Use This App to Create Your Own Timeline for the Entire Internet.
As convenient as the Internet is, when big tech companies chase endless growth, it can lead to bloat. Today it feels like every company wants to trap me in an algorithm , convince me to use their artificial intelligence services , or try to get me to pay more to watch like before. One of my favorite tools for combating these trends is Tapestry . It’s a timeline app for iPhone and iPad that lets you combine multiple feeds from blogs, YouTube, podcasts, and social media, then view them in chronological order with a beautiful interface. Essentially, you can use it to create your own version of (almost) the entire Internet.
Tapestry is developed by The Iconfactory, which also developed the excellent (but now defunct) Twitter client Twitteriffic .
What is a timeline app?
Timeline apps are a new genre of apps that let you take back control of big tech’s algorithms and decide what you want to see and when you want to see it. These apps allow you to create your own personalized feeds with posts from multiple websites. You can use these apps to follow a blog you like, a YouTuber you like, and even a subreddit or social media feed you like to see. It’s similar to using an RSS reader, but with support for content from many other types of sources.
Getting the most out of Tapestry on your iPhone
Installing Tapestry will begin with a very helpful registration process. This displays a list of different recommended channels that you can add to your feed with one tap, allowing you to complete the application in record time. If you’re comfortable with setup, you can also skip the guidelines and manually add your channels to the app by going to the Settings tab and clicking the Add Channel button. After that, you can simply paste the URL of the website, YouTube channel, podcast, or Mastodon/Bluesky account you want to follow, and Tapestry will find the channel and add it to your feed. There’s more going on on the back end, but Tapestry’s channel search feature is pretty good at finding and downloading channels from a simple URL. Once your channels are added, you can view them all in a neat chronological timeline.
The app’s free tier is quite generous. It allows you to add multiple channels and follow them on one timeline with infinite scrolling. If you like a post, tap the flag icon below the post to flag it (i.e. bookmark it), or use the Share button to send it to your friends or social media accounts.
Without a subscription, Tapestry will show you ads in your feed. However, this is one of the least intrusive advertisements I have ever encountered. They follow the design language of the app and most of the ads I saw either asked me to add a channel to Tapestry or install another app. The app has a beautiful design and reminds me a lot of the best of Twitteriffic. A single timeline can easily get very confusing very quickly, but Tapestry handles this well by color-coding posts from different sources and displaying the logo for each channel prominently. It also saved the logos of the two newsletters I downloaded, which is a nice touch. You can customize this process by going to the app’s Appearance Settings page, where you can change the font and length of the message previews. This makes for a neater timeline, and you can make it even better by clicking the three-line icon in the bottom left corner of the timeline. This allows you to choose different sizes for each message. I find that the collapsed view is best for quick browsing, while the expanded view is better for browsing newsletters.
Every post on your timeline is truncated by default, and even when expanded, it displays no more than a few paragraphs. However, you can click the “Read More” button on any message to read it in full on a new page. This view is free of ads and clutter, loads quickly, and the background retains the Tapestry color scheme assigned to it in your timeline. Tapestry also has two types of filters to help you clean up channels: mute and mute. Muffles minimize posts that contain certain keywords and are useful if you want to avoid spoilers from a new movie or TV show. Muting will completely hide posts containing certain keywords, which is great for blocking politics, sports, or other topics from your feed, for example.
The biggest limitation of Tapestry’s free tier is that it only allows you to add one timeline. You have access to specific timeline filters that allow you to view flagged posts, just today’s posts, or posts from one channel at a time. However, if you want to create more than one timeline, you’ll have to upgrade to the paid tier, which costs $2 per month or $20 per year. There is also a one-time lifetime unlock option for $80 in case you want to avoid a subscription.
After the update, you will no longer see ads and can create as many timelines as you want. I’ve used this to separate social media channels, newsletters, and other types of channels, but the good news is that you can create a timeline to suit your needs.
Some people prefer to combine Bluesky and Mastodon posts into one chronological feed, and Tapestry allows you to do this too. One of my biggest complaints about Bluesky is that it doesn’t save your reading position, meaning it updates at the top of the feed every time I open the app. I like it when apps remember where I finished reading and then let me scroll to see all the messages that have appeared since the last one I read. Tapestry shows you a nice counter in the top right corner that shows how many posts are above what you’re reading and remembers where I stopped scrolling. This is great for timeline completers like me, and I use Tapestry to read my Bluesky channel chronologically and follow multiple Bluesky accounts.
Please note that you cannot use Tapestry to post, like, repost or directly interact with anything on social media. You can click a button to open the post on the site where it is posted and interact with it there. However, Tapestry is great for creating a timeline and reading, watching videos, or listening to podcasts. This app allows you to listen to entire podcast episodes without leaving if you want, and also downloads YouTube videos into the company’s own player. It’s a pretty convenient experience if you want to follow a few of your favorite authors. You’ll enjoy the tapestry best if you’re careful with the ribbons you add. If you add a lot of news, it can drown out low-frequency channels, but if you find the right balance, it can become your own cozy corner of the network.
Iconfactory has released a very polished app considering it’s only version 1.0 at the moment. I can’t wait to see where Tapestry goes and I hope it comes to desktop at some point too. There aren’t many timeline apps out there right now that do the job that Tapestry does. The best alternative I’ve come across is Reeder , another beautifully designed timeline app with a similar feature set and pricing model. Ideally, you’ll try both apps and decide which one suits you best, and I suspect the decision will depend on which design language you prefer. I love Tapestry’s bright and colorful design, while others may prefer Reader’s more subtle tones and animations.