Feeder 3.2 is now available. This versions adds drafts, improves the editor, accessibility and updates support for publishing and sharing to social media sites.

Drafts

Feeder can now save drafts of items for later publication, including changes to items that are already in the feed. New and edited items are now autosaved as drafts and listed in the new Drafts section of the main window. When you close an editing window, you can choose to keep it as a draft or save it to the feed. Existing items in the feed will show a draft icon next to the title in the list, and editing those items will edit the draft, not the feed version.

Drafts do not need to be valid until you save them to the feed, which allows for partially complete items — e.g. you can fill out an enclosure’s URL without knowing its size. If you try to save an item to the feed that doesn’t validate, Feeder will offer to save a draft instead.

Unlike the autosaving in previous versions of Feeder 3, drafts are now stored in the library folder, so if that folder is shared with other Macs via Dropbox or iCloud Drive, etc, the draft will be available on all Macs using that library and you will always be working on the latest version.

Editor & Accessibility Improvements

In addition to drafts, the item editor has a number of improvements that are related to accessibility, but are useful in general. There are now separate Editor menu items to perform tasks like choosing enclosure files and fetching attributes, which would otherwise be performed by clicking the gear icon next to the field. There is also a “New Item With Enclosure” item in the File menu, which could previously only be accomplished by dragging and dropping the enclosure file on the list. Various other parts of the app have been updated to be more accessible in a descriptive way too.

OS X Changes

Many parts of the app have been updated to use new technologies in OS X, including publishing to Amazon S3 and WebDAV, sending pings, Facebook, Twitter, URL shortening, downloading and reloading feeds, fetching enclosure details, thumbnail generation and posting to WordPress blogs. These changes are essential to keep Feeder working on future versions of OS X. You should not notice any difference in the functionality, but please get in touch if something stops working for you.

Other Changes

The landscape list has been updated to show columns other than “Title” in grey, matching what you see in Finder windows, and dates are now formatted consistently with the rest of the app. The appearance of the server browser has been improved, and there are various other minor improvements and fixes across the app. See the release notes for full details.

Availability

Feeder 3.2 is a free upgrade for all Feeder 3 customers and is available now on the Mac App Store and directly from this site. Upgrades from Feeder 2 are available exclusively from this site for $24.99. The version from this site also works as a 15 day trial, which can be tried before purchasing or upgrading.

Feeder 3.1 is out today with swipe to delete for El Capitan, a Share extension for sending links to Feeder from other apps, improvements to social sharing and Sparkle appcasting. Feeder 3.1 also returns to the Mac App Store for new customers.

This release follows soon after Feeder 3.0, which launched in July and featured a brand new look, Markdown editing, autosave, updates for iTunes podcasting and the ability to share its library and feeds with cloud services such as iCloud Drive and Dropbox amongst other things.

Share Extension

People use Feeder for more than just podcasting; quite a few create feeds to share links they’ve gathered from around the web, for example. Until now, this could be done by dragging the links to Feeder, which will fill out the title and link (at least from Safari).

Sending those links to Feeder is now easier with a Share extension that can be used from within Safari and other apps. In the extension you can choose the feed, edit the title, link and any selected text, which will be used in the description.

Sadly not all browsers support Share extensions and so Feeder also provides bookmarklets to do the same thing, these can be installed through its Advanced preferences. The bookmarklet always targets the current feed and doesn’t allow anything to be edited before it’s added to the feed, but on the latter you can tell Feeder to open an editing window when importing links in its General preferences.

El Capitan

El Capitan doesn’t mean huge changes for Feeder on the surface, but one of its more compelling features is swipe-to-delete. Swiping across the trackpad shows iOS-like delete button, and swiping all the way deletes that item immediately (by default Feeder checks you want to do that, and has undo). Also when running El Capitan, Feeder’s preview will use the new San Francisco system font.

A lot of the work in Feeder 3.0 was unseen: bringing the app up to date with the latest standards and technologies for OS X. Version 3.1 continues that for El Capitan while remaining compatible with Yosemite.

Mac App Store

Feeder 3.0 wasn’t available on the Mac App Store for a number of reasons, but primarily because the Mac App Store doesn’t have a way of offering discounted upgrades for existing users. While that is something I can do through my site, that can’t be mentioned on the Mac App Store and confusion can abound about needing to pay full price for an upgrade to an app people already own, etc. That situation won’t change until Apple makes provision for paid upgrades in the Mac App Store.

However, the Mac App Store is clearly the best way for finding out about Mac apps, so with version 3.1, Feeder is back on the Mac App Store. Half-price upgrades from version 2 are still available from this site.

And Lots More…

Editing windows now show the standard window buttons inline with the toolbar buttons, there is support for the new “Critical Update” tag for Sparkle appcasts, Twitter announcements can now include images and Facebook support has been updated to keep working in the future too, along with various other minor tweaks and improvements. See the release notes for a full list of changes.

Availability

Feeder 3.1 is a free upgrade for all existing Feeder 3.0 users and otherwise costs $49.99. Feeder 2 users can upgrade for half price through this site only, with free upgrades for anyone who purchased Feeder 2 from October 16, 2014 until Feeder 3’s release. The version from this site works as a free 15-day trial until registered.

Feeder 3.0 is now available with a brand new look, thumbnails and previews in the list, Markdown editing and autosave. Feeder’s library and feeds can now be shared with cloud services such as iCloud Drive and Dropbox, and feeds can be shared with others in a self-contained format that preserves all the publishing settings.

Over the last 10 years, Feeder has proven itself to be one of the best ways to publish RSS feeds and podcasts, and Feeder 3 improves on this in every way, but does so in a way that feels completely familiar.

New Look

More than just a makeover, Feeder 3’s new design makes finding items and working with your feeds far smoother. The list now shows thumbnails and textual previews for each item for quicker visual identification. Switching between the feed, its items and settings is now easier and designed such that the sidebar can be hidden, saving on space if you only have one or two feeds. Every icon has been redesigned to look just right on today’s OS X.

Improved Editing

The editor also has a new look, and items can be written in Markdown, which will be converted to HTML in the feed, and extends to all editing features where appropriate, such as the Insert Link and Insert Image panels. Like all modern OS X apps, the editor now autosaves, but doesn’t commit those changes to the feed itself until you are ready. Autosave also means Feeder can restore its state, so windows you had open when the app was last quit will reappear when it’s opened again, with all your changes intact.

Share Libraries in the Cloud

It’s now possible to share Feeder’s library with cloud services such as iCloud Drive and Dropbox by placing the library folder in the appropriate location, thanks to a new library format — there is a new Move Library command in the Feeder menu to do that for you. Feeder automatically updates as soon as it detects a change has been made.

Self-Contained Feeds

In addition, Feeder can now save feeds in a self-contained format that contains both the content and settings required to publish it. This makes it easy to send a feed that you’ve already set up to someone else without needing to share your entire library or help them set up publishing from scratch. As with shared libraries, these contain everything apart from your passwords, which are kept securely in your Keychain.

Publishing

Feeder now shows progress in the Publish toolbar button, and clicking this will show more detailed progress in a popover. When a library is being shared with many Macs, only one will publish scheduled feeds, and you can choose which in Feeder’s preferences. It’s now also possible to run an AppleScript, Automator workflow or Unix shell script after publishing has completed to perform additional tasks.

And Much More…

Find and replace all links in a feed, see servers, ping services and blogs together in the new Servers window, and Quick Look previews for attached enclosure files are just some of the many other things in this version.

Just about every part of the app has been tweaked and refined, including the things you don’t see. OS X has moved at a blistering pace over the last few years, Feeder 3 not only brings the app up to date on the surface, but also under the hood to take advantage of Apple’s latest innovations and lay a solid foundation for the future.

See the release notes for a full list of changes and some useful information about them.

Availability

Feeder 3 costs $49.99 for new customers, $24.99 for those upgrading from Feeder 2 and is available exclusively from Reinvented Software. Free upgrades are available for anyone who purchased Feeder 2 after the release of OS X Yosemite on October 16, 2014, regardless of whether they purchased the app through the Mac App Store or directly from Reinvented Software.

Feeder requires OS X 10.10 Yosemite or later. A fully-featured 15-day trial is available to download and try out the new features. Your Feeder 2 library will be preserved should you decide not to upgrade.

With this release, I have decided to stop offering Feeder for sale on the Mac App Store, so can offer the same upgrade deal to all customers, along with the fastest updates and best service I can possibly provide.

Feeder 2.5 is now available. This version does not include any significant new features, rather its purpose is to modernise Feeder’s underpinnings to ensure compatibility with future versions of OS X, and more urgently to comply with Mac App Store rules. While no substantial functionality has changed, two notable changes are explained below.

Media File Tagging for iTunes Podcasts

How Feeder tags QuickTime movies, M4A, M4V and MP4 files with metadata such as artist name and artwork has been overhauled in this version. While there should be no noticeable difference for the first three of those file formats, MP4s lose the ability to set artwork. As Apple has moved from using artwork embedded in the files to artwork specified by links in the feed itself, this should make no noticeable difference.

Requires OS X 10.9 or Later

Because of its popularity in education establishments, etc, I have always done my best to keep Feeder working on older versions of OS X, but Apple’s pace of change in this area is making this a constant challenge. Feeder 2.4 became 10.7.3 and later to work with app sandboxing in the Mac App Store version, but 10.7.x had some bugs in this area that have made it unworkable for some people and having 10.8 as the lowest version is pretty pointless when 10.9 is a free upgrade. Therefore for Feeder to properly support sandboxing and the modernisation changes mentioned above, version 2.5 now requires OS X 10.9 or later. Versions of Feeder for older versions of OS X are always available at the bottom of the Feeder downloads page.

Pricing and Availability

Feeder 2.5 is a free upgrade for all existing 2.x users. A new license costs $39.99 direct from Reinvented Software or the Mac App Store. Upgrade and education discounts are available from the Reinvented Software store.

Feeder 2.4 is now available on the web and in the Mac App Store, and includes improvements to editing, publishing and Sparkle appcasting.

However, most of the work in this release isn’t visible, which is to get Feeder working with OS X’s App Sandbox, which is a requirement for apps sold through the Mac App Store.

The App Sandbox is a security technology built into OS X that limits the way apps can access files, interact with other processes and the network.

I originally started this work back in 2011, when Apple first announced this would be a requirement for all apps distributed through the Mac App Store following the release of OS X 10.7 Lion. Unfortunately, that original implementation of sandboxing was too restrictive, and prevented many existing apps from functioning properly, so Apple postponed the requirement until improving sandboxing with OS X 10.7.3 in early 2012, and allowed existing apps to delay making the transition until a release that adds new features, so that bug fixes could be released and enhancements to OS X accommodated.

Consequently, Feeder 2.4 now requires OS X 10.7 and later, and 10.7.3 for the Mac App Store version.

Now that early problems with sandboxing have largely been ironed out, the transition should not be noticeable at all for new Feeder users, and there are no restrictions on what the app can do over the direct version beyond those imposed by the Mac App Store guidelines.

For existing users, Feeder may need to ask for permission to access files such as images, enclosure files and any linked feeds, amongst other things. This will happen automatically when you first run the Mac App Store version of Feeder, and as necessary to cover some other, more obscure cases such as SSH private and public keys for publishing with password-less SFTP.

Hopefully, this will be a seamless transition, but if you do use the Mac App Store version of Feeder and notice any strange behaviour, please get in touch using the email address shown on the Feeder support page.

Feeder is available both direct from Reinvented Software and from the Mac App Store for $39.99. An upgrade from version 1.x is $19.99, and education discounts are also available directly from Reinvented Software. To see a list of all the changes or download a 15-day demo, go to the Feeder downloads page.