Ask HN: Is is possible to add a “Read” menu option to HN | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is is possible to add a “Read” menu option to HN

2 pointssigmaprimus5 comments

I know it can be accomplished by searching my browser history, but it would be convenient to have a section listing the HN articles I have read. My browser history does not include point scores and comment totals, both of which I find useful.

View on HN

It's possible someone has incorporated such a feature into one of the third party apps/services/extensions.

I don't have a list of them and mostly don't use them myself, but a number of third party things already exist. You will probably get more helpful and enthusiastic replies if you ask about such options.

HN policy is intentionally conservative. They don't like changing things much. But the membership also has tremendous enthusiasm for providing third party solutions, usually for free. HN staff appears to be happy to tolerate this ad hoc ecosystem and I'm not aware of them getting cranky about it.

Edit: I absolutely suck at finding such things, but here's an old discussion to try to get you started:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310291

They come and go. Since it's an old discussion, some of the services listed may be defunct.

HN maintains a history of all the articles you've upvoted, which you can find under your user profile. There's also a list of comments you upvoted.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to search this list except by scrolling through it.

Thanks for the tip, I didn't know about that.

Ccould a "read articles" possibly be done through the use of cookies on the users browser, rather than being stored on HN servers?

Perhaps not very well. I’ve browsed HN with half a dozen phones, a dozen computers, and several browsers on each and every one. And from time to time I clear cookies within my browsers just because.

The other dimension is it’s a low priority relative to the invisible work on HN that makes HN what it is because of what doesn’t surface like spam and flamethrowers and blatant astroturfing and injection attacks.

If it’s really important, why not hack something up yourself?

Upvote things, HN keeps a list of your upvotes

Reply on news.ycombinator.com