Flyleaf 2.5 – Finally adding Widgets, and better ways to fix content issues

Today, version 2.5 of Flyleaf, my independently-created read-later app for iPhone, iPad and macOS, became available on the iOS and macOS App Store.

Free Download for
iPhone, iPad and Mac

In this post, I want to talk a little more in-depth about what’s new in this release.

It was about time for this update after some of Flyleaf’s functionality began to break recently: YouTube embeds stopped working a couple of weeks ago because of a change YouTube made. With Flyleaf 2.5, they are back and working. More critically: The archive.today integration in Flyleaf broke because the provider tightened their scraping protections, leaving Flyleaf unable to fetch pages mirrored by archive.today.¹ Again, Flyleaf 2.5 resolves this by introducing a new mechanism for downloading articles. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The headlining new feature of Flyleaf 2.5 are the new Widgets. I have added Widgets in all possible sizes and variants. The widgets simply display your recently read articles, and optionally your total unread article count. Along with that, I added support for some other useful system APIs like Home Screen and Dock icon quick actions.

I think the most important new feature for actually using Flyleaf is the new “Download via browser” action.² The issues with the archive.today integration I mentioned above are part of a broader trend of website owners tightening security against bots to protect against the new plague of AI scrapers that has befallen the web over the last years. Read-later apps like Flyleaf are unfortunately also often impacted by these measures.

Flyleaf 2.5 solves this issue like this: If Flyleaf can’t access an article by itself, it will open the respective web page in an in-app browser instead, allowing you to add the currently loaded page contents to Flyleaf with one tap. This works extremely reliably and as an added bonus can also be used to solve captchas or to sign in to accounts to get through paywalls.³

To put a bow on it, I have integrated this new feature, along with all other ways of downloading articles, into a new “Fix content issues” action which gives you easy access to the tools to solve a variety of issues around missing article contents.

Also new and dear to my heart is the introduction of a proper full-screen mode on macOS 26 (and on iOS when pagination is disabled). In full-screen mode, the article toolbar will be completely hidden except for a small progress indicator. On tap, it reveals article details and controls.

Another small thing which nonetheless became my favorite way to read in Flyleaf is the new “Night” reading theme for dark mode. It replaces the slightly garish “Nightvision” theme, and offers a pleasant orange glow which is great for reading in the dark. I also tweaked a few other theme colors.

Also of note is the new multi-window support. This is especially noticeable with the new windowing mode on iPadOS 26. Previously, multiple Flyleaf windows would simply all display the same content, which was not very useful. It took some re-engineering, but in Flyleaf 2.5 this now works exactly as you would expect: Multiple Flyleaf windows work independently from another, and there is a new context menu action to directly open an article in a new window.

As always, Flyleaf is a free download on the App Store. I would really appreciate it if you gave it a spin, and if you like it, please leave a nice review on the App Store or purchase the optional subscription. It really helps!

Free Download for
iPhone, iPad and Mac

Flyleaf 2.5 Change Log

In Flyleaf 2.5, I also fixed so many little bugs and added small improvements. Here comes the full list of everything thats new or changed in this update:

New Features

• Widgets in all variants: You can now place your current reading list on your Home Screen or Desktop.
• Multi-window support: On macOS and iPadOS, you can now open multiple independent Flyleaf windows at once. There is also a new context menu option to open an article in a new window (or Command-click on macOS).
• Full-screen reading everywhere: Hiding the article toolbar is now always possible, even on macOS or when pagination is disabled.
• New “Fix Content Issues” action: All redownload-related actions have been consolidated into this new action, making it much easier to understand what to do if Flyleaf can’t display an article properly.
• New “Download via Browser” action: More and more pages now use scraping protections that affect the Flyleaf downloader. In those cases, Flyleaf can pop up a small browser window where you can interactively confirm what to download (and even solve captchas if necessary). Requires iOS/macOS 26.
• When viewing an image in an article, you can now zoom and pan freely.
• Icon quick actions: Quickly access frequent functions right from the Flyleaf icon on your Dock or Home Screen.
• New option to configure pagination tap areas, so you can tap anywhere to go to the next page if you prefer.
• New simple dialog when adding the next page of a multi-page article, making it more convenient to archive the current page and proceed to the next one.
• New Shortcuts action to fetch a tag by its name.

Improvements

• The search function is now accessible with one tap on smaller devices.
• Search now searches everywhere by default instead of only in “Unread”.
• “Download from archive.today” can now handle the required captcha, but is available only on macOS/iOS 26 or later.
• Article images are now cached on-device. Note that cached images are not synced between devices.
• Reading view swipe gestures on iOS are now smoother and more reliable.
• Tweaked several theme colors: The “Nightvision” theme is now called “Night” and is much more pleasant.
• Added the correct Settings menu bar shortcut for iOS 26.
• Updated the “Archive” and “Delete” keyboard shortcuts to avoid conflicts with “Minimize Window.”
• Various performance improvements (for real).
• Various small design tweaks throughout the app.
• Various small improvements to the article parser.

Bug Fixes

• The “Remember my choice” toggle in the share sheet and the related “Always open in app” option now work as expected.
• YouTube videos in articles now appear correctly again.
• Long tag names are no longer unnecessarily truncated.
• The “Add to Flyleaf” action in the article view context menu is now more reliable.
• The reading view on iPad is no longer displayed too small after switching back from another app.
• The tab bar now always shows the expected number of items.
• Removed a duplicate close button in the iPad Settings dialog.
• Fixed a crash when saving an image from an article to your Photos library.
• Fixed a rare crash when downloading images.
• Fixed several search field focus issues.