Let's begin a new year with a bunch of new features!

We've already reached another year: couple of new Handy releases behind - with a bunch of new features, either already introduced or "in store" :) . Let's take a little bit of a survey through it.

What's new?:

Flick through articles with distraction-free picking and choosing :) .
If You are used to browse articles in full text mode and add chosen ones to read later or just to preserve (by adding to Favorites) - this feature is made especially for You :) . It allows to add a currently displayed article to Favorites quickly and easily - by a simple swipe from the top gesture. If repeated, the gesture will act vice versa, allowing You to remove from Favorites. So this is a really convenient and distraction-free way of handling new articles :) !

Make Your reading always eyes-friendly - by flexible brightness adjustment.
Although we have already an option to adjust a text brightness "once and for all" (app's settings: "Article's text ➜ Text brightness") - we've introduced yet another, easy way of flexible brightness adjustment while reading: by swiping up or down, alongside the left edge of the screen.

Please Your fingers with better tap zones.
Since there are great diversity among the size of mobile devices, we've decided to improve tap zones, keeping in mind there are a lot of screen sizes and ratios out there, as well as various fingers' sizes, too :) . So, to make the thing more flexible and universal in use, we've added an option for adjusting tap zones' size, which now can be tailored to any screen (or finger) size :) . I like to call this feature "a lazy finger's pleasure" ;) - for I didn't like to tap the previous tap zones because there were a little bit too small for Me, forcing My finger to be more precise, requiring more effort, etc. ;) . Now, finally, the finger can rest and relax while using Handy ;) .

Now Handy knows what You have not seen yet :) !
Alexey described it pretty well: "I have a feed with auto update on, which has many articles. Periodically I am looking through article titles (in article list) to find something interesting. But the articles remain unread. I want to know which article titles I've had already seen. So the new feature marks new articles with a special ^("+") icon - until they remain visible on the list. The ones which You've scrolled out of the list's visible area will be left without a "+" sign (after 2 sec. of being off the screen).

So I always know which articles I have already seen and which are new. This is a similar thing to the 'x new articles' button, which I want to remove in the future".

If You, however, don't find this feature usable for Yourself, You can turn it off in app's settings ("Articles' list ➜ New article icon").

Hello F-Droid :) !
We are now happy and proud to inform that Handy News Reader reached the decent set of free software gathered under the F-Droid app store. This is the place where You'll find many great apps - mostly so-called "free software" - which are often light, fast, and without ads, no strings attached :) ! Moreover, the app store itself has dark mode, allows to choose between various apps' versions (instead of forcing You to install "the newest and greatest"), and has a handful of other valuable features, so it is worth recommending as a good Google Play alternative.

Take a crash souvenir ;) - a crash log file.
There are times - however rare - when an app may crash. Now, in such cases, Handy will help us to solve crash issues by creating a special "log file" containing crash-related technical information. Handy may propose to send this file to us via Your e-mail app - or You can send it by hand (the file is located here: "internal memory ➜ feedex ➜ crash.txt").

"In store".

Alongside new features which are currently implemented - there are a handful of others, which are considered to be introduced in the future (among all the rest of the upcoming features described on this site). Some of those are:

"Run the app in..." - custom shortcuts let You to launch Handy always in Your preferred category (e.g. The Unread, Favorites, and so on).

Customize hyperlinks - choose a color of hyperlinks within article text.

Disable hyperlinked headers - if You often accidentally tap on article header in full text mode, You will be happy of that one :) .

That's all for now, let the good times roll - happy new year and have a good time with Handy!