Pulse News is a feed reader app that transforms articles of your favorite websites into a colorful and interactive mosaic stream. You can add websites from a featured list, browse categories, search your own, or directly import from Google Reader. Moreover, Pulse connects to Instapaper, Read it Later and Evernote, allowing you to save articles for later reading.
First Pulse Steps
When you first open the app, you will see a few pre-set feeds. Each feed occupies a row of mosaics and you can drag the line of tiles to the left to view older articles.
Clicking on a tile will open the respective article and display it on the side. In the top right you can select whether to view the article in text or web mode. Via the buttons in the bottom right corner of the article, you can save and share it. When you click the button on the far bottom right, the article closes.
Also notice that the content of the settings button in the top right changes as you are viewing a post. Here you can mark an article as unread or open it in a browser.
Adding Feeds & Pages
The pre-set pages are likely not going to satisfy you. To add a new page, click the wheel icon in the top left to enter the setup view, then click the plus button, here shown on PAGE2.
You can pick from featured sites, browse categories with more pre-set pages, search for your favorite website, or…
…import pages from Google Reader.
No matter how many pages you add, you have full control over where they show and in what order. You can drag and drop feeds from one page to another and even create a new page, simply by moving a feed to it.
From the mosaic view, you can then switch between different pages and even add a new page for a different category of feeds. Whether you add a new page this way or within the setup menu, you can either choose a pack, i.e. at once add a whole set of sites from one category or browse the catalog giving you the options outlined above.
You can rename pages by pressing their name for a few seconds. Likewise, you can rename the name of your feeds in the mosaic view.
To remove an entire page, apparently you have to manually remove all feeds by clicking their X button in the setup view. This is not very convenient and could have been solved more elegantly. However, it also makes it harder to accidentally lose an entire page of feeds.
Pulse Settings
Within the settings menu you can customize the font size for articles as well as the tile size, switch to dark mode, meaning the background color for articles in text view will be grey instead of white, control update notifications, adjust sync and storage options, and control your social media login for sharing articles.
Pulse Widgets
I tested the app on an Android Honeycomb tablet, where Pulse offers two widgets, one small and one large. You can use this widget to display a single feed source on your homescreen.
You can then browse the feed within the widget. Clicking a tile will open Pulse with the respective article already open.
Sync Pulse
To sync your Pulse News with Instapaper, Evernote, or Read It Later, you need to create a Pulse.me account. Once you have an account set up, you can sync your sources with Pulse.me and also set up the other services to save stories.
For more details on how to set up and use Pulse, I recommend the Pulse Hints website, which essentially walks you through all features.
Since it’s such a cool app, we have profiled Pulse twice in our Directory:
Pulse was previously mentioned in these articles:
What are your favorite feeds and what features would you like to see in Pulse?
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