• This update improves haptic feedback around Unread context menus for links and images in articles.
• This update fixes a bug that prevented the ordering and grouping settings from working on lists of articles from Feed Wrangler Smart Streams, Feedbin Saved Searches, and Inoreader Active Searches under some circumstances.
• This update fixes bugs that prevented Unread from working well with mice that have scroll wheels.
• This update adds fixes for some formatting issues that affected MacRumors articles. This change will not apply to articles already downloaded to the device before installing this update.
• This update improves the algorithm for finding article list thumbnails for articles with YouTube videos.
• This update adds performance improvements around drawing images in article lists.
• The About screen and the Unread Subscription screen have been reorganized.
• Since iOS 14 lets you choose a default system browser other than Safari, I removed the Chrome and Firefox options from the Open Links In setting. I also removed the Open in Chrome and Open in Firefox share sheet actions.
• Long pressing to show an Unread context menu now requires long pressing for a slightly longer period of time. This should avoid Unread context menus appearing when not expected.
• Unread now consistently ignores articles (“a”, “an”, “the”) at the start of a subscription title when sorting those subscriptions.
• Unread can now be launched with a feed: URL. Unread will respond by letting you subscribe to the feed specified by that URL. If you have other apps on your device that can be opened with feed: URLs, iOS might open Unread or it might open one of the other apps.
• There is no longer an optional Article Actions menu item in the swipe left menu of an article. Article Actions are setup from the Settings screen.

Unread 2.5 requires iOS 14 or later.