Show HN: macOS HNReader Application | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: macOS HNReader Application

github.com

87 pointsmattrighetti63 comments

This is a macOS Hacker News reader, lightweight and clean. I would love to hear your opinions on this!

Nice! It looks good, I’ll try it for a while.

Code should ideally be on github as source code files, not inside a binary archive.

I am not going to open source the project at the moment, I have to clean things up a bit before that. I'm probably gonna do that as soon as it reaches a good first RC

I would imagine you're going to get a fraction of the users testing it that you're looking for then. I know I'm not going to put my username and password into a closed source app from a random stranger on the internet.

At the moment it’s just a reader so login is not yet available

Isn't this the source code? https://github.com/mattrighetti/HNReaderApp/archive/refs/tag...

Nope just the readme.

Open sourced now since it seems highly requested, link in the readme!

I have inserted the link to the source code in the readme, I need to clean things up a bit right now

Are you a paying customer of GitHub?

I thought GitHub free user repos are required to be open source.

I have a college student pro account, for free, so yeah :)

Github changed their pricing model last year. Everybody, individuals or companies, can have unlimited private and public repositories.

No, GitHub never required your code to be open-source. In the past, free accounts couldn’t create private repositories. Nowadays, they can, but those private repositories are limited.

A public repository does not need to contain open-source code, or even any code at all. I imagine the repo just contained a README, and that’s completely fine GitHub-wise — why would GitHub mandate people to have code in repos?

Don't worry about cleaning it up; that's the way to get more contributions!

Looks neat. I don’t see any source code in the repository though?

It's closed source. He uses github to distribute the binary.

Yes, give me a week and it will be open sourced. I just need to clean the code a bit

Edit: open sourced it!

Why macOS?

I only have apple devices and I enjoy developing apps in swift, way easier and less tedious than other systems imho. Also SwiftUI makes UI design a lot easier than standard

If you get an MBA I highly recommend a marketing class.

Otherwise it might be good just as a defense against psychology tricks.

My first thought is that I can only see a handful of HN topics at a time, versus 30 via the standard web interface.

So, to me... in its current state this app would be a large downgrade.

It's "nicer" looking than the web interface, but the web interface is fine for me. I don't need it to be pretty.

For an HN app to be useful to me it would have to offer more information or features than the web interface.

I’ve just started this, it will become more complex in the future with some help from the community

Doesn't run on 10.14, requires 11.0 or newer :(

Probably because it's written in SwiftUI.

I do have the option to create a SwiftUI project in the last version of xcode that would run on my OS, so it should support at least some of it. The question to ask, then, is how much of the new stuff, if any, this app uses.

edit: a lot of it. I tried changing the deployment target to 10.14 and building it. Got 101 "'SomeSwiftThing' is only available in macOS 10.15 or newer" errors.

Yes, the toolbar should only be available with SwiftUI 2.0 which was released on macOS Big Sur

It might not be obvious at first glance of the README file: There is an install binary release at https://github.com/mattrighetti/HNReaderApp/releases/

Can you submit a link to https://github.com/cheeaun/awesome-hacker-news#mac-os ?

Sure, will do right away!

You did but this is already a broken link ;)

Is this your first Mac app? If so, how did you find the process of learning the platform?

I've been thinking of writing a native Mac app for a while, but I'm put off by the bad things I hear about the docs and general learning experience.

Well not exactly the first but I’ve experimented a lot with SwiftUI and this is entirely written with that.

UI is probably the hardest part into an application, everything else is plain old style programming with algorithms, data strictures, GET requests etc.

I would suggest to look at WWDC sessions about SwiftUI for what concerns the UI part, everything else has a very active community online that will give you a lot of resources to tackle pretty much everything.

I tried to get into it recently, and I couldn't even manage a "hello world" app. The built-in demo/skeleton app creates a text label in code, and that's it. I couldn't even figure out how to get what is now called the "design canvas" to appear; ie. to create a UI visually. I feel like the introduction to Xcode in 2021 is much worse than Visual Basic 6 was 20 years ago. :'(

There is no way to create the UI visually in SwiftUI, only programmatically. I find SwiftUI substantially easier to write than Swift or Objective-C, and feel like it actually requires less use of Xcode's functionality than either of its predecessors.

Hmm? From https://developer.apple.com/xcode/swiftui/ :

> Xcode includes intuitive design tools that make building interfaces with SwiftUI as easy as dragging and dropping. As you work in the design canvas, everything you edit is completely in sync with the code in the adjoining editor. Code is instantly visible as a preview as you type, and any change you make to that preview immediately appears in your code. Xcode recompiles your changes instantly and inserts them into a running version of your app — visible, and editable at all times.

Aha, what I was looking for was the "Library" popup, which allows drag-and-drop of new components onto the canvas. Now I understand; this latest iteration of Xcode has the code <-> canvas being bidirectional, so using the library or canvas inspector just edits your code anyway! Interesting. I'll have to run through some docs and tutorials to see if I can finally pick up macOS/iOS app development.

Note: despite the github link, it is not open source so no telling what's in the binary

edit: now it is :)

Never mind, published the code repo and created a link to it in the GitHub repo

Really nice to see "native" and not electron :). Very clean looking.

One suggestion would be to do thumbnails like Octal on iOS, but that may just be a personal preference.

I'll try to remember to check back later, when you're ready to `brew`.

Also based on threads here, nice to see you're using this an an opportunity for feedback.

Well done!

I love Octal and I am willing to make similar functionalities, thumbnails are coming after more important features like comments

I’ve been diving into SwiftUI lately and it’s such a joy to use, gave me a renewed appreciation for UI design. It’s nice to see some real apps being done with it, proving it is possible to do so. Congrats on the app!

Definitely possible if your app does not require super precise UI element placement, totally doable and gives spectacular results

The file at https://github.com/mattrighetti/HNReaderApp/releases/ works but the link[1] from the HOME/README is a 404 for me.

1. https://github.com/mattrighetti/HNReaderApp/releases/downloa...

I think the browser HN UI is so good that it’s difficult to switch to anything else even though I appreciate the effort that goes into building something like this.

I curate a list[1] of "FOSS tools to improve the Hacker News experience". HNReader has just been added to it.

[1]: https://github.com/bminusl/awesome-hackernews

This looks cool! How did you find programming in Swift to be?

One small nitpick: the refresh button in light mode is a bit difficult to see due to low-contrast.

So what does this offer beyond just using a web browser?

For the moment it’s just a native HN reader, nothing more. But it’s going to get more complex hopefully

Looking forward to seeing where you go with this!

As some feedback: you only get one shot at Show HN, really. Or at least you should only get one shot at it, you can work around this by submitting a different URL but that kind of thing is discouraged.

You would have been better off waiting until you were ready to show the source code, and had at least a rough sketch of the features you were going to provide. It's going to be difficult to get useful feedback at this stage in the process.

I hope you don't take this as discouragement, I like the idea of having a dedicated HN mac app, and look forward to seeing it again down the road.

I don't think it's strictly true that you only get one shot but agreed this app is too early in its development to receive meaningful feedback and the author should probably come back when it's somewhat more fleshed out - right now it's just a clickable list of direct article links that launch an external browser.

The app is now open source at the link in OP :)

Looks like dark mode, for one. I'm also personally curious if there's an effect in breaking the "what time-wasting website should I let the browser autocomplete" habit that is so easy to cultivate (is "frequently visited" a dark pattern?)

Awesome! You may want to give a brief description in the readme about what it is (for people not coming from this forum).

I have the same issue with every HN app: no “past” support, or insufficient past support. That’s the way I’m mainly browsing HN.

What do you mean by past? Your past interactions, eg lack of ability to engage other users related to things you’ve commented on? “Past” posts? Something else?

I think they mean the "past" link at the top of the page. It takes you to https://news.ycombinator.com/front

Yes, exactly; thank you for clarifying for me.

Will take that into account! Would you mind placing a feature request to the GitHub repo?

I also made a HN reader app with dark mode and it's open sourced at https://github.com/boberbober/yahni

You can use it at https://yahni.news

Neat idea! Do you plan to notarize the binary?

I have never done that to be honest, if it’s not a big hassle I could try to do it

Looks great! Does this have a search button?

That is going to come, I’ve just started this project

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