Managing read status & article states

Newsbin keeps your reading tidy by tracking the state of every article, and letting you choose how much to show. Once you know the states, filters, badges, and smart groups all behave predictably.

The states an article can be in

• Unread. A new article that’s just arrived and you haven’t read yet. Unread articles show a dot and are what your unread badges count.
• Read. An article you’ve read but haven’t archived. It still shows up in the unread filter, so you can tab back up to it. That’s handy when you’ve just read something and want to keep it in view for a moment.
• Archived. A finished article. Archived items only appear when the unread filter is off, so they drop out of your day-to-day flow without being deleted.
• Saved. An article you’ve bookmarked to keep. Saving is independent of the others: a saved article isn’t deleted or archived, and it stays available (with its full text) until you unsave it.
• Deleted. An article you’ve removed. It disappears from your lists and only shows up in the Trash.

These states are part of the small set of things Newsbin syncs across your devices, so an article you read, archive, save, or delete on one device is in the same state on the others. (See iCloud sync.) When two devices briefly disagree, Newsbin resolves it predictably: a read or archived state wins over unread, and a save always sticks.

Read, then archived

The progression from unread to read to archived is what keeps a busy timeline manageable.

Opening an article marks it read. It stays in your unread view so you can glance back at what you just went through. Archiving then moves a finished article out of the unread view entirely. It’s still there; turn off the unread filter to see everything you’ve archived. You can also mark items back to unread at any time to resurface them.

Show unread only, or everything

Newsbin can display unread only (the default, for a clean, inbox-style flow) or all articles. The difference comes down to the states above. In unread only, you see unread and recently read articles, but not archived ones. Switch to all and everything appears, including your archived articles.

This choice also affects smart groups and folders: in unread-only mode they show only their unread and read matches; switch to all and you’ll see everything that matches, archived included.

Tips

Use unread only for daily triage, then switch to all when you’re hunting for something you know you already archived. Save the handful of articles you actually want to keep, since that state is independent of read, archived, and deleted, so they won’t get lost. And pair the filter with smart groups to carve a busy timeline into focused, subject-based views, plus blocklists to keep topics you’re tired of out entirely.