Add a preference to show status bar on fullscreen view on iOS

When reading an article on Newsblur for iOS (on an iPhone SE) that is longer than the screen, as the article begins to scroll the elements normally at the top of the display are hidden to maximise the display area. All good so far.

However, because the iPhone status bar containing the clock is hidden, it’s not possible to simply return to the top of the page with the usual simple tap of the clock - ala the well-known iOS shortcut “tap the clock to return to top”.

This means, if I want to return to the previous screen I first have to manually scroll all the way to the top of the story before the top elements reappear which then allows me to return to the previous screen.

I believe it’s not a good design to hide the status bar containing the clock. Hiding the Newsblur elements is sensible but the clock is an important navigation control on iOS and hiding it makes the user journey quite a bit more difficult.


Screenshot from iPhone showing how display appears with top elements hidden.

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+1, this is a serious impediment to the iOS app. It interacts badly with the improved page-position remembering. I’ll often switch out of the app after finishing a long story, load NewsBlur up again later, and be stuck at the bottom of a long story in full-screen view without an easy way to get back to my list of stories.

I’ve discovered a preference setting that stops this behaviour.

Go to Newsblur’s settings, then to the “Reading Stories” section and disable the “Full screen” option. This prevents the behaviour that minimises the chrome displayed at the top of the screen.

I can’t help feeling that having a way to remove all the Newsblur chrome without removing the iOS status-bar that has a fundamental role to play in navigating content within all applications - scroll to top by tapping the clock being a prime example - is not optimum.

Maybe this mirrors a full-screen mode on the Android client perhaps and is this reused code? Either way, it can be avoided if necessary.

Ok, I’m convinced. I’ll add a preference for the status bar in full screen mode.

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