Are there any plans in the pipeline to support downloading all new items to the iPhone app for offline use as soon as it opens? I ride the subway frequently, so this would be great.
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I would like this as well! Definitely including options for fetching certain numbers of items, fetching only items that are predicted to be interesting, and options to cache images or not.
It would be helpful even if it simply allowed me to permanently download my saved articles.
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You bet thereâs plans. Now, once the re-design hits Iâll evaluate what to work on next. This may make it in, but itâs an enormous undertaking.
Awesome. Hope so! In the meantime, I keep meaning to find a workaround, so if anyone has tips, theyâre much appreciated.
And Iâm sure this is difficult too, but a full-fledged offline mode that allowed me to, for example, save articles on the subway and sync with the servers when Iâm back online would be really great.
Unfortunately, thereâs no workaround for offline access. Itâs a really difficult problem, since it requires so much re-architecting.
This is definitely should be done.
Definitely a needed feature - for Android as well.
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Do you want to put the iOS and Android repo on github?
Oh my bad. Didnât see those.
Thanks
I would love to see the offline feature too. For both iOS and Android.
As a 200mb a month att user, an offline mode is incredibly important. Even a âcache n# of latests stories + n# of focus storiesâ would be incredibly useful. I donât need full offline access to everything.
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As an android dev, Iâd love some clarification as to what exactly âoffline modeâ is. Do you want the app to automagically download metadata in the background or metadata and story content? Would you rather the download happen upon request (to prevent sudden, unexplained data usage)? Are you expecting to actually âreadâ the downloaded content when off the network (e.g.: does the app need to save/queue up all your read/saved/shared stories for a later sync)?
Some concrete use cases would help us out a lot!
Yep, let me join the chorus for an offline mode. This would make Newsblur a âkiller appâ in my opinion. I previously used the MobileRSS reader app, but it became very buggy and crashed a lot, and I think it only works with a Google Reader account so is no use to use, post-June 2013. However, they *did* employ an offline mode and it was fantastic for subway/bus use.
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I think that Google Readerâs sync function is a good model, although it often messes up in practice. At a certain interval it should download both metadata and story content. So the content should be readable without any further network connection. The user should be able to specify downloads only occuring over Wifi to prevent excessive unexplained data usage.
Yes exactly, the key is that it downloads the content in the background so that you donât need a data connection when youâre actually reading your feeds.
People like me are usually using the mobile app when on the move, and therefore the data connection can be spotty, frustratingly slow or totally unavailable.
Another example model is simply the Gmail app on Android, which you can tell to automatically sync mail in the background, and specify how many days worth and which labels to do it for.
You can even search your emails while offline (it will only search the synced ones, obviously).
Really looking forward to this feature.
Previous commenters mentioned Reeder. Newsify app which I was using before Newsblur also has this feature.