Hacker News Reader

Comment by wyldfire | Hacker News Reader

I have now stumbled onto "libreddit" [1].

> cloud Light: no JavaScript, no ads, no tracking, no bloat

I have been an addicted reddit user since before they had user accounts. I never had any desire to block reddit ads until the last ~6-12 months or so when it would autoplay ads when I scroll. I have "no thumbnails" so it doesn't show me the ad other than a line of text or so. I have "old" reddit enabled on my account -- this works for desktop. And now I've started using the explicit "old.reddit.com" on mobile. But I would prefer mobile-optimized reddit without audio ads. I will probably give libreddit a try.

[1] https://github.com/spikecodes/libreddit

EDIT: of course, since it's privacy focused I can't login to my account and reddit is unbearable if you try and use it without your account to curate the subreddits. Whoops, scratch that idea!

View on HN

I find that old.reddit.com is ok on desktop (with uBlock origin), and for mobile there's several third party apps that make for a better experience than a website. I personally like "Relay for reddit".

Apollo is a perfect example of a 10/10 iOS app.

Yup!

I’ve been on Reddit basically daily for 15 plus years…

I only use old.reddit with RES and UBO and I never see ads…

And my Information density this way is so much more enjoyable than anything the new shitty reddit can show!

New reddit is worse than new DIGG was.

But they are trying really hard to fuck up the UX via their new UI…

Just bookmark a multireddit url, ala: https://teddit.net/r/mud+dcss+cataclysmdda (in this thread I show you teddit, another privacy focused frontend)

teddit does actually have a subscription concept, accountless, but in general the multireddit solution would work for your libreddit example

https://teddit.net/about

    Teddit is a free and open source alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy.
    Teddit doesn't require you to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
    The source is available on Codeberg at https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit.

    No JavaScript or ads
    All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Reddit
    Prevents Reddit from tracking your IP or JavaScript fingerprint
    Lightweight (teddit frontpage: ~30 HTTP requests with ~270 KB of data downloaded vs. Reddit frontpage: ~190 HTTP requests with ~24 MB)

You can even aubscribe to an rss feed of a subreddit, I think each has a rel="alternate" link to the feed url

I never understood why so many of these Reddit viewers have no JS in them (well it's generally a cultural preference among a certain crowd, but still feels irrational.) I usually open a forum like Reddit and have it open all day, I'd be fine with loading a SPA and having it make background requests to fetch API output and render them in page and give nice functionality, as long as the code is open and there's no ads. I've been building this myself because both Libreddit and Teddit don't use JS.

Is your project ready for primetime yet?

You can use my personal reddit site. https://reddit.premii.com

It has JS. Optimized for mobile. No tracking from my side.

Open in congnito for NSFW subreddits. Enable pictures/NSFW mode to load all pictures in line. Close it when you are done.

This is VERY nice on mobile, great job. Thanks for sharing.

> mobile-optimized reddit without audio ads

I don't know if you've tried it already, but https://i.reddit.com might fit the bill.

Infinity is found in F-droid store.

Redreader is another option.

Yeah - this is perfect, thanks!

On an Android device, Slide allows you to add subreddits without logging in. I follow several subreddits but have no account. I don't see any ads.

Go to the hamburger menu > settings > manage your subreddits.

Another mobile option is i.reddit.com.

Did you know there is a rss feed for every subreddit?

https://www.reddit.com/wiki/rss

Yes, but if you want to read the comments associated with a post, the link takes you right back to the regular reddit site.

You can also read comments via rss, but I see that might just be to much effort.

I think so too. IIRC, you'd have to add a new feed for each thread.

RedReader is also a great choice on Android, I wish there was a native desktop version of it.

Unfortunately, Slide is abandoned by the author. He replied to an issue on github saying basically that he has no time to maintain it and that and that the code is a mess and needs to he completely rewritten from scratch so he doesn't recommend anyone else bother. Slowly but surely the bugs are mounting. There's so e new-fangked thing that's leaving blue boxes everywhere and videos are breaking again. And I think he also mentioned that the Play Store won't let him push small bug fixes without making another large change that he has no time to work on so it's defacto dead in the water now and will never be updated.

I've been trying Infinity from time to time which others have mentioned as the new OSS client, but it seems less textual than Slide. Sline also has great navigation that is immediately missed elsewhere.

(At least the Android version, dunno about the iOS)

App stores are abominations.

Try https://i.reddit.com/ on mobile.

With libressit you can subscribe to subreddits. It saves to your browsers localhost (just like their settings), nothing is sent to their server.

> mobile-optimized reddit without audio ads

There are 3rd party mobile-optimized apps btw. Support logging in and most reddit features. I use Boost for Reddit personally, but there are others like Baconreader.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com