How smart, pleasant and useful Your Handy may be?

This is the question I'd love to address, the one with the answer being constantly updated over the time with all the new stuff I can be happy to share with You :) . It's fantastic that it's enough just to wait some time to see how the app grows, influencing Your day-to-day experience in a pretty tangible manner.

Today I'm glad to tell You about all the recent important changes and improvements it's good to know about. Let's start with the key features I find most exciting:

How clean are Your articles?

The more content sources You gather within Handy, the more likely You may encounter ads or other potentially unwanted parts "here and there" among articles You read. Now it is possible to clean Your "readflow" from this stuff, at least to a high degree. Here You'll find a detailed instruction how exactly You may benefit out of this feature.

Make Handy more Yours!

Finally there is a bunch of customization options in Handy, and yet - this is not the last word here :) . Besides, regardless of common settings (like font or background color), You can - for example - set a separate color for hyperlinks, and even remove their underlining. Thanks to new customization options You also are able to finally make the reading progress bar much more readable = usable, by changing its color and/or height to Your Own linking. Here I describe in details what and how You can set up, making Handy NR much more Yours.

Now, let's take a little survey on what has been improved or introduced in terms of usability - a desired key trait of Handy:

No need to leave Handy to read all the related articles.

Earlier on when You tapped on a link within an article, an external web browser stepped in - which has not been an optimal way, disrupting the seamlessness of reading in Handy. Now when You tap on a link, You'll see a menu with a couple of useful actions: it still allows You to open the link in an external browser, but more importantly, it also encourages You to do so within Handy itself (through "Read now" or "Read later" command).

Although both of these commands have been available earlier on via Android share feature - You may find the in-built Handy menu significantly quicker to show up.

Intuitive image preview.

If You like to take a closer look on images illustrating articles You read - now You can do it simply by tapping an image and it should be opened in Your default gallery app.

Begin Your Handy reading always in the right place.

Usually even a moment is enough to flick through several articles in order to pick up those which You find worth reading - while skipping all the rest. The ones worth keeping You may mark as "starred" and they will wait for You within Favorites set on the sidebar,

So, depending on how much time You have at the moment, You might prefer to open the app just to quickly review unread articles - or to relax and dive into their content (having more spare time). In either case it would be nice to be able to open the app always in the right place of Your interest (like in the example above: within the Unread or Favorites).

Now it is possible, thanks to the ability to create desktop shortcuts. You can create a shortcut which will open the app directly within Favorites, Unread, or some particular feed (content source).

Navigate through settings easier and faster.

Recently all the app's settings has been re-organized into several categories ("Common settings", "Articles' list", "Article's text", etc.) - so now You can find what You need easier and faster.

Smart brightness.

If You let Android to automatically adjust screen brightness, now You can schedule Handy to obey this feature once a desired time span will pass. The app will be checking the current brightness level every x minutes and apply it to itself. Here is how the Developer describes it:

"When I get outdoors after reading indoors and turn on my phone screen, the HNR brightness level is too dark (until I switch to other app), so I've introduced that function". ^(Alexey)

In case You'd prefer to maintain a dedicated brightness level within Handy - set Brightness update time (settings › Operation) to some big number (counting down won't consume more battery).

Full screen article headers are now finger-friendly ;) .

Have You ever tap on an article header accidentally and been frustrated by canceling an external web browser window? If so, there is a good news for You: from now on all article headers have no links attached :) ! Meaning: no more frustration involved ;) .

E-ink-friendly switching articles.

If You use Handy with an e-ink device - as one of Handy's user, Neo Pici, pointed out - You may know that swipe gestures may consume a lot of power - which is not the case when You just tap on something. Since swipe left/right were probably the most usable gestures within the app, allowing to switch between next and previous article - now You can do it also by tapping (on the top left and top right area of the screen).