While the best websites provide RSS feeds with full article content, some feeds contain only summaries or previews of article content. Without the webpage text feature an article from such a feed would look something like this in Unread:
Unread for Mac is now available from the Mac App Store. Unread for Mac incorporates every Unread capability that makes sense on Mac including:
To read the full article, you would need to read it on the website.
When an RSS reader shows article content that looks like this, it is because the website excludes most article content from its feed.
Unread’s webpage text feature makes reading such articles in Unread much more pleasant as follows:
- Most articles in RSS feeds have a corresponding webpage. Unread can retrieve the webpage and parse the full article content out of that. Retrieving and parsing the article is done by Unread’s servers, so it uses very little battery and very little bandwidth.
- When you initially subscribe to a feed, Unread determines whether that feed contains only article summaries. Based on that, Unread will decide whether to show feed text or webpage text by default for articles from that feed. Feed text is the article content from the feed. Webpage text is the article content parsed out of the webpage.
Switching Between Feed Text and Webpage Text
Unread’s determination of whether a feed contains full article content is usually correct. But there is no perfect algorithm for making that determination, and occasionally a website will change whether it publishes full text feeds versus summary-only feeds.
On iPhone and iPad, you can switch between feed text and webpage text on the article you are reading by swiping the screen to the left, choosing Display from the resulting menu, and then choosing either Feed Text or Webpage Text from the resulting submenu. You will then be asked whether to apply that display mode change to all articles from that feed, versus just the current article.
On Mac, you can switch between feed text and webpage text on an article by choosing Feed Text or Webpage Text from the View menu. After making that change, a prompt will appear above the article asking whether to apply that change to other articles from that feed. Click the Apply button to do so, or click the close box to remove the prompt.
In Unread Cloud accounts, display mode (feed text versus webpage text) settings for feeds and for individual articles sync between devices.
Reporting Webpage Text Issues
There is no perfect algorithm for parsing article content out of a webpage. Like determining whether a feed contains full article content, this is based on heuristics. If you are subscribed to a summary-only feed and find that the webpage text is missing article content or contains extra junk, I encourage you to report that to me.
On iPhone and iPad, the best way to report an issue with webpage text is to open the share sheet of an article and choose Report Article Issue from the share sheet.
On Mac, the best way to report an issue with webpage text is to open the article and choose Report Article Issue… from the Article menu.
Link Articles
A link article is an article consisting of a quote from and comment on an article from another website. For example, this Daring Fireball article is a link to and comment on a Flexibits article.
You can tell whether Unread is treating an article as a link article by looking at it in an article list. A link article will have the website host (“flexibits.com”) at the bottom of its article list entry.
A third display mode is designed for link articles: Feed & Webpage Text. For a link article, this shows the feed text of the article at the top and the webpage text of the linked article below it. In this example, the Daring Fireball article would be on top and the Flexibits article would be below it.
Unread maintains two different display mode settings for each feed, one for traditional articles and one for link articles. You might show feed text for traditional articles, and feed & webpage text for link articles.
Caching
Subscribers to Unread’s premium features can enable caching of webpage text. When caching is enabled, webpage text for new articles is already available on the device when you open the article. This makes opening the article much faster, and makes it available when you have no internet connection.
