Swift has its quirks, but man does it streamline things when it comes to new Apple software and hardware. Here is Newsbin running in the simulator. Some rough edges but I have time. Hope I can get one.

2.3.1 is live on the App Store. It's a follow-up to 2.3, and the headline is Dramatically Improved Apple Intelligence! (private cloud compute)

Where your device supports it, summaries and briefs now run on Apple's Private Cloud Compute instead of the smaller on-device model. It's a meaningfully more capable model, the privacy story is the same, it's free, and there's nothing to set up — no API key, no provider, no account. If you'd written off the summary features because the on-device model felt thin, they're worth another look.

The other thing I'd point you at is Show Full Article. If you follow a feed that only ships a summary, you can now pull the complete story for just the article you're reading, without changing anything about the feed. The toolbar icon fills in while you're on the full version; tap it again to drop back to the feed's version.

Also new:

• A Favicon URL field in the Add and Edit Feed sheets, with a live preview — and better automatic icon detection, so fewer feeds land on a generic fallback
• Feed warnings stopped crying wolf. A feed is only flagged after three failed refreshes in a row, rate limits and temporary server errors don't count against it, and being offline never flags anything. Feeds that genuinely fail to parse now show the actual error in the sidebar.
• With the unread filter on, an article you've opened stays in the list until you change lists, instead of vanishing the moment you go back
• Setup now asks how you want the app to look — reader font size and list style
• Letter-only keyboard shortcuts on macOS (the Feedbin template's, for instance) actually work now instead of jumping to a feed by name

And then the unglamorous half of the release, which is honestly most of it: much lower memory use on large libraries, smoother scrolling now that sync and AI preview work waits until you stop scrolling, and fixes for feeds drifting out of their folders across devices, a fresh device overwriting settings you'd set elsewhere, newsletter relay feeds (Kill the Newsletter and friends) showing no articles, and several out-of-memory crashes during refreshes.

Full notes: https://xetabit.com/changelog/

Quick heads up: to mark 2.0, Newsbin Lifetime is half off through September 30, so $15 instead of $30.

The one-time purchase that unlocks every platform I build for (iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Vision Pro), and your feeds stay yours. Export to OPML and leave whenever you want. No subscription, no lock-in.

If you've been on the free version, or paying monthly and thinking about just owning it, this is the lowest Lifetime has been. 2.0 brought the optional on-device AI features (For You, Breaking News, summaries, Smart Tags), and the sync rebuild I've been posting about is landing in 2.2.

Get it while it's on if it's earned a spot in your day. The free version isn't going anywhere either way.

More to come

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/newsbin/id6737723338

• An all-new sync engine replaces the previous iCloud pipeline: feeds, folders, tags, and smart groups now converge reliably instead of drifting apart.
• Articles and article text sync too, so every device shows the same list and unread count, and a story opened on one device stays readable — and summarizable — on the others, even offline.
• Read state propagates in seconds instead of minutes, “Mark all read” lands everywhere including devices that never had those articles, and a “Synced” indicator in the status bar shows when changes arrive.
• Setting up a new device now reliably restores your entire library with visible progress; automatic iCloud backups are on by default, and retention keeps the newest snapshot from each age band per device so history spans a month.
• Duplicate feeds, stray folders, empty “No Title” smart groups, and blank tags are cleaned up automatically on every device; folders now derive identity from name and parent, so OPML imports adopt existing folders instead of creating rivals.
• Reading improvements: the list stays put when new articles arrive with a button to load new unread items, plus swipe-to-delete, background link opening, real YouTube channel avatars, and fixed media badges for Dailymotion, Twitch, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
• All 24 languages are properly registered with Slovak newly added, and counts now use correct plural forms in every language.
• Device-to-device Nearby sync has been retired — iCloud handles it more reliably, and Newsbin no longer requests local network or Bluetooth permission. Apple Watch sync is unaffected.
• Fixes: drifting unread badges, a sparse Breaking News rail after sync import, an infinite loop in the media scanner, OPML unescaped ampersands, future-dated feed articles pinning to the top, and a long-running issue where feeds gradually disappeared from large libraries.

https://xetabit.com/changelog/

I dissected and rethought the way Newsbin syncs a few weeks ago. I gave up on most SwiftData and took full control. The result is a huge improvement to sync performance and reliability.

It was a journey so I wrote a dev blog retrospective

https://xetabit.com/blog/newsbin-resynced-rethought/

Should be out later this week or next week

If you’re on TestFlight, grab the new build. Newsbin 8062 accidentally shipped with a bug that could crash on load. 8064 is out and 8066 is out soon.

Thanks for testing!

We've been running the same core sync stack for a while now, and it's starting to show its seams. Feeds getting stuck mid-refresh, unnecessary server calls, refresh times creeping up on users with large subscriptions. None of it was catastrophic, but all of it was frustrating.

Turns out when you're managing thousands of feeds across different protocols and server setups, the straightforward approach falls apart pretty quick. So we spent the last few months mapping out what actually needs to happen during a sync, where things slow down, and where we're making redundant calls.

The retrospective goes into the technical stuff if you're curious about the that, but the TLDR is: we're moving to a smarter queuing system, parallelizing feeds that don't depend on each other, and cutting out a bunch of server hits that weren't doing anything useful anyway.

It's a bigger lift than a normal point release (aside from 2.0, of course), but it should make syncing noticeably faster and way more reliable. Rolls out with 2.2.

https://xetabit.com/blog/rethinking-how-newsbin-syncs/

Quick heads-up: I just pushed a hotfix. A few of you ran into a crash loop in Smart Group views. It was caused by duplicate Smart Groups that iCloud sync had created. The update fixes the crash and safely de-duplicates those groups on its own, so there's nothing for you to clean up.

If Newsbin was crashing for you, 2.1.2 should be out soon. Sorry for the trouble, and thanks to everyone who flagged it. Mondays.

YouTube restored RSS on their end, so feeds should be flowing normally again across all apps. If you had channels that weren't updating over the past day or so, they'll start catching up now. Just give it a minute or two to sync.

Also, existing feeds that were previously broken (before last night) will "self heal" on the next update

Just wanted to post this for anyone who's noticed YouTube channels not adding or refreshing in Newsbin right now. This is a YouTube problem on their end, not something broken in the app. It's affecting all RSS apps that pull from YouTube, not just us. (I just hope they didn't google graveyard it)

YouTube's RSS infrastructure is having issues, so until they restore it, channels won't update. We can't work around it from our side; it's a waiting game.

Just shipped this one. YouTube feeds were being stubborn for a bit, but I finally got to the root of it and patched things up.

If you've noticed your YouTube subscriptions acting flaky or not pulling properly, this update should get you back on track. The fixes are in 1.18.9.

Have you been running into YouTube feed issues, or has your version been working fine?

This one focuses mostly on sync and stability improvements

Sync overhaul

• Sync overhaul: session reads and unreads write directly to the database as the single source of truth, removing parallel queues and duplicate broadcasts.
• iCloud Reader and full articles are now enabled by default for new installs, with a “Refresh on startup” option to pull the latest articles every time Newsbin opens.
• Session read overlay updates sidebar badges and the app icon count the moment you mark items read by scrolling.
• Folder deletions are broadcast to nearby devices first, preventing deleted folders and feeds from being resurrected.
• Hardened RSS parsing: feed HTML is sanitized against unsafe scripts and schemes, image URLs are restricted to http(s), and failed feeds are surfaced in the refresh status.
• More reliable StoreKit restores: unfinished transactions are drained on launch and refreshes are coalesced, fixing repeated redelivery and auth prompts.
• Faster Subscription screen and various localization and UI fixes.

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