Brent Simmons:

We’ve released NetNewsWire 7.2 for Mac with a new column view layout: choose View > Use Column Layout to switch.

I really missed this feature from the old NetNewsWire, so I was happy to see its return. Now that I’m using it, I have mixed feelings. I love the columns, how I can scan the titles without the feed names and dates getting in the way. But some titles aren’t very informative, so I miss how the iOS-style view shows a little preview of the article’s body. I wish I could see that, either appended after the title itself or in a second line below it.

We’ve also added a second long-requested feature: you can now hide unread counts or replace them with a •, so you don’t have to deal with the anxiety of an ever-increasing unread count and the feeling like you have to get caught up.

Here are the other changes.

Previously:

• NetNewsWire 7.1

Brent Simmons:

• The Current Activity window shows what the app is doing right now
• The Activity Log window shows what the app did recently
• The Account Stats window shows per-account article and status counts and database sizes, and it includes a Vacuum Databases button which can help with database size and performance
• The Dinosaurs window lists feeds that haven’t updated in n months (with a text field where you specify n)

It’s great to have more visibility into what the app is doing. I was about to report a regression where Mastodon and some other favicons were pixellated, but this was quickly fixed in 7.1.1.

Previously:

• NetNewsWire 7.0.4