Launching real-time filterable push notifications for iOS, Android, web, and email
For some sites, you want to know when they publish as soon as they publish. Maybe you want to immediately be notified of everything a site publishes, like a monthly meetup that posts an event only once a month. Or perhaps you want to be immediately notified of everything the NYTimes publishes about the companies in your stock portfolio. Or you just really enjoy reading your daily comics and want them emailed to you so you never miss a beat.
Today I’m proud to launch push notifications simultaneously across all three native platforms on NewsBlur (that’s web, iOS, and Android). That means that you can setup notifications for all Unread stories or only Focus stories that you’ve trained to be pushed to you over email, iOS, Android, or through browser notifications on the web.
You can setup all four types of notifications on both web and mobile. And you can employ your intelligence training to only surface the stories that have use certain tags, have specific keywords in the titles, or are written by specific authors. Additionally, it’s easy to hide stories using that same training so that you don’t receive notifications that you want to ignore.
Push notifications on iOS
To start with notifications on iOS, you can use the new swipe-to-the right gesture on the feed list (replacing the trainer on the swipe gesture). It’s very easy to turn notifications on and off or to even step up the filtering on a site so that you only get Focus stories instead.
This way you can overprovision notifications for yourself and easily dial them back to where you get just the right number of notifications.
Today version 7.0 of the NewsBlur iOS app is being released and here’s a list of what’s new and fixed on iOS:
- Push notifications: real-time push notifications on a per-feed basis.
- Swipe-to-the-right on a feed to change its notifications.
- A new optional app badge for unread counts. Enable under Preferences.
- Stories now automatically are marked as read on scroll. Disable under Preferences.
- Better image support on iPad and fixes for drag-and-dropping the story titles bar (at bottom of the story detail).
- A note on that: you can move story titles to the bottom on iPad. Just drag the bottom bar up.
- Fixed issue with sharing stories not working or disappearing on iPad.
- Fixed theme issues in the activity share sheet.
- Fixed a crash from opening stories with no permalink.
- Fixed size of intelligence control on bottom of feed list on iPhone SE.
- Fixed issues when story titles are set to the bottom layout on iPad.
- Fixed issues with the interactions dialog.
Notifications on Android
Android also gets a new version today. Version 6.0 gets notifications and new custom reading fonts as well as the mark read on scroll behavior that iOS and web have enjoyed.
Here’s a list of what’s new and fixed on Android:
- Mark as read on scroll is a new preference to automatically mark stories as read as you scroll past them.
- New fonts for reading: Whitney, Chronicle, Gotham Narrow make their way to Android from the web.
- Also supporting native Android fonts Noto Sans, Noto Serif, Open Sans Condensed, and Anonymous Pro.
- Switching between Text and Story view is now sticky per-feed (similar to iOS and web).
- Fixed issues where feed list would not update.
Notifications on Web
Browser notifications are handy for those sites that you only want to read on your desktop. For example, you could setup web notifications for an RSS feed for a status feed, letting you know when migrations and downtime will have some effect on you.
Setting up and tuning notifications is also just as easy to do on the web. You’ll find it under Manage > Notifications as well as in the Read Filter Popover (top right of the app) when reading an individual feed.
Notifications over Email
Finally, for those use cases not covered under web or mobile, you can now have websites automatically email you when they publish new stories.
This is for those stories that you don’t want to miss and want to ensure that you read. For instance, I use email notifications for worrydream’s quote blog that serves me a single paragraph of insight once a week because I loved having quotes emailed to me.
There you have it, four new ways to consume the news. If you love using NewsBlur and want to see it continue to launch new features like these, please tell friends and followers about your news reader. People often ask for ways to stay on top of the game and NewsBlur is the most powerful way to do it.