This guide covers the most important features of Fiery Feeds.
If you’re looking for a specific settings, and haven’t found it in the Settings screen, you also check out the Expert Settings and the Account Settings. If you didn’t find what you were looking for, feel free to contact me via email or on twitter.
Frequently Searched Settings
Mark Read on Scrolling: Account Settings > Mark Read > Mark Read on Scrolling By
Article View Toolbar Buttons: Account Settings > Article View > Active Toolbar Items
Articles in Safari View: Expert Settings > Article List > Open Articles in Safari View
Smart Views
Smart Views are a Premium Feature. There are currently seven views available.
Hot Links
Hot Links are websites that are often linked to in your articles. The ‘temperature’ of the link is based on how many articles link to the website, and how old these articles are.
See the Hot Links section for more details.
Low Frequency Folder
The Low Frequency Folder shows all feeds that only post rarely. By default this means less then 0.1 articles per day, or one article every ten days. Please note that the frequency is calculated based on the articles Fiery Feeds has on the device. If there are no local articles in a feed it will not show up in the Low Frequency Folder. You might want to increase the number of read articles Fiery Feeds keeps on device in the Account Settings in order the improve this.
High Frequency Folder
The High Frequency Folder show all feeds that post especially often. By default this means more then two articles per day, You can change this in the Expert Settings. This is meant to allow you to mark all articles from high frequency source easily as read. This folder is disabled by default, you can enable it in the Account Settings.
Long Articles
Only shows articles with more than a specific number of words. By default it’s 1000 words. You can change this in the Expert Settings.
Short Articles
Only shows articles with less than a specific number of words. By default it’s 100 words. You can change this in the Expert Settings. This folder is disabled by default, you can enable it in the Account Settings](#account_settings).
Must Read Folder
The Must Read Folder is a specially highlighted folder for your most important feeds. In order to use it, please create a regular folder and simply name it “Must Read”. The Must Read folder in the Smart Views section will display the same feeds as this folder.
Recent Articles
This folder only shows articles published today by default. That is, not the last 24 hrs, but the current day. The number of days can be configured in the Account Settings.
Feed and Folders List
The Feeds and Folders list shows all your feeds, folders and smart views. The list can either be sorted by type (feeds, folders, …) or alphabetically.
Long Press Menu
You can tap and hold any item to get a menu with multiple actions for the selected entry, or you can use 3D Touch (on supported devices) to open the preview and swipe up the get access to the same actions.
These additional actions include edit actions. You can move, rename, create and delete feeds and folders. These are Premium Features. They also include marking read, and read by date actions, as well as expand and collapse actions for folders.
To create a new folder, tap and hold feed you want to move to the new folder, then select move. In the list of folders to move the feed to, you’ll find the option to create a new folder.
You can also swipe to the left on any entry, to immediately open the article view with the first article in the feed/folder. You can tap the detail button on the right side of a folder to expand the folder and show the contained feeds. The three actions (tapping folder, tapping detail button, swiping to the left) are configurable in Settings > Feed List.
Toolbar
You can change the current article filter (only starred article, only unread articles or all articles) in the toolbar. This filter applies to all views. You can also trigger a manual sync or mark all articles read by date. The toolbar buttons can be edited on a per-account basis in the account settings.
Article List
The article list shows the articles of the selected feed or folder, filtered by the article filter (starred / unread / all) selected in the feeds and folders list.
Long Press Menu
You can tap and hold any item to get a menu with multiple actions for the selected entry, or you can use 3D Touch (on supported devices) to open the preview and swipe up the get access to the same actions.
The actions include starring or unstaring the article, marking all articles above or below, including the selected article as read, sharing, deleting and tagging the article.
Swipe Actions
You can swipe to the left to mark a single item read or unread. If you have a Quick Action selected, you can also further swipe to the left to quickly share the article. The short and long swipe actions are configurable in Settings > Article List. Additional available options for the swipe gestures include sharing the article, toggle starred, and marking all above/below as read.
Toolbar
In the toolbar you have the option to mark all articles read by date (on the left), or mark all article read (on the right). In the middle you can toggle sorting the articles by feed, otherwise all articles are sorted by date. And you can switch between sorting ascending or descending. The toolbar buttons can be edited on a per-account basis in the account settings.
Article View
At the top you can select the desired article view mode. The view mode is remembered on a per-feed basis. Remembering the view mode can be disabled in the Expert Settings.
Using the three icons at the top, you can switch between article mode, web mode and text mode.
Article mode shows the article as it is in the feed.
Web mode shows the linked website in line.
Text mode extracts the article tet from the linked website.
If you select Text, the full text will be downloaded on demand. If you have enabled full text caching in the Account Settings, the full text will be downloaded during synchronisation. Also see Offline Text.
The Web View does not support Content Blockers, since the Safari View can’t be used for technical reasons in this instance.
You can long tap a link in the article view to share the link, or you can press harder (on devices that support 3D Touch) to open the link preview.
The article view can be dismissed by swiping from the left edge or by swiping down, either on the navigation bar or when you are at the top of the article.
On the iPad the article view is presented as an overlay, with bits of the underlying interface blurred, but visible. You can change this to be fullscreen in the Expert Settings.
Toolbar
The toolbar includes option to mark the article read or unread, starred or unstarred, share the article, open the article view settings and to switch to the next or preview article.
The button for the next or preview article can be disabled in the Expert Settings, instead of using the buttons you can also swipe left or right to get to the next or previous article.
You can move the toolbar to the bottom or either side of the screen, by dragging it using the handle on the left.
The toolbar is hidden when you scroll in the article, this can be disabled in the Expert Settings. This setting also affects the toolbar in the feed and article list.
YouTube Videos
The fullscreen button is disabled on YouTube videos, or tapping it shows a message that fullscreen is not supported on this browser.
That is only an issue with YouTube’s own fullscreen command. The two finger zoom gesture to switch any video to fullscreen does work.
Hot Links View
Hot Links are downloaded for offline use. Tapping a Hot Link will open a special view that allows you to switch between the offline content and the web view.
Toolbar
You can re-calculate the Hot Links using the sync button, you can toggle whether or not to hide Hot Links with only read articles. You can switch between sorting Hot Links by their temperature (based on number of articles and article age), or just by number of articles. You can toggle whether or not to show a Hot Link’s articles. And you can mark all Hot Link’s articles as read.
Long Press Menu
You can tap and hold any item to get a menu with multiple actions for the selected entry, or you can use 3D Touch (on supported devices) to open the preview and swipe up the get access to the same actions. These actions include sharing the Hot Link, opening the Hot Link in Safari View and blacklisting the Hot Link’s domain (so all Hot Links linking to this domain are hidden).
Swiping
You can swipe to the left on a Hot Link to mark all relating articles read or unread. You can swipe to the right to show additional options,
Black List
You can open the black list by tapping the button in the top right. In the blacklist screen you can remove previously blacklisted strings and add custom strings (not just domains).
Interface Settings
Appearance Settings
In the appearance settings you can change the color theme. Managing and using custom themes is a Premium Feature and can also be found there. You can also select an alternate app icon here.
The “Font Size” and “List Style” presents are an easy way to modify the look of Fiery Feeds. Both are not a setting by them self, but predefined presents that change multiple options in the Advanced Settings view.
The sidebar options only affects larger devices, where the split view is used. e.g. iPad and iPhone Pluses.
Feed List
The Feed List section contains options the affect the feeds and folders list. If you sort the feeds and folders alphabetically, the section titles will be hidden.
The accessory action controls what happens when you tap the little number on the right side of a folder.
The tap feed cell action option controls what happens when you tap a folder or feed anywhere else.
You can either select to expand or collapse the folder, immediately show the article view or show the article list. If any of those three actions that is not selected as accessory action or tap cell action, it will be available when you swipe to the right on the entry.
Article List
Show Unread count will show the number of unread article in the current selection in the upper right corner.
All other options affect the appearance of the article list.
Article View
Multiple settings that affect the appearance of the article view. These options are also available by tapping the half filled circle in the toolbar in the article view.
General Settings
Synchronisation
In the Synchronisation section you can choose when Fiery Feeds is supposed to sync automatically and a minimum interval in which Fiery Feeds should not sync.
You can choose to sync on exit, on launch or in the background. If the time since the last sync is less then the minimum interval, Fiery Feeds will skip the synchronisation. Manual syncs ignore the minimum interval.
The frequency of background syncs is determined by iOS based on multiple factors like app usage, battery charge and others. Background sync will not work if it’s disabled in the system settings, or if you force quit the app (until the next time you relaunch it).
There are also options to display notifications. You can receive a notification summary, which means whenever Fiery Feeds has synchronised and there are new articles, it will simply tell you that there are x new articles. Additionally you can receive a notification for every new article, including title and a short preview (Up to 50 articles per sync. Getting more notifications all at once isn’t fun).
iCloud & Backup
In the iCloud & Backup section you can enable iCloud Sync for App Settings, manage the accounts that are synced with iCloud, and create backups of the local app data.
Note that backups only replace contain the local information on restore. If you’ve restored a backup, and sync your account with a service (that includes iCloud feed and read later accounts), the local article data will be replaced with the newer data from your service.
Sharing
The Sharing section contains options for pre-installed actions, custom URL and Email templates and the Quick Share Feature. Custom URL and Email templates are a Premium Feature.
Web Actions
These are pre-installed actions that run inside of Fiery Feeds. You can enable or disable the actions, which will show or hide them in the share sheet.
You can also logout of any service that requires a login here. You login to a service the first time you try to share anything to it.
URL Actions
URL Actions include the Safari and Safari View action, but also any other action that is based on a URL scheme. You can delete custom url actions either by using the “Delete Action” button in the action’s settings, or by swiping to the left on the action in the list.
You can tap the “+” button in the action list to add a custom URL action. This is a Premium Feature.
You can use the following tags: {url}, {url-unescaped}, {url-no-protocol}, {url-no-protocol-unescaped}, {title}, {content}, {content-preview}, {input}, {callback} und {source} to build the URL for your action. I.e.
googlechrome-x-callback://x-callback-url/open/?url={url}&x-success={callback}&x-source={source}to open a website in Google Chrome, and to get the back button in Chrome.
Mail Actions
Mail Actions are predefined email templates. You can delete custom email templates either by using the “Delete Action” button in the template’s settings, or by swiping to the left on the template in the list.
You can tap the “+” button in the template list to add a custom email template. This is a Premium Feature.
You can use the following tags: {url}, {title}, {content}, {image}, {content-preview} and {content-nohtml} in your email template. Please note that you need to have an email account set up in the default mail app for this to work.
Quick Share
You can pick one action to be the Quick Share action. The quick share action can be triggered by long swiping to the left on an article in the article list, or by long pressing on any share button in the app.
Action Directory
The Action Directory contains a collection of URL Actions and Mail Actions. They are treated as custom action and you need to subscribe to Premium to install an action from the action directory.
If you’ve created a URL action or Mail action and want to share it, use the “Share Action” button and send it to me (support@cocoacake.net or @FieryFeeds on twitter) and I’ll add it to the directory.
More
“Safari Text Mode” will automatically switch to the text mode if possible when opening a website in the Safari View. “Return After Mark All Read” will close the article list after mark all read, if you’re not in split mode, i.e. if you’re on an iPhone. “Pull Up To Mark All Read” allows you to pull the article or feed list up to mark all read in the current selection. If you pull up in the feed list, it’ll bring up the “Mark All Read Older then …” dialog.
Report a problem
Selecting the “Report a problem” button will create a new email and attach the log file to the mail. If you have any problems in the app, please use this, so I can look into the log if needed.
Account Settings
You can find all your accounts at the top of the settings view. Tapping the pen icon on the top left, allows you to delete or reorder your accounts.
Articles
You can change if starred articles, and how many read articles are kept on device.
Please note that Fiery Feeds does not cache information (images / extracted full text) for all articles on device. Fiery Feeds always downloads all unread articles and keeps them locally.
Caching
You can how many and which of your articles should be downloaded to your device, and how many and which articles should cache additional data. You can choose whether you want all starred articles, and how many already read articles you want to have available on your device.
You can also choose which (unread, read or starred) and how many, at most, of your articles should be cached. Fiery Feeds always keeps the selected number of the newest articles with the selected states cached, and removes older articles, even if still unread from it’s cache.
Note that caching the article here is different from downloading the article. A downloaded articles shows up in the app, and has the in the RSS feed included article text available offline. For a cached article, the extracted article text (for text mode) as well as any image included in the article is downloaded and available offline. Both are downloaded on demand for any downloaded, but not cached article.
Offline Text
Fiery Feeds can automatically download a text version of truncated articles for selected feeds. This is a Premium Feature.
The app remembers the selected view mode on a per-feed basis. To enable downloading offline text, set the article view mode to text while reading an article and enable “Extracted Text” in the what to cache section in the account settings.
Fiery Feeds will download the text version for up to 500 article per sync, and keep the text version for all articles it caches information for (see “Maximum Articles To Cache”).
Notifications
Here you can choose whether to include the unread count in the app icon badge. (The unread counts of all accounts with this setting enabled are added together).
You can also choose if you want to receive detailed notifications for each new article (and wether you want to receive them inside the app, or only in the Notification Center. Note that the notifications inside the app only show for at most 5 articles, as to not block the UI for too long).
You can also choose to receive a sync summary (“6 new articles found”) as notification.
Smart Views
Show or hide individual smart views, and set the threshold for long / short and high / low frequency folders.
Mark Read
Choose when articles should be automatically marked read. Available options are on opening in the article view, on scrolling past them in the article list, or on triggering the quick share action.
Interface Settings
In the account interface settings, you can fully configure the bottom toolbars for the feed list, the article list, the Hot Links and article view. Additionally you can turn or or off showing word counts in the article list, as well as left/right swiping and saving the reading progress in the article view.
Adding Accounts
Additional Accounts can be added in the account list view. To open the account list view tap the accounts button on the top left in the main feed list, then tap the “+” button at the top right to add a new account, or tap one of the accounts to switch to this account.
Expert Settings
To keep the app settings from being too overwhelming, I hid a bunch of less used, or experimental settings in a special, separate settings screen. You can tap and hold the settings icon to bring up the Expert Settings view.
Additionally, at the bottom is a complete list of all settings used in the app in no particular order. This of this page as the about:config some browsers have.
Some settings may be grey out and disabled, these settings are from previous versions and are still saved in your settings file, but no longer in use by Fiery Feeds.
The Expert Settings include a couple of options regard dragging items. This effects the dragging of articles from the article list, which is only possible on the iPad.
Share Full Text
The “Share Full Text” option includes the full article text when sharing an article. Unfortunately some share extensions, like the Notes app, do not support multiple pieces of text (title, article text), so not all apps might be available to share to if this option is enabled.
iCloud Sync
App Settings
Synching the general app settings is easy, you just need to enable “Sync App Settings” in Settings > iCloud and Backup. Note the selected color theme setting is exclude (since any custom theme file is not part of the settings, and might not be installed on other devices), as well as the selected layout (1, 2 or 3 panes), since that is very device depended.
If you find that any of your settings are not synchronised (this can happen after initially turning on “Sync App Settings”), you can try toggling them on one device. Since Fiery Feeds only synchronises settings when they’re changed, editing the setting, even if you set it back to its original value, will cause it to be synced to other devices again.
Alternatively, you can also use the “Rebuild iCloud Database” button in Settings > iCloud & Backup, to delete and reupload everything to iCloud, including all settings. Afterwards, use the “Replace Local Settings” button on your other devices to make sure all of the settings from iCloud are downloaded.
The app settings are synchronised with iCloud whenever you tap the “Synchronise Now” button in Settings > iCloud & Backup, when you manually trigger a sync in either the feed, article or accounts list, or when a background sync happens.
Account Settings
Synchronising account settings is a little bit more involved, since Fiery Feeds supports more than one account of the same type, and the settings should obviously only sync to the corresponding account.
To start you need to add your account on one, and only one device. Make sure to enable “Sync Accounts” in iCloud & Backup, and tap the “Synchronise Now” button, in case your account isn’t already listed under “Accounts in iCloud”. Then, on your other devices, remove all previously set up accounts, and import the account you’ve added to iCloud either in Settings > iCloud & Backup, or by adding a new account from the accounts list (the accounts found in iCloud are displayed at the top of the list).
After that, the account settings will be synchronised with iCloud, every time the account is synced, as long as “Sync Accounts” is enabled.
If you are experiencing issues, you can also use the “Rebuild iCloud Database” to reupload all data from one device to iCloud. Make sure to synchronise the account on the device, with the data you want to use, before synchronising on your other devices.
Note that purely local accounts do not support synchronising settings, and are not added to iCloud, to avoid confusion (when the account is listed in iCloud, but the feeds and articles are not synchronised).
If you want to delete an account, and all associated data from iCloud, delete it first from all of your devices (so it isn’t reuploaded automatically), then delete it from iCloud by swiping left on the account in iCloud & Backup.
Performance
Reduce Visual Effects
You can disable a couple of visual effects, most notably the fullscreen blur in the background, to make Fiery Feeds perform better on older devices. While I try to optimize the app performance to a reasonable degree, whenever I had to decide between performance and features or visual effects, I went with features and effects in 2.0. With the following link you can apply a couple of tweaks to improve the performance on older devices.
TTRSS Sync
The TTRSS API is not designed for full sync operations, and even just fetching the unread articles IDs is limited to 200 ids per request. This means that syncing with TTRSS might be very slow, if you have a lot of unread articles (thousands), or if you keep a large number of read articles on device (Fiery Feeds also checks if there are any new read articles on every sync – up to the number of articles that should be kept).
To increase the sync speed you can install a TTRSS plugin on your server that adds a method to fetch all article IDs in a single request. If you have installed the plugin, you also need to enable the News+ API option in the account settings in Fiery Feeds.
Premium Features
There are several additional features in Fiery Feeds only available to Premium subscribers.
Fiery Feeds Premium is $9.99 per year, which I think is a fair price and allows me to keep working on the app and continually improve it.
Premium Features include:
- Text Extraction
- High / Low Frequency Folders
- Hot Links Folder
- Highlighted Must Read Folder
- Offline Ful Text
- Feed Management
- Custom URL Actions
- Custom Email Templates
- Alternate App Icons
- Custom Themes
- Theme Directory
- Saving more than 10 articles in local / iCloud read later accounts
- Subscribing to more than 10 feeds in local / iCloud accounts
The Premium Features are designed for power users, regular users should be fine with the free version. If you want to support the continued development, you’re more then welcome to get Premium tough :)
If you have any more questions, feel free to contact me via email or twitter.