Airshow 3.0 - New Design & More

by Ben Ubois

Airshow 3.0 is now available.

All-new design - Airshow has a fresh new look with numerous UI improvements. Every management screen now includes an easy way to filter by playlist or show, and actions that previously required multiple taps are now easier to access.

Universal search - Search across your Queue, Episodes, Shows, and Podcasts from a single place, making it easier find what you’re looking for.

Performance improvements - UI performance throughout the app has been noticeably improved.

Chapter selection in CarPlay - View and select podcast chapters in CarPlay. The player now also displays the current chapter title.

Create & View Newsletter Addresses from the Browser Extension

by Ben Ubois

There’s new version of the Feedbin browser extension.

The biggest feature is a new tab where you can create and view newsletter addresses. This way you can easily subscribe to email newsletters while browsing, without having to remember your address or visit Feedbin’s settings to generate a new one.

There are also two new keyboard shortcuts available:

  • control shift f - opens the extension
  • control shift v - while using Feedbin, open the current article in a background tab

Available for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.

YouTube Chapters

by Ben Ubois

Feedbin’s YouTube embeds now support chapters.

When a video includes chapter markers, you can access them right in the embed so you can quickly scan what’s covered and jump straight to the part that interests you most.

A Browser Extension to Subscribe & Read Later

by Ben Ubois

There’s a new official browser extension to subscribe to feeds and save pages to read later.

You can use the extension in these browsers:

  • Safari - Bundled with the Feedbin app. It works on iOS, macOS, and iPadOS.
  • Chrome - Which is also where you should go if you’re using a Chromium based browser like Edge, Arc, Brave, etc…
  • Firefox

Besides being a convenient way to get content into Feedbin, the extension also enables a new feature for Pages. Previously Feedbin could only get the content of the page from its servers, so if the page you were on required an account, it couldn’t get the full content. Now the extension can upload the entire content of the page you are on, which helps it work better in more places.

Privacy-wise the extension tries to keep its permissions to a minimum. It has no background capabilities, so it will only run when it is clicked on. It’s also open source.

Feed Search

by Ben Ubois

Feedbin now has a feature that lets you easily find and subscribe to feeds by searching for keywords.

The search results include many popular feeds and enables searching by:

  • Feed name or partial name
  • Author
  • Feed description

The feature also comes with an update to the API so any client that uses Feedbin’s subscription API will automatically get search results too.

Custom Newsletter Addresses

by Ben Ubois

There’s a few new features for your newsletter address.

  1. Create unlimited addresses. First up, you can now create newsletter addresses. There’s a couple reasons you might want to do this:
    • Automatic categorization with a different default tag.
    • To prevent spam. More on this later.

    If you’re familiar with Apple’s Hide My Email or Fastmail’s Masked Email, then it’s like that, but for your newsletters.

  2. Customizable addresses. You can now choose a custom prefix for your address. This can help with making something more memorable or as a note to yourself what the address was created for.

  3. A new domain. All Feedbin newsletter addresses now use an @feedb.in domain. This was changed because it’s much shorter and nicer looking. Newsletters addressed to @newsletters.feedbin.com will continue to work too.

There is an unfortunate reality of email newsletters. Since running a fairly large inbound email service, it’s come to my attention that newsletter addresses accidentally leak (or get sold?) to spammers. To combat this, you can now deactivate an address entirely. I consider it good email hygiene to use a unique address for every newsletter you sign up for.

There’s a couple ways to do this:

  1. Generate a custom (or random address) on the website.
  2. Use a “plus hack”. Say you have the email address abc@feedb.in. You can also receive newsletters at abc+1@feedb.in or abc+anything@feedb.in. This way you don’t have to create a new address ahead of time. If this address ever gets out, you can disable it entirely.

Airshow Updates

by Ben Ubois

There’s an Airshow update available now. It includes a number of powerful new features, upgrades, and polish.

  • Interactive widget: Playback controls right on your Home Screen. The design is richer and now includes more useful information.
  • Download filters: Download just the episodes you want with keyword filters.
  • Skippable chapters: In the chapters view you can preselect chapters you want to skip.
  • Chapter filters: The only thing better than skippable chapters is being able to automatically skip chapters that match keywords you specify.
  • App icon: A beautiful and fun new concept designed by Matthew Skiles.
  • Polish: There’s a simplified scrubber in addition to multiple layout fixes and improvements especially on iOS 17.

Finally, Airshow now has its own website.

Fixable Feeds

by Ben Ubois

There’s a new set of features available on Feedbin with the goal of helping you find and fix broken feeds.

A fairly common reason for a feed breaking is when a publisher moves their feed, but does not redirect the old one to the new location.

Feedbin continuously monitors feed health and is now able to use this data to see if a healthy alternative exists.

For example a feed I subscribe to moved. Visiting the old one results in a “404 Not Found” error. Feedbin was able to detect that they still advertise feeds on their website and offers the option of replacing the broken one.

Visit your subscriptions page to get started. There will be a notice at the top of the page if Feedbin has detected any broken feeds it can help with.

This same feature can also help with OPML imports. For example if your OPML file includes an outdated link, Feedbin will automatically check for working alternatives.

Airshow 2.0

by Ben Ubois

Airshow 2.0, Feedbin’s podcast app for iPhone and iPad, is out now.

This release aims to address all the most common feature requests and some surprises. This includes:

  • Playlists: Airshow takes a streamlined approach to playlists. Most podcast players make playlist management in the same style as a music playlist. You subscribe to some shows, then you create a playlist separately.

    However podcasts are different. You typically only listen to an episode one time, so there’s no need to manage playlists separately. Instead, Airshow lets you choose or create a playlist when subscribing to the show, making it a one step process to add a new show to a playlist.

  • Speed Controls: People really like listening to podcasts faster than real-time.

  • Sleep Timers: Another common request, now available right on the player screen.

  • Download Manager: See and manage your downloads in one place. This is also helpful for surfacing download errors.

  • Mini Player: This makes it possible to see what’s playing and control playback from anywhere in the app.

  • More Chapter Art: Chapter specific artwork is now displayed on the lock screen during playback.

Twitter Access Revoked

by Ben Ubois

Feedbin’s Twitter access was revoked because “this App has violated Twitter Rules and policies.” Which is the same message many Twitter clients received in January when Twitter first started turning off API access.

Twitter does not want any kind of third-party client accessing its data. While it looked like there might be a path forward at one time, it’s now clear that there is not.

This means the end of Twitter support in Feedbin. Feedbin will no longer be able to fetch any new content from Twitter, but anything that you have already subscribed to will stay put.

I could tell you about the benefits of using open alternatives like RSS or Mastodon instead, but if you’re reading this, you already know.

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