I think it would be useful to have a “do not sync with mobile” option in the newly released ‘organize sites’ section for feeds and/or feed folders.
I know this sounds similar to muting, but it’s a bit different.
What i mean is, you can still have the feed/folder active on the desktop. But not on the mobile. I think this would make a great addition for feeds/folders that are updated quickly like news sites or visual websites.
News sites like Reuters that i follow on Newsblur instead of Twitter because of the Intelligence trainer, sometimes become super full of stories. If i had this function, it would allow me to keep my mobile feed somewhat clean, and only get stories from the sources i want in the morning commute, without having to create a special folder for it, and would greatly decrease my syncing times.
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On websites like ‘Fubiz’ or ‘My Modern Met’, which are more visual. This function could be used to turn off those feeds for mobile. Because currently there is no option on the Newsblur app or any other 3rd party app for a tiles/card view to quickly skim through images. This would again clean up the feed list greatly on mobile, and improve syncing speeds.
I know this is a bit of a niche feature. But i think it could prove to be powerful for users that have a lot of feeds, and want a more minimal experience on mobile, whilst keeping the full experience on the desktop.
The old NetNewsWire allowed this and I’ve always thought it was more trouble than it was worth. I believe a better way to accomplish this is to put your mobile-prefered feeds into a folder and just use the folder when on your mobile device.
Syncing and storage is negligible in terms of time and space. Sep. as phones get bigger storage and faster chips, this will continue to improve. So the argument for only syncing a few feeds is less persuasive. The folder option is one that i think works best.
And remember that you can have a feed in multiple folders! So use the Organize to select your mobile only feeds and add them to a folder.
However I think this feature is useful for people that cannot get wifi signal everyday or don’t want to rack up huge data cost on their cellular connection. It’s nothing to do with storage or faster chips. It’s all about internet speed, and data charges.
I know it’s more trouble that it’s probably worth. But to people like myself that travel a lot for business, and sometimes happen to be in places with crappy wifi or no wifi at all; many hotels. It would be a very useful addition.
Thanks for your suggestion tho. I will continue to handle feeds the way i do now, or get a separate account for mobile feeds only.
You should consider that in the future, and I’m talking 6-12 months, more people will be on larger data plans and it won’t even cost them anything more. I just upgraded from a 4GB/month plan to a 10GB/month plan and it only cost me $10 more a month.
As for the speed of syncing, I try to be as efficient as possible, and even with thousands of stories, it still syncs in only a couple minutes.
You can also mute feeds from the web interface. Just click on the folder containing the feeds and you can effectively shut them down for the time being. So if you want to turn feeds on and off, you can do so on the web. That may save you a headache in the future. Ideally I would also build this on iOS.