The current help content is not fully up-to-date. We will update the content as soon as possible to News Explorer 2.0 in the coming weeks.
The background update interval is determined by iOS and depends on the settings of the app, availability of a reliable network connection, battery level, usage history of the app compared to other apps and other factors only known by Apple. Apps that are used often get more time from iOS for background app refreshes than less used apps.
Follow these steps to get a quick overview of the Background App Refresh status in News Explorer:
To fix or improve Background App Refresh, make sure that the following conditions are met:
Please take note that the Background App Refresh of News Explorer only concerns the downloading of new articles and the generation of related local notifications. It does not perform a complete sync with iCloud, because this doesn't fit within the allowed 30 seconds time-frame of Apple for Background App Refresh support.
If you still doesn't see any sign of Background App Refresh, like new news articles or notifications, then you should try the following:
Follow these steps to enable Dark Mode in News Explorer:
Aa
icon at the bottom toolbar of the news article view. Scroll the article downwards when this toolbar is not visible, to make it visible again.The Add to News Explorer share extension can be found in the Share menu of Safari and other compatible apps.
On macOS, make sure you have started the latest version of News Exporer at least one time, otherwise macOS isn't aware of the existence of the Add to News Explorer share extension. Also make sure you don't have other editions or versions of News Explorer on you Mac.
Normally you don't have to worry about how iCloud sync works. Just make sure that you use the same iCloud account on all your devices with News Explorer, and your feeds and related data will automatically sync between all your devices. However, if the synchronization stops working or is incomplete, it's useful to understand a little bit how synchronization works.
If you use multiple devices with News Explorer, then the first device must have uploaded all changes to iCloud, before you may expect to see the changes on a second or any other device. Uploading changes to iCloud happens immediately after each status mutation, unless your internet connection is offline. In that case, the unsaved changes are uploaded as part of a periodical sync session, as soon as you're back online.
If you switch from device A to device B, then device B must first perform a sync session to retrieve data from device A. If you start the app, it will sync automatically after a few seconds. But if the app is already started (which is often the case on iOS devices), then it may sometimes be necessary to start a manual sync. To do this, click on the Refresh icon on the bottom toolbar of the feeds list (macOS) or pull down the feed list until an activity indicator keeps spinning (iOS).
Please keep in mind that when device B syncs, it also downloads new feed data. As a result, the unread count maybe higher then device A. To compare the unread counts of two devices, you may need to run multiple sync sessions on all devices until all devices are in sync with each other and all current feed data has been downloaded.
The following tips will reduce the time needed to sync via iCloud:
To resync one feed with iCloud:
To resync all feeds with iCloud:
First, make sure you understand the basics of syncing with News Explorer as explained in 'How to use the iCloud sync feature?' in this FAQ. Devices can sometimes go out of sync, for example when a device has been offline for a long time. Normally devices will get in sync automatically when the app gets enough foreground time to perform a full sync procedure. The following troubleshoot steps may help to speed up or fix syncing issues.
Always perform one or more manual sync sessions on all your devices before you continue with other troubleshooting steps:
Do this to resync a feed with iCloud:
Resyncing with a data snapshot is the fastest way to get an out-of-sync device in sync with other devices.
First, check if there’s a data snapshot on a device that’s been properly synced:
To perform a full resync on a device that is out of sync, follow these steps.:
The full resync procedure will make use of a data snapshot when setting Use snapshots is set on any option other than Never. This setting is located in the iCloud section of the Accounts app settings.
Sometimes network connection problems result in degraded sync performance in News Explorer, especially the real-time sync feature. Follow these steps to test the correct working of real-time sync between two devices:
Test this in both directions on both devices. Before testing, make sure that the standard sync has been finalized.
Try the following troubleshoot steps if a test fails, and repeat the test after each step:
Perform the following steps one by one to check app settings and device configuration, and perform a manual sync after each adjustment to test the performed change or action:
If none of the steps listed above works, then it can help to close News Explorer, delete the local database, restart your device and start a fresh resync based on the data in iCloud:
~/Library/Containers/betamagic.News-Explorer
~/Library/Containers/com.betamagic.News-Explorer-setapp
Important: the initial sync session may take a lot of time, especially when you have used News Explorer for a long period. Don't switch to other apps in iOS, iPadOS or tvOS during the first sync session, wait until the activity indicator disappears.
The cookie warning must be confirmed, before Reader view starts working normally. This is only possible by opening the original website article in News Explorer in the same web browser control.
To use Reader view with paywalled content, you must open the website version of an article, as a one time operation, so you can login. After logging in, Reader view should work for all articles of the paywalled source. The login must take place in the same web browser control as used by Reader view.
When you set the primary view of a feed to Website Article with option Open in Safari view controller enabled, articles for this feed will be opened in Safari view controller. This view doesn’t have the Reader view button.
Follow these steps to change the primary view for a feed:
View Options
.Make sure that the following conditions are met:
Notification are generated by your macOS or iOS device, initiated by News Explorer. To adjust or disable notifications you must therefore change settings on system level.
Removing an app from the recent applications list, also known as force closing an app, will prevent the app from receiving any background processing time by iOS. The app needs background processing time to download news and generate notifications.
If an iOS app is in the background, then it is not allowed to do anything unless iOS assigns background processing time, triggered by ‘background app refresh’ or by silent push notifications. Each background processing session must be completed within 30 seconds, otherwise the session is terminated by iOS.
To install the Mac App Store version, you need to delete the trial version first.
Please follow these steps:
If you have used or started the trial version since your last login on your Mac, then first restart your Mac before you start using the freshly installed App Store version.
If you have purchased News Explorer from the Mac App Store, then the store will automatically propose to download the latest compatible version of News Explorer if you use a Mac that's not compatible with the latest version of News Explorer
However, due to Mac App Store restrictions, if you haven't purchased News Explorer yet, you must do so on a Mac that's compatible with the latest version of News Explorer for macOS. Once done, you can download older versions on other Macs. If you don't have a recent Mac, you can also buy the app on a Mac of somebody else, after logging into the Mac App Store with your account.
To install the Betamagic Store version of News Explorer on macOS Sonoma 14.7 or older, use the following download link:
https://betamagic.nl/downloads/News Explorer Retail 1.20.4.zip
To install the Betamagic Store version of News Explorer on macOS Mojave 10.14.6, use the following download link:
https://betamagic.nl/downloads/News Explorer Retail 1.9.10.dmg
To install the Betamagic Store version of News Explorer on macOS High Sierra 10.13.6, then please use the following download link:
https://betamagic.nl/downloads/News Explorer Retail 1.9.4.dmg
Setapp will automatically download the latest compatible version of News Explorer for macOS. On Setapp, the oldest supported macOS version for News Explorer is El Capitan 10.11.
The situation on iOS, iPadOS or tvOS is comparable to macOS. This means that if you have purchased News Explorer from the App Store on iOS, iPadOS or tvOS, then the store will automatically propose to download the latest compatible version of News Explorer if you use a device that's not compatible with the latest version of News Explorer
However, due to App Store restrictions, if you haven't purchased News Explorer yet, you must do so on an iOS, iPadOS or tvOS device that's compatible with the latest version of News Explorer for the used platform. Once done, you can download older versions on older devices. If you don't have a recent device with one of the said platforms, than you can also buy the app on a device from somebody else, after logging into the App Store with your account.
Follow these steps if you want to remove all your current feeds, and start again from scratch:
When done, start News Explorer while pressing the Shift key. This will automatically delete the local database and resync the app with the now empty iCloud container of News Explorer.
When done, open News Explorer, tap on the three dots icon on top of the Feeds list and select Resync All from the menu. This will delete the local database and resync the app with the now empty iCloud container of News Explorer.
To remove your News Explorer database from iCloud without affecting other apps, navigate to the iCloud pane in System Preferences on your Mac, click the Manage... button, and select News Explorer from the list of third-party apps. Click the Delete All Files button to remove your data from iCloud. In macOS 10.15 and later, you must first click on the Apple ID icon in System Preferences to get access to the iCloud settings.
On the iPad, iPhone or iPod, select iCloud in Settings app (part of your Apple ID settings in the latest iOS versions), tap Manage Storage, and select News Explorer from the list of third-party apps. Tap Delete Documents & Data to remove your iCloud data for News Explorer.
To remove all News Explorer data from your Mac, you'll need to delete the local Sandbox container folder:
~/Library/Containers/betamagic.News-Explorer
~/Library/Containers/com.betamagic.News-Explorer-setapp
Note: Please restart your Mac first, if you use this procedure to start with an empty feed list.
To delete all News Explorer data from your iOS or tvOS devices, you must delete the News Explorer app:
All data displayed in News Explorer is directly related to data in your iCloud container, 'what you see is what you have'. However, iCloud may contain some old data that's not visible in the app, due to storage and cleaning settings in the Storage section of the News Explorer settings. Perform these steps to retrieve all iCloud data in the News Explorer app:
After this operation, you may restore your previous storage periods, to prevent unnecessary grow of your iCloud storage space.
On device level, the data of News Explorer is stored in a SQLite database. In macOS, the SQLite database files can be found here:
~/Library/Containers/betamagic.News-Explorer/Data/Library/Application Support/betamagic.News_Explorer
~/Library/Containers/com.betamagic.News-Explorer-setapp/Data/Library/Application Support/betamagic.News_Explorer
To easily navigate to these files, start Finder, choose Go > Go to folder from the menu and copy & paste the string displayed aboe. Then hit to Go button.
Check the following settings if you don’t see an unread count badge on top of the app icon:
To change the article list source displayed on the Apple Watch, long press on an item in the Feeds list on your iPhone, and select Show on Apple Watch in the popup context menu.
Open a news article by tapping on it. Long press on the article to activate a menu, then choose Mark as Read to mark the news article as read.
Repeat this and choose Mark as Unread to set the article back to unread.
Open a news article by tapping on it. Long press on the article to activate a menu, then choose Mark as Favorite to mark the news article as favorite.
Repeat this and choose Mark as Unfavorite to remove the favorite mark.
If a long press doesn’t show a context menu in the watchOS edition of News Explorer, then you need to force quit and restart the app.
To force quit, open the News Explorer app and hold the side button until you see the power off screen. Then press and hold the Digital Crown until the power off screen disappears.
No, but maybe in a future release as an extra sync option. News Explorer uses it’s own built-in sync mechanism based on iCloud.
If News Explorer keeps crashing on startup, chances are very high that the database or other files are corrupted, in most cases due to an forced update performed by the App Store.
To fix this you'll need to start with a fresh database and resync your data from iCloud. Close the app and delete the data by following these steps:
~/Library/Containers/betamagic.News-Explorer
~/Library/Containers/com.betamagic.News-Explorer-setapp
Start the app after deleting the old database and restarting your device. The app will automatically start resyncing with iCloud to retrieve all your synced data. This may take some time. Do not try to interrupt this to prevent sync problems.
Attention: Please contact support@betamagic.nl if the app still crashes after following the steps above.
The latest version of News Explorer contains the following known issues:
Please send a message to the developer if you encounter other reproducible issues.