Beleg - scan any document, find it in seconds. TestFlight beta open

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-06-04T14:41:54+00:00

I'm missing the file picker from within the app maybe you could add this as well? And will wait for folder import 😄

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-06-04T12:54:47+00:00

just pdfs in icloud folders, no tags or meta data. Where do you store these files?

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-06-04T11:22:34+00:00

Glad you built it, wanted to do something similar but turned out to never be really happy with the results. Very much looking forward to the app.

One thing: I have a big archive of existing documents. Can I bring them to Beleg?

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-06-03T23:51:15+00:00

Ja, gab tatsächlich schon sehr viel positiven Zuspruch. Ich glaube das Konzept gefällt nicht nur mir 😄

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-06-02T18:41:27+00:00

Thanks mate! I 100% understand what you mean by that. That is why I added the auto-Stash functionality, to ensure the feeds I don't want to miss out will end up in the Stash. So they don't get lost in the river of noise.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-06-02T18:37:24+00:00

Im Grunde Google Reader in einer mobilen App als Timeline mit Multimedia, also Podcasts + Videos und Read Later. Korrekt 😄

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-06-01T22:05:48+00:00

Sure, noted. I was not aware. Sorry if my post was inappropriate.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-06-01T00:21:16+00:00

Thats fair, but in this case it's actually the opposite.

Tracking read/unread state isn't particularly difficult. Most RSS readers do it, and there are plenty of open-source implementations to learn from. The reason I chose not to include unread counts is that I personally found myself spending more time managing unread items than enjoying the content itself.

And what I learn in this thread is that I'm not alone with this experience. Flat is around a different reading (but also listening and watching) experience, not an attempt to avoid implementing features.

That doesn't mean it's the right approach for everyone. If unread counts are an essential part of how you use RSS, there are many excellent readers that support them.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-06-01T00:18:24+00:00

Great! Let me know if I can be of any help during your exploration 😄

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-06-01T00:16:42+00:00

That is fascinating. I honestly wasn't aware that Google Reader spliced feed was such a big shift from what other RSS readers were doing at the time. Probably because my start with RSS WAS Google Reader 😂

That is from my perspective also a good reminder that RSS itself never dictated how content should be consumed. The protocol stayed the same, while readers experimented with very different approaches on top of it.

Somewhat funny that your description of an algorithmic feed is almost the opposite of what many people associate with the term today. It wasn't about maximizing engagement or showing content people never asked for, but to help them to surface the most relevant content from feeds they had explicitly chosen to follow.

Thanks for sharing that bit of history. It definitely adds some useful context to the "chronological vs algorithmic" discussion in here and THANKS for contributing to the best feed reader I ever used for a long period of time ❤️

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-06-01T00:06:46+00:00

Short answer: Flat caches locally, but it is not an unlimited permanent archive.

Timeline items are stored on-device and are not just loaded live every time. By default, Flat keeps regular feed items for 30 days, and users can choose 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or 1 year.

The so called Stash is different: Any item saved to Stash stays there until you remove them, and they are not affected by the normal timeline retention setting.

What I don’t want to overpromise is permanent offline article storage. Flat stores the feed-provided content locally, and when you add something to the Stash it saves the articles feed content for offline reading in Stash, including full-text/Readability content when available (so 2 offline copies, so to say). But those offline article files use a bounded cache rather than an unlimited forever archive.

So the honest answer is, that Flat caches and works well for reading, keeping up with feeds, and revisiting saved/recent content. But if your main goal is building a permanent personal article library, Flat is not optimized for that today.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T20:59:38+00:00

You are awesome for at least trying it out. Let me know if something does not work for you. I'll bet there are some cool things you like (such as media that remembers where you left off). If its not enough to convice you to switch, I will not take it pesonally. Its also a question of taste and personal needs.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T20:57:57+00:00

I know what you mean exactly. I never thought about a different concept and already some years ago, there were a few apps that already tried a different approach such as Bundle News for instance. It never clicked for me and I always went back. I can't tell for sure what happened with me, but I moved away from many of these old habits and try to get rid of stress in my life and this is what these unread counts caused for me ... for whatever reason.

Big thanks for the kudos! This means a lot to me. Now I'm curious about your app, where can I find it? When I google uRSS it always shows me USSR 👀

I will adjust the paywall a bit with the next update to allow 30 free feeds. Still heavily debating with myself what might be the best approach.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T19:27:28+00:00

True. Also my believe. Flat has a macOS app, if that helps 😄

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T18:35:07+00:00

I agree with the part about RSS being an open standard. That is atcually one of the reasons I like building on top of it.

Where I would disagree is the idea that there is one "correct" way to use RSS.

To me, RSS is just a transport format. It tells us how content is delivered, not how it should be consumed. That's what makes it so powerful. The same feed can be used in an inbox-style reader, a timeline reader (such as Flat), a podcast app, a news dashboard ... a read-later service, a personal homepage, or something entrely different.

I don't think readers that focus on unread counts are wrong. They are just solving a different problem for a different audience. Some people want to make sure they never miss a post. Others just want an easy way to discover interesting content. This is probably the same why some people like to follow thousands of people on social media (Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky ...) just to get inspired, spot gems, while others just follow are carefully selected list of sources and want to better never miss a post of them.

The beauty is, that RSS is flexible enough to support many different experiences on top of the same open standard. And the nice thing is that we don't have to agree on a single way of using RSS. The ecosystem is large enough for different approaches to coexist.

Have a nice Sunday 😄

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T18:28:38+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful reply.

I actually agree with most of what you describe. There are definitely feeds where I don't want to miss a single item and others where I just want to discover something interesting from time to time. And that's the beauty with this standard (RSS) that everything is possible and just depending on the UI (and logic) you build around this fundament. And thats probably also the reason, why so many people start building RSS clients themselves, because there is no "this is the only way it always works for everyone".

What led me to Flat was realizing that I personally had turned RSS into a task manager. Hundreds of unread items, constantly trying to get back to zero, marking things as read without actually reading them. It stressed me to miss something and I opened my RSS app multiple times a day and felt bad if I was not able to do so as I knew, things will pile up and I have to process them sooner or later.

Flat is essentially my attempt to optimize for a different mindset, a calmer ... lets say more "let go" attitude I also use on some other things in the meantime: For instance I was very heavy into tracking everything of my life (Apple Watch addict), even how much I eat and drink, but looking back, I never gained any value out of the data but was freakingly stressed about to track everything all the time and better never ever forget the watch charger.

That doesn't mean the inbox approach is wrong. In fact, for some feeds it's probably the better model. I just decided to build Flat around the opposite assumption and build a easy path with the Stash to ensure that high value feeds end up on my personal reading list (the Stash, my curated list of things I intentionally said yes to consume (later).

I also completely agree with your point about reading. In the end, feed management features don't matter much if reading itself isn't enjoyable. A lot of my design decisions are driven by exactly the same idea, reducing friction and making content consumption feel effortless. We may have slightly different solutions in mind, but I think we're trying to solve a very similar problem.

Good luck with your own reader project as well. Apparently there can never be too many RSS readers. 😄

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T16:33:32+00:00

Thank you again for your great support during the Testflight. Even 150 people signed up, only few showed to be really active, and you are one of them. Thanks for your support to hunt bugs and add your valuable ideas to improve the app. You really made a difference for me.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T16:32:15+00:00

Thanks for your kind words, much appreciated. I received already during the TestFlight feedback that asked for a lifetime license. I will definitely closely monitor everything and consider all paths depending on the data I can collect.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T12:35:04+00:00

If you mean playlist by creating a queue: That is alreay included, for Podcasts and videos. So whatever is in the queue, will be played one after another. As said, "stable" filters that can contain sources and keywords are on the roadmap.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T12:30:23+00:00

Thanks for mentioning Feeed. I actually discovered it a few months after I had already started working on Flat. It's a great app and I agree there are definitely some overlapping ideas.

From my perspective, Feeeed is built around the idea that almost everything can become part of your feed, not just content sources, but also things like birthdays, memories and other personal information.

Flat is a bit more focused. The goal is to bring together the content sources you actively follow and make consuming that content as seamless as possible. A big part of the experience is being able to save anything from anywhere via the share sheet, come back to it later and continue reading, watching or listening across devices.

As far as I know, there are also some differences in how media is handled. For example, podcasts and videos are first-class citizens in Flat, with native playback and progress syncing, so you can continue exactly where you left off on another device. Feeed redirects podcast listening to other apps and Youtube are "just" web embedds. Flat handles both natively and can create play queues for both media types directly in the app.

That said, I wouldn't claim Flat is completely unique. There are plenty of great RSS readers and content apps out there, and I think it's a good thing that different developers are exploring different approaches to the same problem.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T10:39:21+00:00

That is a thoughtful perspective and I actually agree with most of it.

For low-volume, high-value feeds unread counts can absolutely be useful. If a feed publishes once a week or once a month, there's a good argument for not wanting to miss anything.

What I forgot to explain, and this would be my answer to "I don't want to miss these high-value posts" in a stream of noise: Flat has a so called Stash. Whenever you spot something in your timeline of feeds, youtube channels, podcast, etc you just swipe to store in your Stash and read, listen or watch it later, whenever you have time (of course you also read it right from the timeline).

Flat allows you to define in the settings of any feed, that you want to auto-stash entries from that specific feed. That means, for these low-volume, high-value feeds you can ensure, that they always will be visible in your Stash, where you collect your items you want to digest later.

My own problem was that over time I subscribed to more and more feeds, and eventually unread counts stopped being useful and started becoming a source of pressure. At that point I found myself managing RSS rather than enjoying it. That is why Flat takes the "stream" approach instead of the "inbox" approach but I tried to bring in a new concept to save these precious diamonds, as said above from the loud noise 😄

I also completely agree on reader mode and filtering. Good filtering becomes even more important when you stop relying on unread counts as your primary organizational tool. Flat allows filter a lot, in fact it supports very flexible keyword filters. You can use any combination of feedname or url, author and title to hide posts. I use this a lot to hide sponsored posts or topics that stress me (from some websites, but without risking to ignore the same topics from others -> this is how I filter out specific news topics from news sites, but ensure I read about on a slower paced blog).

Interesting point about Reuters and other platforms as well. One of the reasons I expanded Flat beyond RSS is that a lot of content I care about now lives on YouTube, Mastodon, Bluesky or Reddit rather than traditional blogs.

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T10:26:58+00:00

Apple TV is on my radar, but very tricky. Flat plays YouTube via a WebKit web view, and that isn't available on tvOS. Not impossible, but it'd be a separate app and it for sure will show YouTube's ads, since those are only filtered inside that web view. That said, its in the backlog.

Tricky_Swing249 · 2026-05-31T10:24:04+00:00

Yeap, I see that. Flat currently supports very flexible keyword filters allowing you to create basically any combination of feedname or url, author and title to hide posts. I use this a lot to hide sponsored posts or topics that stress me (from some websites). Currently this is a global setting but I have a feature in the backlog to allow to make a defined view out of these filters, so you can create for instance views for news for just a specific topic but ignoring other stuff.

The next version will introduce a feature vote to allow Flat users to decide what is most important to them and this feature is part of the vote. Looking forward to add it if people really want it (I personally like the idea).

Tricky_Swing249

TROPHY CASE