Way to refresh from navigation drawer

[dbr]

Say I've scrolled to the end of a list of articles, and have opened the navigation drawer to see it's empty. I want to manually refresh, mainly to update the sync-server.

In this case, I think I need to:

1. Close the navigation drawer
2. Scroll to top of content in main window (or switch to another folder, which is tricky in "Unread" mode)
3. Use the pull-to-refresh gesture

which is a bit inconvenient, especially if at the end of a long list of now-read articles.

Maybe a refresh button could be added either in the navigation drawer somewhere, maybe either beside the all/unread/starred switcher, or next to the settings button? 🤷

Thanks!

[issteve]

@jocmp And/or, helpful for me would be having the same swipe down - which refreshes / updates the feed in the feed view - updating all feeds in the navigation menu. Especially as it looks like in the latest version the swipe down in the feed only updates the feed displayed and not all the other feeds.

So I get to the navigation menu showing all the different feeds when I completely read one and would like to update all (even the read hidden) feeds by just swiping down. I think this would be pretty consistent and helpful for me.

Thank you very much for caring!

[PhilC813]

Have you tried the "pull down to refresh" gesture in the "All" or "Unread" folders? Since these aren't feed-specific, I believe it refreshes all feeds (at least, logically-speaking, it should). But I agree that it would make sense to have a refresh button in the feeds sidebar; to add a down gesture in the sidebar would be tricky since it's already a dynamic UI element that can moves left/right).

[issteve]

Have you tried the "pull down to refresh" gesture in the "All" or "Unread" folders? Since these aren't feed-specific, I believe it refreshes all feeds (at least, logically-speaking, it should).

Yes, I tried that and that's the point, it doesn't update all the feeds no matter if the navigation menu shows feeds with unread or favorite items or showing all the different feeds.

[PhilC813]

I like the idea! Maybe adding a confirmation dialog tho? Since it'll be easier to access than the pull-down gesture, and refreshes all feeds, something that servers from services like Feedbin may not like if done repeatedly.

[jocmp]

It's a good thought. Feedbin is an good outlier in terms of performance. They heavily rely on HTTP caching which Capy takes advantage of to avoid overfetching. Local feeds use the same mechanism if the site respects etags.

[jocmp]

Hey @dbr, thanks for the suggestions. Your screenshot looks like it's on an older version of the app. I recently reconfigured these buttons so that filters are easier to reach. This is available in the Google Play Store now, and soon in F-Droid if you use that source. Let me know if that changes any of your ideas after you update!

I'll think about a refresh button in the sidebar. There should still be enough room to allow for that.

[issteve]

Is my observation right, that in the new version a refresh gesture within one feed no longer refreshes the others? Is this on purpose? So how can I refresh now all feeds at once, especially the ones which are not displayed, because they are filtered out as read?

Maybe the refresh button could be right beside the filter-buttons in the new bottom bar with the filters?

Thank you so much for your great work!!!

[jocmp]

@issteve, yep, that's basically right. If you're in a folder, only that folder is refreshed. Same with a single feed.

If you're in a top-level category like "All" or "Unread," all feeds will be refreshed.

So I think to your last point, a refresh button in the sidebar would always refresh all content regardless of the current category.

[issteve]

Thank you very much for the clarification. This was very helpful. 🤗
I'm looking forward to the refresh button in the sidebar. 😊

[jocmp]

Tracking via #819

[jocmp]

I'm focusing on other bug fixes at the moment by I have a prototype working for this feature. The refresh button joins the other icon buttons in the top-right corner. Here's what it looks like:

Screen_recording_20250208_144350.webm

[issteve]

Thank you very much! I always prefer stability and bug fixes over new features. So thank you for following this priority, too. You are just amazing! 🤗

[jocmp]

This is available as of 2025.02.1106-dev.

[jocmp]

I think it's ok to establish that the end animation represents refresh success (this is how swipe-to-refresh also works). Toasts can be a little noisy if overused.

That said, I like the idea to improve the rotation animation. Here's a quick demo of that:

Before

Jumps back to initial state

before.mov

After

Settles until complete

after.mov

[PhilC813]

I think it's ok to establish that the end animation represents refresh success (this is how swipe-to-refresh also works). Toasts can be a little noisy if overused.

Good point!

Your "after" for the animation is A1! Exactly what I meant.

[PhilC813]

I saw the new animation in the latest dev version!

To come back to my point about verbose tho:
I turned on airplane mode to see how the app would react if launched with no ability to refresh, and there is nothing to indicate that the fetch of new articles failed. Same thing if you press the refresh button in the sidebar.

As always, just ideas, but I think the user should be informed if a background refresh fails like the one that occurs when the app is launched.

As for the refresh initiated from the sidebar button, since you prefer not to use toasts, the icon could be changed to a "!" or a "✓" for a few seconds depending on if it failed or succeeded. I'm pretty sure I've seen other apps doing this with their refresh button before.

[jocmp]

All good points. Let me explore toast-on-failure for this (code). Showing a toast isn't hard, but so far I've built a lot of error handling that doesn't propagate refresh errors beyond crash logs. So that part requires some rework.

[issteve]

I prefer not having a toast message, too. I personally don't miss any message for failing, but I see why someone would like to have some note about it. So I guess a "!" in the refresh circle if anything goes wrong would be a nice to have (and good to avoid toast messages which always block something for an annoying amount of time).