Delete old feeds?

App
1

Hi, is there a way to delete old feeds in NetNewsWire for desktop, or are they deleted automatically after a while? Sorry if this is a silly question, but I’m new to NetNewsWire. :wink:

2

Old feeds will stay until you delete them — but old articles will get automatically deleted (unless they are starred).

1 Like
3

Thanks for the info. :+1:

4

What means “old” here? How long can I see the feeds before they are deleted?

5

All articles whose feed is no longer in the subscriptions list are deleted.

A cut-off date of 4 * 31 days ago is calculated.

For the remaining articles, we go feed-by-feed.

If a feed has 20 or fewer articles, it’s left alone.

For each article (oldest first) delete until: The feed’s count of articles is down to 20, or the article is newer than the cut-off date.

The reason we preserve some articles that would otherwise be deleted: you want to be able to select a feed that hasn’t been updated in a year (or whatever long period of time) and still articles from that feed.

6

Wasn’t there a dinosaurs menu item you could use to find inactive feeds at one time?

7

I must say that I do not really understand it. I might misunderstand something.

E.g. the NetNewsWire feed and several others has 20+ feeds, many feeds from 2025 and far earlier (older than 4*31 days). Now I would expect, after reading the details in the comment by @stuartbreckenridge, that I would see here max 20 feeds.

Why is there this limit (4x 31 days, max 20)? I would like to keep most of the feeds for later research or just achievement. How I define feeds to be kept and not deleted?

I am confused now …

8

Let’s define some terms.

A feed is a thing that appears in the left-hand sidebar. The NetNewsWire feed, for instance. Daring Fireball, MacStories, etc.

Feeds provide articles. Articles are listed in the timeline view. Tap or click an article to read it.

Important things to know:

  1. Feeds are never deleted automatically by NetNewsWire.

  2. Articles are deleted automatically. When an article is deleted depends on which syncing system you’re using. The rules are different for each one. (But 30 days is generally a minimum, and 90 days is more likely.) Important exception: starred articles are not deleted.

There isn’t a way to control when articles are deleted. But the point of NetNewsWire is to show you the latest news (from the last few months) rather than serve as a place to collect articles forever. For that we recommend bookmarking and read-later services.

9

@schnide Yes! There was a Dinosaurs window. And I plan to bring that back.

For folks who don’t know: the Dinosaurs window showed you a list of feeds that hadn’t been updated in a long time, and made it easy to delete them. This way you could trim your feeds list to just active feeds, if you wanted to.

3 Likes