Most of us have accounts at several social media services, and while we might not post stuff on every single one of them, you probably at least keep track of them. That’s also true of stuff such as news sites. While features like home screen widgets or filtered notifications can be great, you might still want to take things one step further. That’s precisely the goal for Project Tapestry.
Project Tapestry is a proposed app made by The IconFactory, an established app developer for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that has already made other apps such as Linea Sketch and the now-defunct Twitterrific client for Twitter (which stopped working after Twitter killed its public API). It aims to address the issue of fragmented online media by creating a universal, chronological timeline for iOS that consolidates updates from various sources. Currently, you need to navigate through multiple apps and websites to stay informed, but Tapestry seeks to simplify this process.
The proposed app will offer a single, chronological timeline encompassing social media services, RSS feeds, and other data sources. Unlike algorithms dictating content visibility, Tapestry displays updates in the order they are posted. The objective is not to replace existing apps but to complement them. You can configure Tapestry with data source plug-ins: small JavaScript codes translating between the app and web services. While default plug-ins will be provided, you can create custom ones as well.
The planned features include a unified timeline, individual post details, a reading position memory, support for various publicly accessible sources (e.g., Mastodon accounts and RSS feeds), basic plug-in building, iPhone and iPad compatibility, VoiceOver support for accessibility, dynamic font resizing, and light/dark themes. Down the road, the app also wants to include features like muffling and muting items in the timeline, visual themes customization, post bookmarking, timeline filtering and search, local notifications for updates, easy installation of new plug-ins, a curated plug-in library, and a native macOS version.
It’s worth noting that you can achieve most of this single feed functionality manually with something like an RSS reader. This uses publicly accessible and open data sources, after all, and platforms like Tumblr, Mastodon, and YouTube offer RSS feeds. The promise here is to have all of this in a much more user-friendly hub that might get some cool extensions.
The app will only become a reality if the project hits its funding goal on Kickstarter, so if this sounds interesting, consider backing the project at the source link below. As of the time of writing, it has reached over $70,000 of its initial $100,000 goal.
Source: IconFactory (Kickstarter)
