As convenient as the Internet is when large technology companies pursue endless growth, it can mean that they can inflate. Nowadays it feels like every company wants lure me into an algorithm trapConvince me to use yours AI servicesOr try to do me pay a bonus To search as before. One of my favorite tools to defend themselves against these trends is tapestry. It is a timeline app for iPhone and iPad, with which you can combine several feeds from blogs, YouTube, podcasts and social media and then display it in chronological order with a nice interface. Essentially, you can use it to create your own curated version of (almost) the entire Internet.
Tapestry was designed by the iconfactory, which also developed the excellent (but now no longer differentiating) Twitter client Twitteriffic.
What is a Timeline app?
Timeline apps are a new app genre that enable them to Take control of Big Tech’s algorithms And decide what you want to see and when you want to see it. With these apps you can create your own personalized schedule with posts from several websites. You can use these apps to follow a blog that you like, a YouTuber that you enjoy, and even a Subreddit or Social -Media -Feed that you would be happy to see. It is like the use of an RSS reader, but with the support of the content of many other types of sources.
Make the best of tapestry on your iPhone
By installing tapestries, it starts with a very useful registration flow. In this way, a list of various recommended feeds is displayed, which you can add to your timeline with just one tap so that you can fill the app during data record. If you have a great adaptation, you can also skip the recommendations and add your feeds to the app manually by going to the app Settings Tab and tap on the Add feed Button. Then you can simply insert the URL of the website, the YouTube channel, the podcast or the mastodon/bluesky account you want to follow, and Tapestry is looking for the feed and add your timeline. There is a little more than that in the back, but Tapestry’s feed finding function is pretty good at finding and loading feeds from a simple URL. As soon as your feeds are added, you can display them all in a decent, chronological timeline.
The free level of the app is quite generous. You can add several feeds and all follow them on an infinite scroll time bar. If you like a contribution, tap the Flag symbol under the contribution to mark it (also known as bookmarks) or use the release button to send it to your friends or social media accounts.
Without a subscription, Tapestry shows you ads in your timeline. However, these are some of the least intrusive ads that I came across. They follow the design language of the app, and most of the ads I saw asked me either add a feed to the tapiss series or install another app. The app is beautifully designed and reminds me very much of the best of Twitteriffic. A uniform timeline can easily become very chaotic, very fast, but Tapestry processes this well by displaying color-coding articles from different sources and prominently a logo for every feed. It also recorded the logos of two newsletters that I loaded, which is a very nice gesture. You can adapt this experience to go to the “Appearance settings) within the app, where you can change the font and the length of the postal preview. In this way you can make your timeline look neat, and you can make it even better, By typing the three-line symbol in the lower left corner of the timeline. through newsletter.
Credit: Pranay Parab
Each contribution in your timeline is cut off by default, and even the extended view shows at most some paragraphs. However, you can on the tap on the Read more Button on each post to completely read it in a new page. This view is free of advertisements and disorder, loads quickly and the background retains the color scheme assigned on your timeline. Tapestry also has two types of filters with which you can clean up your feeds – muffles and mute switch. Steam collapses collapse with certain keywords and are useful if you want to avoid spoilers from a new film or TV show. Mutes hide contributions that contain certain keywords – as an example of blocking politics, sports or other topics from your feed.
The biggest restriction of the free level of Tapestry is that you can only add one time bar. You have access to certain timeline filters, with which you can only display contributions from today or contributions from a single feed at the same time. However, if you want to create more than one timeline, you have to upgrade to the paid level that costs $ 2 per month or $ 20 per year. There is also a one-time option for lifespan for $ 80 if you want to avoid subscriptions.
After the upgrade, you will no longer see any displays and can create as many schedules as you want. I used this to separate social media feeds, newsletters and other types of feeds, but the good news is that you can create a timeline for your needs.
Some people would prefer to combine contributions Bluesky And mastodon You can do that in a chronological feed and tapestry. One of my greatest symptoms about Bluesky is that she does not save her reading position, which means that it updates to the tip of the feed after opening the app. I like it when apps remember where I stopped reading and then allow myself to be able to scroll to find all the posts after the last one that I have read. Tapestry shows you a beautiful counter in the upper right corner, in which it is indicated, how many posts are above what you read, and it remembers where I was during the break during the break during the break. This is ideal for timeline manufacturing persons like me, and I used tapiss series to read mine Bluesky feed in chronological orderAnd to follow a few accounts of bluesky.
Credit: Pranay Parab
Note that you cannot use tapisserie to publish something on social media, to like contributions, to interact directly with you. You can tap a button to open the post on the website on which it is hosted and interact with it. Nevertheless, Tapestry is ideal for creating a timeline, reading, watching videos or hearing podcasts. With this app you can listen to entire podcast episodes without leaving them if you want, and you also invite youtube videos in the company’s own player. It is a fairly seamless experience if you want to follow some of your favorite creators. You will enjoy the most tapestry when you are careful with the feeds you add. If you add a high-volume news feed, it could drown out low-frequency feeds. However, if you find the right balance, this can become your own cozy corner of the web.
The ICONFACTORY has delivered a very polished app when you consider that it is only version 1.0 at this point. I am happy to see where carpet is going and hope that he will also go to the desktop at some point. At the moment there are not too many timeline apps that do the job, does the tapestry. The best alternative I came across is ShipownerAnother beautifully designed Timeline app with a similar functional set and a price model. Ideally, try both apps and decide which one is best suited for you, and I suspect that the decision is due to which design language you like more. Tapestry’s bright and colorful design appeals to me, while other Reeders prefer more subtle tones and animations.
