NetNewsWire 6.0d4 for Mac is the first public test build of NetNewsWire 6.

You should probably skip it. It’s not a beta. It’s not even an alpha. It’s a d release — where d, which used to stand for development, now stands for dangerous.

We’re not being cute; this is not reverse psychology. We’re not fans of testing other people’s stuff and you shouldn’t be either. Especially not early stuff.

Things will almost surely go wrong, and, since we’re just a bunch of volunteers working during our spare time, we may not have time to help you.

Important: if you’re just running it because you’re curious, and then want to go back to NetNewsWire 5.1.3, you might have some trouble doing that, since this version turns on sandboxing, which changes the location of your data. It’s essential that you make a backup of ~/Library/Application Support/NetNewsWire/ before you launch this test build, so you can restore it if you go back to 5.1.3.

And let us satisfy your curiosity in advance: it’s just an app. It’s got some more features. You know the story, and you don’t need to run this if you’re just curious. Seriously.

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All that said, if you’d like to help test, then: thank you! We appreciate your bravery and understanding.

Please post bug reports to GitHub. We can also talk about the app on the Slack group, in the #nnw-mac-feedback channel. (Both of these links are available in the Help menu.)

Changes since 5.1.3:

• Big Sur app icon
• Big Sur UI (when running on Big Sur)
• App is now sandboxed
• Syncing via iCloud
• Syncing via BazQux, Inoreader, NewsBlur, The Old Reader, and FreshRSS
• Special support for Twitter and Reddit feeds
• Share extension, so you can send URLs to NetNewsWire
• Preference to change article text size
• Preference to set preferred browser
• External link, when available, shows in article view
• High resolution icons in the sidebar (when available)

Download the app here. After downloading and launching, go to Preferences > Advanced, and turn on downloading Test Builds so that you get updates. (Otherwise you’ll be stuck on this version for a while and you’ll miss bug fixes. You will definitely want bug fixes.)

The app requires macOS 10.15 (Catalina) and newer.

Check for updates or download the latest.

We were hoping that 5.1.2 was the last of the 5.x series, but we found a couple crashing bugs to fix — and we can’t resist a good crashing bug. Or two.

Changes since 5.1.2:

• Fixed a crashing bug that could happen with empty titles in the timeline
• Fixed a crashing bug that could happen when adding a feed

Check for updates or download the latest.

Changes since 5.1.1:

• Fixed a crashing bug in the timeline
• Fixed a background color bug in dark mode in the timeline
• Fixed a crashing bug updating the browser popup in Preferences
• Feedbin: fixed bug where credentials couldn’t be updated
• Feedly: fixed bug syncing feed name changes
• Feedly: fixed a bug adding a feed to a Feedly collection that has a + in its name
• On My Mac: increased performance downloading feeds in the On My Mac account

Note: we expect this to be the final 5.x build. Next up will be test builds for NetNewsWire 6. (Yes, we will do another 5.x build if needed, if some critical bug comes up, but we aren’t planning for it.)

Check for updates — if your preferences are set for test builds — or download the latest.

Changes since 5.1.2b1:

• Fixed a crashing bug in the timeline
• Fixed a background color bug in dark mode in the timeline
• Fixed a crashing bug updating the browser popup in Preferences
• Feedly: fixed bug syncing feed name changes

Check for updates — if your preferences are set for test builds — or download the latest.

Changes since 5.1.1:

• Increased performance downloading feeds in the On My Mac account
• Fixed a bug adding a feed to a Feedly collection that has a + in its name

It’s out! Check for updates, or download it directly. Requires macOS 10.15 or newer.

This release brings parity with the iOS version. Changes since 5.1:

• Fixed a crash handling a specific type of weird URL
• Preferences: restored ability to set default RSS reader
• Fixed bug where o key wouldn’t mark older as read
• Fixed an Open System Preferences button in an alert that didn’t work
• Fixed a possible hang when adding a feed to Feedly (and the feed isn’t found)
• Fixed some UI issues to do with adding a Feedly account
• Fixed contrast in footnotes indicator
• Fixed bug where duplicate accounts (same username and service) could be made
• Fixed bug where open in Safari in background might not open in the background

If you’re using NetNewsWire 5.1 for Mac, you may find there are some URLs that can make NetNewsWire crash. One was a link to a Google Doc in a recent post on Jason Kottke’s blog, which was linked to from Daring Fireball.

We have a fix for this in a test build. The fix will be in 5.1.1.

Check for updates — if your preferences are set for test builds — or download the latest.

Changes since 5.1.1a1:

• Fixed a crash handling a specific type of really weird URL
• Fixed a possible hang when adding a feed to Feedly (and the feed isn’t found)
• Fixed some UI issues to do with adding a Feedly account
• Fixed contrast in footnotes indicator
• Fixed bug where duplicate accounts (same username and service) could be made
• Fixed bug where open in Safari in background might not open in the background

Check for updates — if your preferences are set for test builds — or download the latest.

Changes since 5.1:

• Preferences: restored ability to set default RSS reader
• Fixed bug where o key wouldn’t mark older as read
• Fixed a crash in the code that handles URLs with non-ASCII characters
• Fixed an Open System Preferences button in an alert that didn’t work

It’s out! Check for updates, or download it directly. Requires macOS 10.15 or newer.

This release brings parity with the iOS version. Changes since 5.0.4:

• Feedly syncing
• Reader view
• Notifications (configure per feed in the Info window)
• Multiple windows - File > New Window
• View > Hide Read Feeds
• View > Hide Read Articles (also a filter button above timeline for this)
• Clean Up command (to immediately hide read articles when hide-read-articles is on)
• Feeds view: remember expansion state between runs
• Timeline: more compact rows (source and date on same line)
• Timeline: sort menu on top
• Timeline: swipe actions
• Article view: shift-space scrolls backwards
• Articles with non-ASCII URLs can now open in browser
• Adding feeds with non-ASCII URLs now works
• AppleScript: article now has a feed property
• Hold down shift to temporarily toggle open-in-browser in background preference
• Article > Mark Above as Read, Mark Below as Read
• Preferences: Choose preferred browser (for viewing web pages)
• Inspector: window title now matches name of thing being inspected

Important note! If you were using a previous 5.1 test build, you may have to set up your accounts again.

Or you can migrate — see the end of this post.

Either way, we apologize — this is totally inconvenient, and we didn’t want for this to happen.

This is because we turned off sandboxing in this build, and sandboxing (and turning it off) changes the location of your data.

(We turned off sandboxing due to crashes we couldn’t investigate and fix in time. We’ve postponed that feature to a later version.)

To get the latest: check for updates — if your preferences are set for test builds — or download the latest.

Changes since 5.1b1:

• The Clean Up command now works in the All Unread smart feed
• Sandboxing has been reverted to off

How to Migrate Your Old Data

If you were using a 5.1 test build, you can find your old data at ~/Library/Containers/com.ranchero.NetNewsWire-Evergreen/Data/Library/Application Support/NetNewsWire/Accounts/

If you take that Accounts folder, and copy it into ~/Library/Application Support/NetNewsWire (replacing the Accounts folder in that location), then you’ll have your data from 5.1 test builds.

It’s in beta now. But it’s still pre-release software, and if you’re wise you’ll never run anybody’s betas. Not ours, not Apple’s, not anybody’s. Running beta software is free labor for other people — and it’s not always that fun, since bugs can be pretty darn frustrating.

If you still want it…

Check for updates — if your preferences are set for test builds — or download the latest.

Changes since 5.1a2:

• Articles with non-ASCII URLs can now open in browser
• Adding feeds with non-ASCII URLs now works
• Feeds view, timeline: fixed bug where multiple selection could result in showing only unread articles
• Help menu: NetNewsWire Help now links to the 5.1 help book
• Inspector: window title now matches name of thing being inspected
• VoiceOver: fix bug navigating into the Add Account table
• Fixed crash that could happen when adding an account
• Preferences: Removed non-working (due to sandboxing) feature for setting the default RSS reader

It’s not beta yet! If you’re concerned about running pre-release software — and you really, really should be (we are!) — then you might not want to run this. 🐣

If you still want it…

Check for updates — if your preferences are set for test builds — or download the latest.

Changes since 5.1d3:

• Feeds view: fixed bug where unread counts might be misplaced at startup
• Timeline: fixed extra row of pixels in swipe actions
• Article view: tweaked some colors
• Toolbar: reader view button is now not blurry on non-retina machines
• Toolbar: review view animation looping fixed
• Inspector: fixed some layout/spacing issues
• Preferences: tweaked text relating to holding down the shift key
• Dock unread count: now asks for permission so it can show it

NetNewsWire 5.1d3 has all kinds of good stuff in it — but it’s not a beta. It’s not even an alpha. It’s a “d” build — which means development but could just as easily mean don’t or dangerous or demons live in this here code.

If you still want it…

Check for updates — if your preferences are set for test builds — or download the latest.

Changes since 5.0.4:

• Feedly syncing
• Reader view
• Notifications (configure per feed in the Info window)
• Sandboxing
• Multiple windows - File > New Window
• View > Hide Read Feeds
• View > Hide Read Articles (also a filter button above timeline for this)
• Clean Up command (to immediately hide read articles when hide-read-articles is on)
• Feeds view: remember expansion state between runs
• Timeline: more compact rows (source and date on same line)
• Timeline: sort menu on top
• Timeline: swipe actions
• Article view: shift-space scrolls backwards
• AppleScript: article now has a feed property
• Hold down shift to temporarily toggle open-in-browser in background preference
• Article > Mark Above as Read, Mark Below as Read
• Choose preferred browser (for viewing web pages)

NetNewsWire 5.0.3 for iOS is up on the App Store. Enjoy!

Changes since 5.0.2:

• VoiceOver: now reads expansion state in sidebar
• VoiceOver: now reads “starred” when an article is starred
• Article view: subject is now populated in mail composer when a mailto link includes a subject
• Settings: fixed some URLs to our GitHub repo that included obsolete name for main branch

We just released NetNewsWire 5.0.4 for Mac — it’s a bug-fix release with a nice performance enhancement when fetching articles.

But the question on your mind probably isn’t “When are you going to make NetNewsWire even faster?” — it’s probably “When is Feedly sync coming?” or “When is iCloud sync coming?”

Here are our current plans:

NetNewsWire 5.1 for Mac

This release will include Feedly syncing. It will have feature parity with NetNewsWire for iOS, including a reader view and a few other features that haven’t made it to the Mac version yet.

We can’t give you an ETA, but we can say that it’s next. We’re working on this release. Once test versions are available, we’ll post a note on this blog.

(This release will require Catalina. It will run on Big Sur, but won’t be updated for Big Sur.)

NetNewsWire 6.0

This Mac and iOS release will include iCloud syncing, user interface updates for Big Sur, and a bunch of other new features (including, hopefully, support for other additional syncing systems).

(Our current plans have us supporting Catalina and Big Sur in this release, but we’re not 100% sure about Catalina support yet.)

NetNewsWire 6.1

More… things?

Don’t know. Good stuff!

(There’s a good chance there will also be 6.2, 6.3, etc.)

NetNewsWire 7.0

This will be the SwiftUI release, where the user interface code will be shared across Mac and iOS versions of NetNewsWire. We’re hoping to be able to do this after the SwiftUI updates coming in WWDC 2021.

We could almost do this now, but there would be too many regressions. We’ve done a ton of work on this, but we’ll just hold on to it for a year.

This isn’t meant to criticize SwiftUI or to say that it’s not useful yet. It’s awesome, and many apps could be written using SwiftUI right now. But NetNewsWire has some special considerations. We’ll write more about what we’re missing in a future blog post. Our view — that SwiftUI and Combine are the future of Mac and iOS development — is unchanged.

(This release will require the Mac and iOS OSes presumably coming in 2021.)

Check for updates, or download the latest.

Changes since 5.0.3

Performance enhancement: fetching articles is faster and uses less memory

Changed the retention policy to match iOS

Feeds view: fixed bug where multiple sequential deletes could mess up the current selection index

Article view: dealt with Twitter change that caused Twitter embeds to get cut off

Article view: properly size emojis that are actually graphics (from Wordpress, for instance)

Article view: stop playing any audio if the window is closed

Article view: don’t let line lengths get too long

Article view: fixed display of BandCamp widgets

OPML export: use an accessory view instead of an intermediate sheet

Add Folder: disable Add Folder button when text field is empty

Feed icons: get more icons from Feedbin; get favicons from some tricky cases

Add Feed: now allows IPv6 literal URLs

Feed discovery: give less weight to feeds with the word “podcast” in them, because they’re probably not what we want

Refreshing: fixed bug where automatic refreshing might not happening after the computer wakes from sleep

Preferences > Accounts: Renamed “Create” account button to “Add Account”

Fixed bug where a Feedbin article could stay unread right after you select it

Fixed bug where folder names with double quotes would have the quotes replaced with the HTML entity for quote

When importing from NNW 3, the app now ignores script feeds (since we don’t have that feature yet)

Fixed bug where, right after initial launch, the spacebar might not work to go to next unread article

Pressing return now opens the selected article in your browser

Check for updates, or download the latest.

Changes since 5.0.4d2

Changed the retention policy to match iOS

Performance enhancement: fetching articles is faster and uses less memory

Check for updates, or download the latest.

Changes

Feeds view: fixed bug where multiple sequential deletes could mess up the current selection index

Article view: dealt with Twitter change that caused Twitter embeds to get cut off

Article view: properly size emojis that are actually graphics (from Wordpress, for instance)

Article view: stop playing any audio if the window is closed

Article view: don’t let line lengths get too long

Article view: fixed display of BandCamp widgets

OPML export: use an accessory view instead of an intermediate sheet

Add Folder: disable Add Folder button when text field is empty

Feed icons: get more icons from Feedbin; get favicons from some tricky cases

Add Feed: now allows IPv6 literal URLs

Feed discovery: give less weight to feeds with the word “podcast” in them, because they’re probably not what we want

Refreshing: fixed bug where automatic refreshing might not happening after the computer wakes from sleep

Preferences > Accounts: Renamed “Create” account button to “Add Account”

Fixed bug where a Feedbin article could stay unread right after you select it

Fixed bug where folder names with double quotes would have the quotes replaced with the HTML entity for quote

When importing from NNW 3, the app now ignores script feeds (since we don’t have that feature yet)

Fixed bug where, right after initial launch, the spacebar might not work to go to next unread article

Pressing return now opens the selected article in your browser

NetNewsWire 5.0.2 for iOS is up on the App Store. Enjoy!

Changes since 5.0.1:

• Feeds view: Fixed a bug where marking a feed as read then quickly tapping on another feed could navigate to the wrong feed.
• Feeds view: fixed bug where feeds that should be hidden by filter weren’t getting hidden fast enough
• Timeline: VoiceOver reads “unread” before each unread item
• Timeline: Mark All as Read confirmation is now an action sheet rather than an alert
• Timeline: fixed bug using trackpad two-finger swipe to toggle read status (in some contexts)
• Timeline: canceling a search didn’t repopulate the timeline as it should have. Now it does.
• Article view: deal with recent Twitter change where Twitter embeds could be cut off
• Article view: mailto links now open the Mail compose sheet
• Article view: fixed bug where saved scroll position in article could be applied when it shouldn’t be
• Article view: space bar advancement in the article view works more like it does in Safari
• Sharing: now sends title along with the URL when sharing to Buffer
• Feedly: retrieve new token from Feedly after expiration
• Feedly: fixed a bug where sometimes removing a feed with Feedly doesn’t work. (We think we’ve fixed it, but we couldn’t reproduce it, so we’re not positive.)
• Keyboard: Cmd-, brings up settings
• Keyboard: Shift-cmd-R now shows the Reader view
• Keyboard: Shift-cmd-S now hides the sidebar
• Keyboard: Cmd-I now brings up the Info pane
• Keyboard: shortcut for Mark All as Read now works when feeds list has focus
• Keyboard: return key opens current article in in-app browser (SFSafariViewController)
• Notifications: now grouped by feed
• Notifications: now waits to ask for Notifications permission until user toggles a feed to notify about new articles
• NetNewsWire now appears in Firefox’s share menu

If you haven’t signed up for testing, see this page for instructions.

Changes since 5.0.2 build 47:

• Feeds view: restored Mark All as Read command for accounts

If you haven’t signed up for testing, see this page for instructions.

Changes since 5.0.1:

• Feeds view: Fixed a bug where marking a feed as read then quickly tapping on another feed could navigate to the wrong feed.
• Feeds view: fixed bug where feeds that should be hidden by filter weren’t getting hidden fast enough
• Timeline: VoiceOver reads “unread” before each unread item
• Timeline: Mark All as Read confirmation is now an action sheet rather than an alert
• Timeline: fixed bug using trackpad two-finger swipe to toggle read status (in some contexts)
• Timeline: canceling a search didn’t repopulate the timeline as it should have. Now it does.
• Article view: mailto links now open the Mail compose sheet
• Article view: fixed bug where saved scroll position in article could be applied when it shouldn’t be
• Article view: Space bar advancement in the article view works more like it does in Safari
• Sharing: now sends title along with the URL when sharing to Buffer
• Feedly: retrieve new token from Feedly after expiration
• Feedly: fixed a bug where sometimes removing a feed with Feedly doesn’t work. (We think we’ve fixed it, but we couldn’t reproduce it, so we’re not positive.)
• Keyboard: Cmd-, brings up settings
• Keyboard: Shift-cmd-R now shows the Reader view
• Keyboard: Shift-cmd-S now hides the sidebar
• Keyboard: Cmd-I now brings up the Info pane
• Keyboard: shortcut for Mark All as Read now works when feeds list has focus
• Keyboard: return key opens current article in in-app browser (SFSafariViewController)
• Notifications: now grouped by feed
• Notifications: now waits to ask for Notifications permission until user toggles a feed to notify about new articles
• NetNewsWire now appears in Firefox’s share menu

NetNewsWire 5.0.1 for iOS is up on the App Store. Enjoy!

Changes since 5.0:

• Feeds list: fixed a crash that could happen if you tapped really fast on a feed inside a folder in the middle of collapsing
• Feeds list: now automatically applies the read filter when a feed reaches zero unread
• Feeds list: fixed issue where unread count for smart feeds was sometimes not updated
• Feeds list: disclosure buttons interact with the iOS 13.4 cursor
• Feeds list, timeline: progress indicator bar is better behaved when refresh is done multiple times rapidly
• Timeline: read filter now applies immediately at the start of refresh when “Refresh to Clear Articles” is enabled
• Timeline: Micro.blog posts without title or content are better formatted
• Timeline: empty rows are the same height they would be if content were available
• Timeline: header button interacts with the iOS 13.4 cursor
• Timeline: fixed cell reuse issue that caused incorrect icon backgrounds to be displayed on occasion
• Article view: fixed a bug where the zoomed image could be of lower resolution than expected
• Article view: fixed accessibility label for zoomed image close button
• Article view: limited width of title view when an image is zoomed (for the XKCD folks)
• Article view: zoomed image close button is no longer 2 pixels too narrow
• Article view: footnotes handle more footnote types
• Article view: table based HTML layouts used in newsletters look better
• Article view: fixed issue where non default dynamic type sizes could cause the article view to use the default size incorrectly
• Article view: share and reader buttons are disabled if the link to the article wasn’t provided by the feed
• Article view: max article width now restricted to make articles easier to read in full screen on the iPad
• Article view: added a small amount of space above and below images so they don’t run together
• Article view: image zooming lways shows the full image
• Article view: zoomed images are always centered
• Article view: fixed crashing bug that could happen when using the next unread button
• Article view: fixed a bug where, after leaving and returning to the app, the web view could be empty
• Settings: added title to Add Account screen
• Settings: fixed navigation stack position bug after canceling adding a Feedbin account
• Settings: fixed bug where “Feedly” would stay highlighted after canceling prompt for sign-in
• Settings: added ability to manually select the color palette (light/dark/system)
• Settings: Account login fields go to next field on return key press
• Settings: switches are better aligned
• Syncing: fixed bug where background status sync wouldn’t fire consistently upon returning to the foreground
• Syncing: fixed bug that could cause synced accounts to have older unread articles removed
• Keyboard: added keyboard shortcut for Read Feeds filter cmd-shift-F
• Keyboard: added keyboard shortcut for Read Articles (Timeline) filter cmd-shift-H
• Keyboard: added Clean Up keyboard shortcut that removes read items from the timeline. cmd-‘
• Revised retention policy for on-my-device accounts: articles are kept if they are in the feed or less than 30 days old
• Fixed bug where keyboard focus could be lost after returning to NNW from another app or the Safari view controller
• Fix bug caused by iOS 13.4 that prevented swiping back to the Timeline when in Full Screen
• Scroll position and Reader View state is now preserved when leaving and returning to the application
• In page RSS feed detection now normalizes the URL
• Feeds that have to word “podcast” in them are now deprioritized in the automatic feed finding algorithm
• We now send the correct user agent string when fetching RSS feeds
• Improved efficiency and performance of feed image scaling
• Improve performance when saving articles returned from RSS sources
• No longer show default feed icon for feeds that share a common icon
• Sharing an article no longer puts “See first unread article” randomly in the title field

Maurice Parker just updated NetNewsWire and our build instructions so that you can build the app more easily.

And, importantly, you don’t need a paid developer account. (You do still need a free developer account, yes.)

If you’re just curious about the app, or want to see if there’s something you can learn from it, that’s totally cool. If you think you might want to use some of the code in your own app, that’s totally cool too.

But if you think you might want to contribute, that’s awesome! We welcome everybody. If you’re a long-time app developer, that’s great — but we’d also love to have contributors who are brand-new to app development. (Even people who are new to coding!)

If you think you might be interested, read our page on contributing, which includes our code of conduct, then join the Slack group and get on the #work channel and say hello. Easy as that. 🐥

The launch of NetNewsWire for iOS has been going great! App Store Connect reports that it’s a 4.9-star app with 385 ratings worldwide, and it’s been downloaded 18,567 times. Our guess is it will have more downloads than NetNewsWire 5.0.3 for Mac within a few days.

There have been some reviews and articles in the press; we’ve been getting lots of feedback on Twitter, Slack, via email, and in our bug tracker. Almost all of that feedback is people asking for features — which is exactly what we hoped for. It means they like the app, but wish it did this thing for them.

That’s a great spot to be in. The alternatives are no feedback or lots of bug reports. We like feature requests. 🍕

Of all the reviews and press, one of our favorites is a review on AppleVis, which says that “The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use” and…

I was truly amazed how accessible this app was right out of the box on its opening day. You can really tell that accessibility was put into this.

We don’t talk about this often enough, but it’s important. Accessibility is one of those things that many people can overlook — except for the people for whom it’s the entire difference between a usable app and not.

In our App Store description, we write, above, the fold:

NetNewsWire is a free and open source RSS reader. It’s fast, stable, and accessible.

In other words: when we all talk about app quality, we should talk about stability and performance and accessibility. It’s just as important.