Elytra Winter 2020 Update

Jan 25, 2021

The Winter 2020 update is finally ready in 2021! This is the first release of Elytra which brings local sync, local notifications and a lot of performance and stability improvements to the apps.

Similar to Elytra v2 and v2.1, this is an iOS 14 only release. The latest supported version for iOS 13 is v1.8 and will be deprecated soon.

You can download the update from the App Store. If you feel generous and have a couple of minutes, please leave a review on the App Store. It makes a huge difference for me. Thank you in advance.

Local Sync

Elytra v2.2 running on Macbook Air, iPhone XS and iPad Air
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This release brings Local Sync to the apps. Local Sync caches all articles across all your feeds (just like other RSS Feed Reader Apps). This is not a “new” technique. Feed Reader apps have been doing this for as long as I can remember. Elytra now uses the same technique by leveraging its APIs to make the entire process a lot faster!</p>

Elytra does not have to check every single feed if it has new updates. It uses a single API to check if updates are present, and if they are, sync them to your devices.

Full Change Log

New

  • Local Sync. All feeds are now synced to your device locally, so you can continue reading even when your device is offline.
  • Added a new “Title View” to individual feeds. Open a feed and tap on its title. This shows the Feed Info and two preferences at the moment: Push/Local Notifications & Safari Reader Mode. These are per feed settings. This is very similar to the design and functionality from NetNewsWire, is directly inspired by it, but with a minor difference: the layout and copy denotes which feeds support Push Notifications, while the others supporting Local Notifications.
  • Push Notifications Request Form. If you already have push notifications enabled, you won’t see this. This is per device.
  • Added support for background push notifications to keep all your devices in sync without needing manual refreshing.
  • Push Notifications for new articles now download and cache the article for immediate use.

Improvements

  • Tapping on a folder now opens the folder’s feed.
  • Tapping on the disclosure icon on a folder now toggles its expanded state.
  • Filtering is now stricter. It’ll match “sponsor” but will not match “sponsored”.
  • Added Feeds to the iOS Search Index. You can now directly open feeds by their names (or custom names if you have one set).

Fixes

  • Fixed the tint colour for the blog name when opening a micro-blog article.
  • Fixed adding feed by URL where the feed presents multiple options.
  • Fixed an issue when searching by title for 3-letter sites like CNN or BBC.
  • Fixed articles not loading for certain feeds.
  • Fixed Today View not updating when opened after an app launch.
  • Fixed an issue with the iPadOS app showing different widths for the columns in different orientations or environments (split view).
  • Fixed an issue with the apps not correctly download bookmarks from the API.
  • Fixed an issue where toggling folders in the sidebar interface would show empty folders.
  • Fixed an issue with certain CJK paragraph blocks rendering incorrectly when certain linebreak characters are used in the paragraph text.
  • Fixed an issue with filters incorrectly hiding articles when matching against CJK based filters.
  • Fixed an issue with line-heights in the articles list for multi-lined article titles with favicons.
  • Fixed an issue where the “no articles” label would appear over the articles.
  • Fixed an issue for adding Streaming Video Channel feeds. They recently changed their format which was causing issues.
  • Fixed a crash when writing the widgets data to disk when the app has just been sent to the background.
  • Fixed Navigation Bar buttons not appearing in some contexts.

Thank you for reading.

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