Fiery Feeds 2.5 is the first feature release in 2021. The big one is widgets, but it also includes a complete rewrite of the font and theming system, which was long overdue. And with this version native rendering is now the default render mode for articles.

New Default Themes

The first thing you’ll probably notice are the two new default themes. The retain a slight blue shade and the red accent of the previous default theme, but they are overall much lighter and much darker, respectively. The old default themes haven’t changed much since version 1.0 almost 8 years ago.

New Widgets

The probably most requested feature are home screen widgets. The are widgets for single or multiple articles, single or multiple accounts and Hot Links, in all relevant sizes. You can even add multiple widgets of the same type and configure them individually.

And of course the widgets are fully configurable. You can pick the account/folder/feed you want to have displayed in the articles widget, and decide which articles you want displayed.

I’ve been meaning to do a random article widget for a long time, to suggest articles from my read later list every time I look at my phone. This was a good time to finally do it.

Theme Editor and User Theme Directory

I’ve cleaned the theme file structure up a bit. It is still a JSON file, but comments are no longer allowed inside the file and some of the keys have changed. The macOS version still has a few extra keys, but all other keys have been unified, and the new default themes are the same on both iOS and macOS. There are also no longer default values for each color, so every theme needs to contain a color for

I’m no longer documenting all of the used keys explicitly, but you can still read the file with an text editor (the keys are pretty self explainatory). The reason why, is because Fiery Feeds now finally includes an integrated theme editor, allowing you to modify your themes right inside the app.

In addition to the theme editor there is a new, completely native theme directory, and you can submit your own creations to the directory to share them with other users right from inside the app.

New Font Handling

And finally, even if it sounds like a simple change, but I’ve almost completely rewritten the font handling inside Fiery Feeds. This means that the app respects the default system font size (by default – you can still override it for each part of Fiery Feeds, like previously), and you can select any installed font, including fonts installed by third party apps.