2.24.9
2024-03-08
* Fixed bug and potential crash issue when opening the Voice Library Configuration view from the Settings view when in the News view.
2.24.8
2024-03-05
The Speak News news feed and web page text and text-to-speech reader app for iPhone and iPad gets improvements and bug fixes.
* Refined some user interface style elements and fixed a few minor style glitches.
* Fixed crash when opening the Siri Shortcuts view.
2.24.4
2023-11-19
Speak News gets a bug fix:
* The Done button now correctly appears in the New Bookmark and Edit Bookmark popover views on iPad.
2.24.3
2023-08-30
* Fixed a bug in loading the bookmark collection from iCloud.
2.24.2
2023-08-13
Speak News gets a couple improvements:
* A vibrant new icon design that works better for dark mode on the iPhone and iPad, for those late night readers out there!
* Minor text-to-speech pronunciation improvements for common news phrases.
2.24.1
2023-08-01
Speak News gets some nice interface improvements.
* Several action views are now displayed as popovers instead of sheets: Update Feeds, Add New Bookmark, Go to Section, Move Selected Bookmarks, Choose Section, Settings, and Speak News App Info, particularly in landscape orientation on the iPhone or iPod touch.
* The popovers improve the experience by helping keep the context of the underlying view visible, including in landscape orientation.
* Improved background color consistency for popover views.
* Improved interface colors for the Edit Bookmark view in the app-based dark appearance.
* Fixed glitches with Done buttons.
2.23.1
2023-05-11
* Minor text-to-speech pronunciation improvements.
2.23.0
2023-01-03
Speak News gets a useful new feature and a bug fix:
* New option in Speak News app Settings view: "Maximum items per feed".
This determines how many items to save in the app's cache for each RSS feed. Previously, this was a fixed internal value of 80. Small numbers (30 items for example) will allow the app to operate faster, while larger numbers (80+) provide more news items in the app's cache for later viewing offline, also helpful if one wishes to keep track of older stories. The number of items in the cache can be larger than the number of items provided in a given reload of a feed, hence giving one access to older stories no longer in the active feed.
* Bug fix to improve the behavior of the "Hide toolbars when speaking" option in Settings.
2.20.1
2022-07-11
Speak News gets improvements and bug fixes:
* All new design for the Edit Bookmark view, easier to use and understand.
* Improved the presentation of the Edit Bookmark view for iPad.
* Minor bug fixes.
2.19.7
2022-06-04
* Improved news feed and article page parsing and formatting, removing extraneous non-story items.
2.19.6
2022-05-17
Speak News gets improvements and bug fixes:
* Improved news article page parsing, cleaning up extraneous text items.
* Corrected some pronunciations in news text.
2.19.5
2022-02-08
Speak News gets improvements and a couple bug fixes:
* Improved news article page parsing.
* Fixed a bug for opening a "custom URL" into Speak News when the app was already running in the background.
Note: One way to add a bookmark to Speak News for an RSS feed or a web page is to use a custom URL. A custom URL for Speak News is just like a URL except the "https" at the beginning is replaced with "speaknews". For example: speaknews://www.imaja.com/speaknews/features.xml . If a "speaknews:" link is located in a text file, message or email, and the Speak News app is installed on that device, the link will be clickable and will open into Speak News and add that URL as a bookmark.
* Fixed a bug in the Speak button for items in the Speak News Today Widget.
We appreciate your feedback; it helps us evolve these apps together to a better world for everyone! Please recommend or gift Speak News to your friends or colleagues. We have a lot of ideas and tasks to work on for Speak News and our other apps and appreciate your support and ideas!
Email us comments, suggestions, issues... Email: support@imaja.com
2.19.4
2022-01-08
* Improved news article page parsing.
2.18.2
2021-10-16
Speak News gets a new "Clean up cache" action, freeing up storage space on your device by removing obsolete news feed cache files.
* To do the "Clean up cache" action, open the Speak News App Info view by tapping the question mark (?) button in the Bookmarks view.
* Choose "Clean up cache". A bell tone will sound when the cache cleanup is completed. It takes a while, and only runs in the background while Speak News is the active app.
* The "Clean up cache" action takes place in the background without taking up too much processing power. For example, on a device with about 2000 bookmarks in Speak News, the Clean up cache action could take about 10 minutes, depending on the state of the cache. Check the Speak News App Info view to see the cache size get reduced over time.
2.18.1
2021-09-30
* Improvements and a bug fix for Home screen quick actions behavior.
2.17.3
2020-10-19
Speak News gets numerous text-to-speech improvements for phrasing and acronyms, and a few bug fixes.
2.17.2
2020-08-11
* Minor text-to-speech improvements and bug fixes.
2.17.1
2020-07-27
Speak News gets text-to-speech improvements:
* Minor improvements for text-to-speech, improved pronunciation of units, measurements, and abbreviations.
* Text-to-speech now pronounces geographic coordinates such as 51°28′38″N.
For details on new enhanced support for Siri Shortcuts and other new features, see the info for Speak News 2.17.0.
2.17.0
2020-06-21
Speak News gets new enhanced support for Siri Shortcuts and other new features!
The following activities in Speak News are now available as Siri Shortcuts, so they can be triggered with your voice.
Speak News Siri Shortcuts:
* Control text-to-speech
- Start Speak News
- Pause Speak News
- Resume Speak News
- Stop Speak News
- Speak section
- Speak bookmark
- Speak current view
* Changing the view
- Show headlines view
- Show short view
- Show medium view
- Show full view
* Navigate the bookmarks and stories
- Smooth scroll Speak News
- Go to next bookmark
- Go to previous bookmark
- Go to next story
- Go to previous story
* Updating/adding bookmarks, and Settings
- Update while reading
- Fast background update
- Add from Feed Library
- Add bookmark manually
- Show Settings
After performing one of these activities in Speak News, the activity will appear in Settings > Siri & Search > Speak News > Shortcuts and in the Shortcuts app for use in creating one’s custom shortcuts. A custom speech phrase may be recorded to trigger the Shortcut.
Tutorial with screenshots: How to use Siri Shortcuts for Speak News for iPhone and iPad
* https://imaja.com/speaknews/How-to-use-Siri-Shortcuts-for-Speak-News.html
New actions in the menu for a given text selection have been added. Select the desired text in the News view and choose one of the following actions from the popup menu. For example, if the selected text is "BluesMan", the action will create a new bookmark with the chosen action:
* Wikipedia — the Wikipedia page for BluesMan
* Google news — a Google news topic search for BluesMan
* Twitter — a Twitter search for BluesMan
* Tweets — tweets from @BluesMan.
Also the "Bookmark search" action in the menu will open the Bookmarks view and start a search for BluesMan.
* We've updated the news feed update process to handle changes in some of the source protocols. This is a background update and does not change the features or user interface.
* Speak News also gets some minor text-to-speech bug fixes and improvements.
2.16.2
2020-04-12
Speak News gets a bug fix:
* Bookmark deletion is now working properly. When "Use iCloud for Settings" is turned on in Settings, Speak News bookmark deletions and additions on one device will automatically be reflected in Speak News on one's other devices connected to the same iCloud account. It takes several seconds for an update on one device to be transferred through iCloud to other devices.
2.16.1
2020-04-01
Speak News gets some bug fixes and improvements:
* The "story contains (phrase)" query type of bookmark is now working properly again.
* Bookmark item counts and data sizes are now properly restored when the app is relaunched.
* Minor text-to-speech improvements.
2.16.0
2020-03-26
Speak News gets a cool new story caching feature, text-to-speech improvements, and a bug fix.
* RSS and Atom news feed items and tweets will now accumulate in the bookmark. For example, even if a news feed only delivers 20 items in an update, the bookmark will add any new items to existing items from previous updates, saving up to eighty (80) items on the device for offline reading!
* The "Speak items only once" option in Settings is working better now with a bug fix. The app now properlly restores the 'spoken' status of the items upon updating a feed/bookmark. The 'spoken' status of an item is indicated by an empty circle (not spoken) or a full circle (spoken) after the item title when the "Speak items only once" option is turned on.
* Improved text-to-speech.
2.15.3
2020-02-29
Speak News gets bug fixes:
* Fixed glitches in order of speaking news items for the two-finger tap action and when changing the View Mode while speaking news items.
* To start speaking a specific news item in a News view, tap with two-fingers on the item.
2.15.2
2020-02-27
Speak News gets a bug fix and mini-tutorial on query bookmarks:
* Fixed problems with the 'all stories in section' and 'all stories' query-type bookmarks.
How to use Speak News query bookmarks:
* Use the phrase 'all stories in section' or 'all stories' as the title of a bookmark to create a Speak News query bookmark.
* When other bookmarks in the collection or in a given section are updated from the Internet news feed, the stories from the newly updated bookmark will be added to the appropriate query bookmarks. Older stories are purged from a query bookmark to make room for newer stories.
* To change the maximum number of stories that can be saved in a query bookmark, open the Settings view (the gear icon button) and change the 'Maximum items in queries' in the Miscellaneous section.
2.15.1
2020-02-15
Minor improvements to Speak News:
* Fixed a bug where some news feeds were not sorted in newest first order.
* Minor text-to-speech improvement for abbreviations.
2.15.0
2020-02-10
Speak News gets improved bookmark collection management:
* A new Move Bookmarks To Section action has been added (the folder icon button in the Bookmarks view toolbar).
* To enter the Move Bookmarks mode, tap the folder icon button in the Bookmarks view. The Bookmarks view displays empty circles beside each bookmark, and the toolbar displays a Move Bookmarks To Section button (folder icon).
* To select bookmarks to be moved, tap the desired bookmarks and the empty circles will change to blue checkmark icons.
* Then tap the Move Bookmarks To Section button (folder icon). The Move Bookmarks action will display the Move Selected Bookmarks To Section view for choosing the destination section (folder).
* To simply exit the Edit mode without moving bookmarks, tap Done.
* The new Move Bookmarks To Section action makes it much easier to manage large bookmark collections organized in sections.
2.14.2
2020-01-21
Speak News gets improvements, optimization, and bug fixes:
* Improved bookmark collection syncing for iCloud and fixed a bug where bookmark collection order could possibly get jumbled.
* Optimized app startup for faster access, particularly for a large bookmark collection.
* Corrected the title text color for various views in dark mode.
2.14.1
2020-01-15
* Fixed bugs in the display of items in the Speak News Today widget.
2.14.0
2020-01-11
Speak News now supports iCloud for bookmark syncing! New features:
* iCloud supports the syncing of one's Speak News bookmark collection to other iOS devices: iPad, iPhone or iPad touch.
* New option in the Speak News Settings view: Use iCloud for Settings. To allow Speak News to use iCloud, turn this option on.
* Upon app startup, the Speak News Settings will be restored from the local copy of Settings and then merged with the iCloud copy of Settings.
* Upon app exit, the Settings will be stored both locally on the device and to iCloud if the device is connected to the Internet and one's iCloud account is logged in.
* Use the iOS Settings app to configure iCloud.
* Additional minor text-to-speech improvements.
2.13.3
2019-12-18
* Corrected text color in the Speak News Today widget in Dark appearance on iOS 13.
2.13.2
2019-11-23
Speak News gets a new feature, improvement and bug fix:
* Added a Play button (triangle icon) to items displayed in the Speak News Today widget. Tap the play button in the Today widget to listen to the item via text-to-speech in the app.
* Improved handling of Custom URLs of the form speaknews://...
* Fixed bugs with the View Story and Speak Story activities in the Share view for when one taps a story headline in the News view.
2.13.1
2019-11-14
Improvements to Speak News: iOS 13 and Dark Mode support, and bug fixes:
* To get the benefits of Dark Mode support in iOS 13, choose the white background Display Style in the Speak News Settings view (the gear icon button in the toolbar). On iOS 13, the "white background" style will automatically follow the light or dark appearance of the system.
* In iOS versions before iOS 13, the app appearance can be customized with in-app 'dark mode' by changing the Display Style in the Settings view..
* Swiping left or right on a News view will go to the next or previous bookmark. If the News view was speaking, it will finish speaking the current item before continuing speech in the new bookmark in the News view.
2.13.0
2019-09-06
Speak News gets new features and bug fixes:
New support for Siri Shortcuts!
The following activities in Speak News are now avaible as Siri Shortcuts, so they can be triggered with your voice!
* Speak section (section name)
* Speak bookmark (bookmark name)
* Update while reading
* Fast background update
* Add from feed library
* Add bookmark manually (or from clipboard)
After performing one of these activities in Speak News, the activity will appear in the Shortcuts app for use in creating one’s custom shortcuts.
Tutorial with screenshots: How to use Siri Shortcuts for Speak News for iPhone and iPad
* https://imaja.com/speaknews/How-to-use-Siri-Shortcuts-for-Speak-News.html
Bug fixes:
* This update corrects a bug in handling a RSS feed or web page loading error.
* Fixed bug in behavior of the Next button in the News view. Tap the Next button once to start speaking the next story in the News view. Double-tap the Next button to skip to the next bookmark and start speaking.
* The Share button activity behavior has been changed. The AirDrop option was not working for sending formatted text, so the share action for a News view now shares a plain-text version of the view.
* To support Siri Shortcuts, this version is built to support iOS 10 or later. Stay tuned for future versions that will be specifically built for compatibility with older versions such as iOS 8 or later.
2.12.9
2019-06-25
New feature and bug fixes for Speak News:
* New feature: The "Go to section" view now has a "play" button (with the triangle icon) for each section to start text-to-speech with the first bookmark in the section.
* Fixed a bug in changes to the Section of a given bookmark in the Edit Bookmark view.
* Fixed an incorrect punctuation.
* Fixed bug in title of bookmark when there is a loading error.
* Added screenshots to App Store for iPad Pro 12.9-inch 3rd generation and iPad Pro 11-inch and updated other screenshots.
2.12.8
2019-04-05
Improvements to Speak News:
* Improved speech pacing for news article title, author and date.
2.12.7
2019-03-22
Improvements and bug fixes to Speak News:
* Improved speech pronunciation for more abbreviations and topical phrases.
* Bug fix: Improved special character support for Google news bookmarks.
* Bug fix: Speech stopping bug that occuring in certain conditions is fixed.
2.12.6
2019-03-18
Improvements to Speak News:
* Improved the Save Page action: the bookmark title is updated with the HTML page title.
* The "Go to section" view will auto-scroll to the top only if it has not been opened in the last minute. This helps keep one's context when switching between sections when one has a lot of sections in the bookmarks collection.
* Improved speech for added news topic acronyms and other abbreviations.
* Bug fixes.
2.12.5
2019-01-25
Interface improvement and bug fix for Speak News:
* Interface improvement to the Settings view headers; now the first header pins to the top of the view when scrolling.
* Fixed the way the Share button works for HTML web pages and Wikipedia pages: only the title and the URL of the article will be shared.
2.12.4
2018-12-11
Speak News Improvements
* Further improvements for saving news story web pages.
* HTML web pages now display the base web site URL link in the caption below the article title.
* Wikipedia page and HTML web page titles now link to the source pages. To open the source web page, tap the title link and choose Open in Safari.
2.12.3
2018-12-09
Speak News Improves Saving of News Story Pages
Saving and reading news story web pages gets more streamlined in this update to Speak News:
* Improvements to the Save Page action to remove more extraneous non-news phrases and HTML code from story text.
* The Save Page action lets one archive the text of web pages of news stories from the News view story links.
* To use the Save Page action, tap a story headline in the News view for an RSS feed and choose Save Page in the activities view.
* These pages are saved (cached) in the bookmarks listing and can be read later while offline.
* The saved web page bookmarks can be organized into sections, for instance an "Articles" section.
* Use the Edit button in the Bookmarks view to edit the order of bookmarks, or tap the circle i icon button for a bookmark and choose a new section in the Edit Bookmark view.
We appreciate your feedback; it helps us evolve these apps together to a better world for everyone! Please recommend or gift Speak News to your friends or colleagues. We have a lot of ideas and tasks to work on for Speak News and our other apps and appreciate your support and ideas!
Email us comments, suggestions, issues... Email: support@imaja.com
2.12.2
2018-12-05
Bug fix:
* Sequential bookmark updating now properly continues after switching from the News view to the Bookmarks view.
See the Version 2.12 release notes for recent significant feature additions.
2.12.1
2018-12-04
Improvement and bug fixes:
* New Speak News Today widget improvement: For single article bookmarks such as Wikipedia pages or HTML web pages, the number of visible lines of the article is increased so the reader can read more of the article right there in the Today widget. Tapping the article will open to that bookmark in Speak News.
* When returning to the Bookmarks view from the News view, the bookmark listing will scroll to the current bookmark (with the blue diamond indicator) if it is not visible.
* Fixes issues in the creation of new bookmarks from the RSS Feed Library or Speak News custom URLs. RSS news sources from the RSS Feed Library can be easily added to one's Speak News bookmarks collection.
* Fixes gray text issue in the Share activity when sharing to Mail or another app that supports color-formatted text.
* Fixes bug in display of the Share activities view on iPad.
See the Version 2.12 release notes for recent significant feature additions.
2.12
2018-11-29
New features in Speak News: Save Page activity, support for diacritical characters in bookmark creation, and new custom URL functionality, bug fixes:
* Save Page: To save a story's web page text as a bookmark in Speak News, tap the story headline in the News view. The Activity view appears. Tap the Save Page icon button in the bottom row and a new bookmark will be created and loaded with the full text of the HTML web page. This is different from View Story or Speak Story which use the story excerpt (or full story) as contained in the RSS/Atom feed for the bookmark. Use this to read the full story right away, or to archive stories on the device for offline reading when not connected to the Internet.
* New support for special diacritical characters in natural language setup of bookmarks. When using special characters in bookmark titles such as "People's Park Gardens Twitter search", the special characters are encoded in the URL. This is handled for Google News, Twitter Search, and Wikipedia page names. This automatic encoding expands on Speak News capabilities.
* New custom URL support for basic search of the existing bookmark collection titles, and natural language phrase bookmark creation. Examples:
* This type of URL will open the bookmark found if the bookmark's title contains the specified phrase, such as "New York Times":
speaknews://New+York+Times
* To create a new bookmark for the Wikipedia page for "Resumé", use this URL format:
speaknews://Resumé+Wikipedia
* To create a new bookmark for a Twitter search for "Resumé service", use this URL format:
speaknews://Resumé+service+Twitter+search
* To create a new bookmark for a Google News search for "Speech Technology", use this URL format:
speaknews://Speech+Technology+Google+news
* In the creation of Speak News custom URLs, use + to replace the space characters.
* Fixed scroll glitch in the "Go to section" view.
We appreciate your feedback; it helps us evolve these apps together to a better world for everyone! Please recommend or gift Speak News to your friends or colleagues. We have a lot of ideas and tasks to work on for Speak News and our other apps and appreciate your support and ideas!
Email us comments, suggestions, issues... Email: support@imaja.com
2.11
2018-11-04
New keyboard shortcuts, screen shots, and bug fixes:
* Add New Bookmark: Command N
* Add Bookmark From Library: Shift Command N
* New screenshots on the App Store, including the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR.
* The items in the Voice Library Configuration view can now be rearranged with the Edit button. This will effect the order of voices used for stories.
* Fixed bug in Voice Library Configuration view.
* Fixed a bug for swipe deletion of bookmarks in the Bookmarks view.
2.10.4
2018-10-01
Bug fix: Improved behavior of bookmarks view when switching in and out of Edit mode with the Edit button.
2.10.3
2018-09-21
Bug fix: Fixed crash bug in confirming changes to a bookmark section in the Edit Bookmark view.
We have a big task list with lots of great ideas for future updates to Speak News. Help us get the time and resources to make this happen. Tell your colleages and friends about Speak News, available on the App Store on iPhone and iPad. Thanks for your support!
2.10.2
2018-09-13
Numerous improvements for stability and a bug fix.
* This update improves app stability based on crash reports submitted by our helpful users!
* Bug fix: The speech volume, pitch and rate controls in Settings are now properly working again. They were inadvertantly disconnected in a recent update.
* Note: The "Mix with other audio" option in Settings lets Speak News play text-to-speech while music or other app audio is playing. In combination with that, the "Speech volume" settings lets one adjust the balance between the text-to-speech and the other audio. This is really interesting for people who like to multitask.
We appreciate your feedback; it helps us evolve these apps together to a better world for everyone! Please recommend or gift Speak News to your friends or colleagues. We have a lot of ideas and tasks to work on for Speak News and our other apps and appreciate your support and ideas!
Email us comments, suggestions, issues... Email: support@imaja.com
2.10.1
2018-09-06
* Fixed bugs in drag reordering handling for Edit mode in the Bookmarks view.
* When using Edit mode in the Bookmarks view, all bookmark sections will be expanded.
* Rearranging Bookmarks: To move a bookmark from one section to another without using drag and drop in Edit mode, tap the ( i ) button to open the Edit Bookmark view and tap the section button to select a new section. The bookmark will be moved to the beginning of the chosen section. To move a bookmark within a section, tap the Edit button in the Bookmarks view and use drag and drop to reposition the bookmark.
2.10
2018-08-22
New feature and bug fix:
* Sections in the Bookmarks view can now be collapsed to just the section header. This is useful for hiding lesser used sections of bookmarks and makes Bookmark view browsing better.
* A triangle pointing down in the Section header means the section is open, and a triangle pointing right means the section is closed.
* Bookmarks in a closed section will continue to be updated during the various Update activities such as Update While Reading, Fast Background Update and Old Background Update.
* The Go to Section view also displays the triangle indicating the section is open or closed.
* Bug fix: Corrected the calculation of the number of items in each section in the Go To Section view.
2.9.11
2018-08-08
Bug fixes:
* Corrected position of View Mode popover bar for iPhone X.
* Improved button spacing behavior for different device orientations and versions of iOS from iOS 8.4 to iOS 11.x. The Speak News app dynamically configures buttons for the toolbar for easier access to functions in the app.
* Fixed potential crash bug for iOS 8.x users.
2.9.10
2018-07-22
Faster app startup time for Speak News, and other improvements:
* Optimized startup time for Speak News; now significantly faster.
* Corrected keyboard appearance style for Edit Bookmark view and Bookmarks search bar.
* Updated text-to-speech processing to improve app stability.
2.9.9
2018-07-18
* Minor bug fixes in app behavior. The Go To Section command now clears and closes the Search bar if it was in use.
2.9.8
2018-07-11
* Bug fix to improve speaking of abbreviations.
We appreciate your feedback; it helps us evolve the Speak News app together to a better world for everyone!
* Email us comments, suggestions, issues... Email: support@imaja.com
2.9.7
2018-06-18
* Bug fixes for improved stability. We appreciate your feedback; it helps us evolve the Speak News app together to a better world for everyone!
* Email us comments, suggestions, issues... Email: support@imaja.com
2.9.6
2018-06-16
Speak News gets some improvements and bug fixes!
* The Edit Bookmark view is now in the current display style, looking much better in the dark modes.
* Improved popover and view display behavior with better compatibility with versions iOS 9 through iOS 11 and different devices.
* Bug fixes.
We love to hear from users. Email us comments, suggestions, issues... Email: support@imaja.com
2.9.5
2018-05-30
Bug fixes:
* Fixed a sometimes-occuring glitch for a two-finger tap on a news story to start text-to-speech.
* Fixed a sometimes-occuring glitch for starting text-to-speech on query bookmark news views.
2.9.4
2018-05-29
* Improvements for app stability and performance
2.9.3
2018-05-27
Speak News improves news query results in phrase search bookmarks ("story contains phrase") and bookmark section queries ("all stories in section") and ("all stories").
* Improved parsing of dates for news feed articles.
* Improved sorting of query bookmark stories.
* Improvements to text-to-speech for abbreviations often used in news stories.
* Improvements to app stability, performance, and popver view layout.
We love to hear from users. Send us comments, feedback, suggestions, issues... E-mail: support@imaja.com
2.9.2
2018-05-21
* Improved text-to-speech for various abbreviations.
* Improvements to app stability and performance, and corrections of graphic glitches.
2.9.1
2018-05-17
Bug fix: "all stories in section" query bookmarks are now properly activated when launching the app.