Unread 2.6 Adds Full-Text Search, a Compact Article List Option for iPhone, and More

Unread 2.6 is available from the App Store. This update adds:

• Full-text search capabilities
• A compact article list option for iPhone
• More flexible caching settings
• A variety of additional improvements

I am particularly excited about this update. It is the most substantial feature update since version 2.0, and it delivers capabilities that customers have been requesting for some time.

Full-Text Search

This update adds the ability to search for articles. You can initiate a search by opening an article list, swiping left, and selecting Search Articles from the resulting menu. By default search results are limited to articles that are included in a particular article list, i.e., articles from the current subscription or folder. While on a list of search results you can toggle Hide Read Items or expand the scope of the search to all articles from the swipe left menu.

You can find an article based on words and phrases in its title, author name, or text. If webpage text for an article is cached, you can find it based on words and phrases in the webpage text that may not be in the feed text.

Subscriptions and folders are also searchable. Rather than scrolling all the way down to a specific subscription, you can find it quickly by selecting Search Subscriptions from the swipe left menu and typing the subscription name.

Unread will index your existing articles to make them searchable the first time you refresh your account after installing this update.

Compact Article List Option for iPhone

On iPhone there is a new Format setting under Article Lists that can be set to Compact or Expansive. The compact format is designed for scrolling through long lists of articles quickly. The compact format uses less whitespace. It does not divide article lists into sections by date or by feed. When Show Thumbnails is enabled, the compact article list uses a smaller thumbnail image and places it to the right of the article title.

The expansive article list format also has minor spacing tweaks. The compact article list format is not available on iPad.

Caching Settings

The Caching setting is now split into two different settings, one for caching webpage text and another for caching images. You can now choose to always cache webpage text but to only cache images when on Wi-Fi, for example.

Additional Improvements

• Recent Articles widgets can now be configured to show saved articles. This feature requires a subscription.
• On iPad, article list images are now vertically aligned to the top of their respective article list entries.
• When incorporating text from a blockquote into an article summary, Unread will now add quotation marks around the blockquoted text. This change will apply to new articles downloaded after installing this update.
• A new Show Authors setting lets you show author names in article lists.
• This update improves the heuristics around determining whether an article’s author name is meaningful versus whether it is just the name of the website. Unread tries to avoid showing an author name if that author name is the same as the name of the website or looks like a placeholder.
• This update adds heuristics to clean up author name strings. If an author name starts with “by ”, that prefix will be removed. Unread tries to normalize author name strings representing multiple author names. Multiple author names are consistently delimited by commas (,).
• When displaying an article list that excludes read articles, an article will no longer be removed after it has been read. Similarly when displaying an article list that contains only saved articles, an article will no longer be removed after being unsaved.
• This update contains many minor improvements to the sets of menu items available in context menus and in swipe left menus, particularly around menu items that pertain to subscription management.
• Pressing command-i on a hardware keyboard will now bring up the Edit screen for a subscription or folder if one is selected.
• Pressing delete on a hardware keyboard will now delete the currently selected subscription, folder, or account after prompting for confirmation.
• The Keep Read setting now defaults to One Month on new installations of Unread.
• The Hide Read Items setting now defaults to off on new installations of Unread.
• Mark Read on Scroll now works when scrolling with VoiceOver and with Voice Control.
• This update removes the Premium Settings section from the Subscription screen.
• This update fixes a bug that prevented animations from working when expanding a GIF inside an article.
• This update fixes a bug that prevented feed title colors on the article screen from being random when using the Panic theme.
• The previous feature update removed the ability to enable article actions without a subscription. With this update, article actions are not available without a subscription even if they were enabled with an older version of Unread or if the subscription since expired.
• Mark All Read Below now marks articles read even if they are not loaded into the article list because you have not scrolled down that far.
• This update fixes bugs around sharing articles to Tweetbot.
• This update adds performance improvements around updating the widgets.
• This update adds minor text alignment tweaks to images in article lists.
• This update fixes a bug that resulted in bad thumbnail images for articles from routinehub.co under some circumstances.
• Unread now uses Stacksift for crash reporting. I updated the privacy policy to reflect this.

Unread 2.6 requires iOS/iPadOS 14.5 or later. It is available from the App Store. If you are excited about this update please consider leaving a review in the App Store, writing about it on your blog, or telling your friends on social media.