When I'm simply creating groups in the "manage" window, I had to drag and drop feeds one by one into groups because I couldn't select multiple at a time. That seems silly.
Hm, I agree that does seem silly. Initially, I set up all my feeds on the Google Reader site, where you have better options for that if I recall correctly. (actually, it may have just imported them from the OPML file I uploaded, I'm unsure as I made the switch years ago)
Selecting multiple feeds at once - say, to star, since deleting isn't even an option - can't be done. It all has to be done one by one. That sort of thing makes sense on the iPad or iPhone, but on a computer?
I think it's just that you have your workflow set up one way, and I'm not sure there's a way to replicate that now. I think you can do more-or-less what you're wanting, but it's just handled in different ways.
I primarily read in the iPad version of the app now (though I started with Reeder on the desktop) but what I'll do is read the articles I want to see now, star the articles I want to read later, and then hit "mark all as read" on that feed.
Or I'll load up a group (e.g. "Apple" or "Tech") and do the same thing, then mark all as read again to clear them off my list. I should point out that I use the view which sorts articles chronologically in a group, rather than grouping by site. (which doesn't make much sense in my opinion)
Well to be more specific, I actually use "starred" and "send to Instapaper" for two separate archived lists. Instapaper gets long-form articles I want to read, Starred is for things I'll want to look at later in the short-term, but don't necessarily treat as an "archive".
If you're in the "unread" view mode, then it might as well be. But no, when I said delete, I meant really delete the news article.
Well no, you can't delete an article, I suppose that's because what you're looking at is the feed from the site, and not a locally-managed list of articles. But that's what the "unread" view is for.
In the "unread" view, when an article is marked as read, it disappears off the list and is essentially "deleted" though it will stay visible in the "all" view for another week, or however long you set.
I'm only ever in the unread or starred views really. If I've read something I want to refer to again, I star it, or mark it as unread if it's only something I'll want later in that day and not archived for a long time.
The "all" view is really for when you forgot to archive an article and want to bring it up again. At least that's how I treat it.
I may be misunderstanding how this works. I see an option for "keep read items" as well as a checkbox for "download read items." If I set "keep read items" to "always," are you saying that it will only keep the things that I star, and it will automatically clear away the rest?
Looking over the options again, that is very confusing. Because I haven't used the Mac app for a long time, there probably isn't actually anything downloaded for me to test this.
The way I have it set up is to sync "all" starred items, which should keep a local copy of the article text on that machine.
Having the cache images for starred items option should also keep a local copy of any images in the articles.
I have it set to clear read items after one week. This is anything that has been read, but not starred.
With it set up like this, and having WiFi disabled, I'm able to read all of my starred items offline on my iPad. (going back to March 2011, which is the earliest one I have starred, and when I purchased my iPad 2)
I got that Instapaper is for "reading later," but I'm talking about archiving things for years. I'm under the impression that Instapaper was not designed for such a thing?
The web service
does not cache items. However the iOS app
does download and cache items to the device, saving all the text & images locally so you can read them indefinitely. Unfortunately I don't think there's a desktop app for Instapaper that does this.
What I have had happen before though, is that I've marked an article for Instapaper to download, but then didn't actually run the app for a few days, and by the time I loaded the app, the article no longer existed. (up until recently, there was no way for Instapaper to download articles automatically in the background)
If I had loaded the app right away, it would have cached the content and I would have been able to read it any time I wanted.
