Hidden gestures on iPhone: pressing and holding pays off

Many buttons in channelBar Feeds have a second function. You reach it by pressing and holding for just under half a second; your iPhone confirms it with a small click you can feel. With VoiceOver, you’ll find the same functions among the button’s actions.

Channels and the unread count

Press and hold “Home”, and you jump to the next channel. Once more, and it moves on; after the last channel, it starts over at the top. With “Only Unread” on, only channels with something new come up. In “Consume Later”, you step through the channels with saved messages this way, in search results through the channels with hits. A normal tap on “Home” takes you back to all channels.

At the top of the stream you see how much is still unread. Does the number bother you? Press and hold the filter in the bottom bar, and it’s gone; once more, and it’s back. channelBar remembers your choice. You’ll find the same switch in Configuration: tap the logo at the top left and choose “Appearance” under “Settings”; there it’s called “Unread badge”. And if you tap the number itself, channelBar offers to mark everything as read.

Maximum height in one move

A tap on the button at the top right switches between the full and the compact view. Press and hold it to step through the maximum height of messages: from “Full image height” to “Large”, “Full message” and “Small”, then back to the start.

“Full image height” is the default: whole images, up to eight lines of text. “Large” shows up to 16 lines, “Full message” everything. “Small” keeps the images flat and the text short.

Pressing and holding is a shortcut, and it applies to the way you’re holding your iPhone right now. To set the maximum height exactly, use “Appearance”, separately as “Maximum height in portrait” and “Maximum height in landscape”. If a feed has a maximum height of its own, that one applies to it.

Feed settings and the message menu

In the full view, tap a feed’s small image in a message. That opens the “Feed Settings” for just this feed: a “Custom Title”, the “Polling Interval”, meaning how often channelBar checks, and the “Maximum message height”. Retention and a message filter are there too, among other things.

A message has a menu too. Press and hold it: you can share it, mark everything from its feed or the whole channel as read, or remove it with “Delete Entry”. channelBar marks messages as read right away; before deleting, it asks.

In the player bar and the player

In the player bar at the bottom, a long title scrolls by. Press and hold the middle, and it stops; once more, and it scrolls again. A normal tap opens the player. channelBar remembers whether the text scrolls, separately for portrait and landscape; the switch is called “Scrolling Text” and sits under “Podcast Player”.

In the player, the buttons skip back 15 seconds and forward 30. Press and hold them, and it’s a whole minute in either direction.

Your history sits at the bottom right. Press and hold it, and channelBar asks: “Clear playback history?” With “Clear History” it’s empty; only the episode that’s open right now stays.

Gestures you already know

You already know a few gestures from the other videos. Pressing and holding the magnifier discards your search results, after asking first. Pressing and holding “Player” hides the bar and brings it back.

A tap on the free area at the bottom next to the bar takes you to the end of the list, to the oldest messages; a tap on the status bar at the very top takes you to the start. And if you shake your iPhone, the last message you read becomes unread again. Every further shake goes one step further back, until you quit the app.