October’s updates newsletter

Updates on Android self hosting, pdf improvements, new fonts on the web and more

Greetings fellow Omnivores,

Welcome to our first Autumn newsletter with app updates, community news and Halloween puns. If you stumbled upon this page and are confused, Omnivore is a free and open-source read-it-later service. You can sign up for a free account at https://github.com/omnivore-app.

Updates

Like all great blog posts, we will start this post with apologies for not blogging more frequently. Next year, when we send the second edition of our monthly updates newsletter, we will do the same.

We do have some excuses though.

Over the last few months, Omnivore has improved significantly. We've added support for RSS/Atom feeds, added coloured highlights, introduced Saved Searches, fixed countless bugs, and introduced even more.

The Omnivore community has also grown and there have been some very cool contributions to the code base, the ecosystem, and our future plans.

Let’s start with the improvements made last month:

Browser Extension Improvements

Remember that long dramatic video GitHub put out when they finally implemented dark mode? They were mocking themselves for this one taking so long. If we had a marketing budget we’d make a video like that for this extension improvement.

You can now create labels while saving using our updated extension. This has been one of our most requested features and is now available on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Edge coming soon. Just type the label name, and hit Enter.

We also added caching to notes. If you are writing a long note and accidentally close the window, saving again on that page should populate the note area with the previously written note.

Saved Searches

When we started Omnivore we always imagined a flexible (but very complicated) search system that powers everything under the hood. To make those complicated searches easier to use we introduced Saved Searches. With Saved Searches, you can quickly find anything you want in your library.

You can create new ones, reorder them, and hide them from your list using the Edit Saved Searches button at the bottom of the page.

What’s very cool about this, is its one of those important features we always wanted to build, but never got around to. And then one day, thanks to the miracle of Open Source, someone else built it for us.

Obsidian Plugin Colors

We recently added multiple highlight colors on the web.

Those colors can be synced into Obsidian as well. Check out this beautiful demo from a community member using colored highlights.

If you want to create a view like this in Obsidian join our Discord or look forward to a future tutorial here.

Omnivore Community List Popup Extension

If you ever used the “My Pocket” extension you will love the Omnivore List Popup Extension. This is a community-built extension that gives you quick access to items in your Omnivore library.

After the add-on is added to your browser, you’ll need to add an API key, so it can be connected to your account. You can use it in Firefox and Chrome.

Mac app updates  

The Mac desktop app has a few improvements. The list view is updated, self-hosting options are added, and the login is improved. You can log in with Apple, Google or email.

More Text-to-Speech voices

On iOS we can have access to the Ultra Realistic Voices. You can test them all to see which you like.

PDF updates

• In the PDF viewer, there is a new thumbnail sidebar you can use to quickly scan documents. You can switch between Thumbnails, Outline, and Bookmarks.

• The toolbar in the PDF viewer can also be hidden now in the display settings, via a radio button.

Account Management Improvements

On the web you can now change your name, username, email address and switch from social login to email based login if you’d like. You can also delete your account, but we know you don’t want to do that.

Android updates

The Android app has been updated to support self-hosted backends, we’ve also started pushing release builds to GitHub for user’s that are not using the Play store.

A new font on the web

A new font is available for the web: IBM Plex Sans. It is a neutral yet friendly Grotesque style typeface that balances design with the engineered details of the Plex family. It was created by the IBM Brand & Experience Team. Shout-out to community member Riiku for suggesting it!

What’s Next

Improved Self-Hosting- We just merged a patch to remove our elastic search dependency. This will make self-hosting and local development much easier.

A new right menu bar on the web - more web functionality will be moved into a split pane view on the right hand side, allowing for things like chapters, and margin notes.

??? - Join our Discord and suggest our next big feature in the #feature-requests channel.

Reading Recommendations from our Community

Interested in Scottish folklore? Or about the Orkney Islands? This article is just the thing.

A history of trick-or-treating and how it became a Halloween tradition. If you want a deep dive into the lore of Halloween, Victorian ghosts and vampires, check out the JSTOR editor’s picks.

For more, join our #recommendations channel on Discord.

Good to know

You can read our blog directly in Omnivore with the RSS option or by signing up using your newsletter address.

RSS feed: https://blog.omnivore.app/feed

The Puns

OK maybe we over promised when we said there would be Halloween puns. This is the best we could do: Happy Halloween from your favorite boo-kmarking app.

Enjoy your reading with Omnivore.

You can join us in Discord to be the first to find out about improvements.

pps. We rely on the community to spread the word on Omnivore, if you know someone that loves to read, please share us with them.