Check for updates, or download the latest.

Changes

Significantly enhanced performance during syncs and refreshes.

When running for the first time, and the user previously used NetNewsWire 3, it will automatically import NetNewsWire 3 subscriptions instead of the defaults for new users.

You can also import NetNewsWire 3 subscriptions via the new File > Import NNW3 Subscriptions… command.

Fixed the space bar when running on Catalina. It wouldn’t advance to the next unread — now it will. (This was due to a change in JavaScript in Catalina.)

Fixed a crashing bug having to do with async database fetches for the timeline.

Periodically empties the articles cache that was added in 5.0.3b1, so its memory use doesn’t just keep expanding.

Maurice Parker is working on adding support for shortcuts (including parameterized shortcuts) in NetNewsWire for iOS.

If you have ideas for shortcuts you’d like to see, let us know!

Note for NetNewsWire 3 users — in NetNewsWire 5.0.3 (new beta coming soon), we’re adding the ability to import NetNewsWire 3 subscriptions.

In a comment on Michael Tsai’s blog, sbarex writes up a hack to get NetNewsWire 3.3.2 running on Catalina.

Obviously, do things like this at your own risk! We have no idea what side effects there could be.

NetNewsWire is a-okay on Catalina. All good. Happy updating!

On his blog, Brent writes up the current NetNewsWire status.

Check for updates, or download the latest.

We’re making it faster! And fixing some bugs.

Changes:

Performance enhancement: fetching articles from the database is faster, and sometimes much faster.

Performance enhancement: syncing could block the main thread more than it should. We moved JSON decoding to a background thread, which fixes this. This is particularly noticeable during an initial sync.

Keyboard shortcuts: the ’s’ key toggles starred status. The ‘r’ and ‘u’ keys now both toggle read status (instead of setting read and unread status, respectively).

Articles view: articles where the feed icon is quite large would be slow to render — now they render as fast as other articles.

Articles view: a bug where keyboard shortcuts wouldn’t work after giving the articles view focus has been fixed.

Articles view: YouTube videos could end up small. Fixed.

Articles view: fixed a bug scaling images to fit in the view.

Feedbin syncing: fixed a bug where renaming a tag on the Feedbin site would result in feeds in NNW ending up at the top level.

Help menu: fixed the expired Slack link.

Some folks have reported that the Slack group link in the Help menu has apparently expired.

We have a new link — use this one instead.

Check for updates, or download the latest.

Changes

The app movement monitor has been updated to handle quarantined apps and translocation.

Normally we wouldn’t have pushed out a new release for a single bug fix, but this one is important — we were getting false positives on app movement, which was affecting some users negatively.

For anyone curious about technical details, here’s the commit.

Check for updates, or download the latest.

Changes since 5.0

Crash fix: when the app is renamed or moved on disk while running, alert the user and quit the app. This prevents crashes that will happen due to renaming/moving. See Daniel Jalkut on App Movement Monitoring for more info.

(Probably) fix a crashing bug having to do with a callback being called more than once, when it was designed to be called just once.

Sidebar: deleting an empty Feedbin folder no longer makes the sidebar non-responsive.

Timeline: update UI more quickly when a feed icon is downloaded.

Timeline: reload the timeline when show-feed-names is toggled. This fixes a bug where switching between a folder and a feed with the exact same list of articles to appear in the timeline would result in display glitches.

Timeline and article pane: make sure the link for an article isn’t an empty string.

Article pane: stop blocking links containing the string “feedburner” — there are legitimate cases where that string appears.

Article pane: handle figures and iframes as we do images, so they fit in the view.

Article pane: fix white flash on first article load while in Dark Mode.

Preferences > General: add checkbox to hide the unread count in the Dock.

Preferences > Accounts: Updated the UI when a Feedbin user with an expired trial creates an account in NetNewsWire.

RSS parser: Detect RDF (RSS 1.0) feeds that lack an XML header.

RSS parser: Parse Atom-style dates that are missing a T character in the middle.

RSS parser: check for bad permalinks more aggressively. If they don’t contain a / character, then do not consider them permalinks.

RSS parser: don’t let author/title overwrite item/title.

About window: add link to NetNewsWire website.

Feedbin syncing: fixed a bug where starred articles could appear as unread.

Microblog Mac app sharing: when it has to launch the app first, it waits a little longer before sending it content, which should fix a bug where sometimes you get no content in that case.

Enable the Open in Browser command only when a single article is selected.

Check for updates, or download the latest.

Changes:

Timeline: reload when show-feed-names is toggled. This fixes a bug where switching between a folder and a feed with the exact same list of articles to appear in the timeline would result in display glitches.

You can quickly get to the Today feed by typing cmd-1 on your keyboard.

And you can get to All Unread with cmd-2. And Starred with cmd-3.

(Cmd-4 doesn’t do anything. Yet.)

NetNewsWire 5.0.1d2 is out — check for updates or download the latest.

Changes:

Crash fix: when the app is renamed or moved on disk while running, alert the user and quit the app. This prevents crashes that will happen due to renaming/moving. See Daniel Jalkut on App Movement Monitoring for more info.

Timeline: update UI more quickly when a feed icon is downloaded.

Article pane: stop blocking links containing the string “feedburner” — there are legitimate cases where that string appears.

Timeline and article pane: make sure the link for an article isn’t an empty string.

RSS parser: check for bad permalinks more aggressively. If they don’t contain a / character, then do not consider them permalinks.

On his blog, Brent describes his current thinking about syncing using iCloud.

Brent, on his blog, writes about showing full web pages (or not) in NetNewsWire.

The first post-release test build is up! NetNewsWire 5.0.1d1.

Remember that, if you want to get test builds, you’ll need to set your preferences: open Preferences and click Advanced in the toolbar, then make sure “Test builds” has been chosen.

Also remember that test builds have bugs! If you want to stick to release builds only, we totally understand.

Changes

(Probably) fix a crashing bug having to do with a callback being called more than once, when it was designed to be called just once.

Preferences > General: add checkbox to hide the unread count in the Dock.

Article pane: handle figures and iframes as we do images, so they fit in the view.

Article pane: fix white flash on first article load while in Dark Mode.

Enable the Open in Browser command only when a single article is selected.

Detect RDF (RSS 1.0) feeds that lack an XML header.

Parse Atom-style dates that are missing a T character in the middle.

About window: add link to NetNewsWire website.

RSS parser: don’t let author/title overwrite item/title.

Deleting an empty Feedbin folder no longer makes the sidebar non-responsive.

Updated the UI when a Feedbin user with an expired trial creates an account in NetNewsWire.

Feedbin syncing: fixed a bug where starred articles could appear as unread.

Microblog Mac app sharing: when it has to launch the app first, it waits a little longer before sending it content, which should fix a bug where sometimes you get no content in that case.

NetNewsWire ships with a single default On My Mac account. Here’s the thing — you can create more of these. And give them different names.

This adds another layer of organization. You might use an extra one for feeds of a certain type, or feeds you’re just trying out, or as a place to import an OPML file.

Just go to Preferences > Accounts to make more.

(Also — you can have multiple Feedbin accounts! You probably don’t actually have more than one Feedbin account, but if you did, NetNewsWire could handle it.)

Is there a TestFlight for the iOS app yet? Are you going to support Feedly?

Here’s a page that answers those and other questions.

Some people don’t want to see an unread count in the Dock, and we totally understand. You can turn off that unread count — see Hidden Preferences in the Help book.

Now over 20K downloads — up to 20,940. 🎩

On his blog, Brent writes about what beta means and why.

We did find out how to get download numbers from GitHub. At this writing, NetNewsWire 5.0 has been downloaded 17,625 times. We had no idea what to expect, and don’t know if this is good or bad — so we’ve decided it’s awesome.

On his blog, Brent writes about NetNewsWire 5 feature requests and how we think about them.

Some Mac apps — we won’t shame them :) — don’t have actual help.

But NetNewsWire does! The Help menu includes a link to the Help book and to some other useful things such as the website, the GitHub repo, the Slack group, and other things.

Help is available. 🕶

Let’s say you Mark All as Read — and then you realize you didn’t mean to, or you’ve changed your mind.

Just hit cmd-Z to undo it! Easy.

Or choose the Undo command from the Edit menu, which is the same thing.