How do you browse Hacker News? | Hacker News Reader

How do you browse Hacker News?

22 pointsbundie51 comments

Hey everyone,

I'm curious about how you all browse Hacker News. Do you use the website, mobile app, or a desktop client? If you use a desktop client, which one do you prefer and why?

View on HN

HACK for iOS is the best client I’ve found on iOS. https://apps.apple.com/app/id1464477788

On desktop I use the website but install HNES extension to help with some of the formatting.

Indeed this is the best and only way I browse HN. It’s a far better experience than the desktop HN page.

I don't use any third party HN clients made by other people, for privacy reasons. All those clients are neat, but you don't know what they're doing in the background unless you start firing up debuggers. The HN site itself is enough and last time I checked there's no trackers and it even works with JS disabled. I use a mix of my phone and my desktop PC. (Phone for casual surfing of /newest and my desktop for commenting and submitting posts).

Materialistic Android App. Unfortunately it is not anymore in the Google Play Store. It's the best hackernews android app in my opinion. What android app do you use?

Materialistic became buggy for me in terms of UI elements arbitrarily switching to different themes (pixel 5a). I switched to Harmonic and have been very happy with it.

You can find it in F-Droid[1], it still has the old version though. And it is not in active development.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.github.hidroh.materialist...

If the F-Droid version is the old version, the new one must be incredible!

Harmonic on android. Best by far from what I can find

+1, tried many other apps, but nothing beats harmonic. Only downside is, that it makes hackernews too addicting.

+1 To this, harmonic is my primary way to browse HN. Great app

Commenting this +1 from Harmonic on Android, it's fantastic.

Harmonic is an excellent app.

Currently using the "Glider"¹ client on Android. Pretty happy with it so far.

¹ https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/nl.viter.glider/

I use my own custom client since I couldn't find anything that satisfied me enough, and the ones that looked nice didn't work without JS. You can find it over at https://hn.gigantino.dev, while the source is at https://github.com/gigantino/hn

Desktop: bookmark

Phone: URL shortcut icon on home screen

Both are fine. I can't imagine an app would provide much more value, especially with the privacy cost.

I faved the "new" URL and keep refreshing the site in one if the 50+ tabs on my mobile browser, whenever I feel bored.

No app, no client, no whatsever. That's one news site among lots others and not worth setting up a read-flow around.

if one's so into news, Bloomberg terminal 24k/y, msy be a proper client. But not for me.

Why the question?

Hacki for Hacker News (Hacki is a simple noiseless Hacker News client that is just enough.) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.jiaqifeng.hacki/

I really enjoy Hacki when mobile

Firefox (desktop and Android) with uBlock Origin list that hides the tee-vee news, blogspam, and off-topic garbage: https://pifke.org/hn.txt

Glider for Android

https://f-droid.org/packages/nl.viter.glider/

I created this(https://plaihn.vercel.app/) for myself specifically for mobile viewing as I wanted something decluttered compared to all the IOS apps that I’ve used before. Not saying they’re any less but I personally wanted something very simple. I wish to create a comment section within that as well in the future.

I follow the twitter feed, rarely click on anything but see topics go by and semi-remember them for later (or I sometimes open up the site right-away).

2-3 times a day I go to the site on a desktop browser. Scroll through the first 2-3 pages (logged in, standard view) and open a tab for the story and discussion. Work though these gradually.

Occasionally I open the site on my phone but find a pain to use it that way (and I'm not logged in).

Web.

On desktop, I use my own custom CSS hacks to restyle the site:

Dred's HN CSS Madhackery: <https://pastebin.com/gLXiqKyd>

Dred's HN CSS Madhackery -- Dark Mode: <https://pastebin.com/6PF3dCXH>

(Those are linked in my HN profile.)

I use Octal, Free with $5.99 for paid features (commenting, etc)

Great UI, performant app and the developer is quite active in pushing updates.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal-for-hacker-news/id130888...

You have to pay to comment? That's ridiculous. Just make it a paid app

I assume the free version is meant to be used as a trial to evaluate the quality of the client. There is a “Share HN Link” option for each comment where you can comment on the webpage. After using it for free for a year or so, I paid because it’s one of my favorite clients on iOS.

I use a small Firefox extension I made that displays HN in the sidebar, and offers a keyboard shortcut to toggle it.

https://github.com/datastring/firefox-hacker-news-in-sidebar

Desktop: Website iOS: Octal

Because everyone else links to their preferred apps: https://apps.apple.com/se/app/octal-for-hacker-news/id130888...

Through materialistic app, it's no longer on google app but can be found on f-droid

Desktop browser with hastily written custom CSS (https://pastebin.com/CEjLKFar) and the "Dark Reader" add-on.

Own web client[0]. Click the date title for yesterday.

It was handy having all the SVB stories grouped separately.

[0] https://hackerer.news/

Try this terminal client out: https://github.com/Aperocky/hnterminal

`pip install hnterminal`

I don't like how the home page at http://news.ycombinator.com/ sorts by a combination of score and time-since-posting because that means that I end up scanning each entry (story title) over and over.

In contrast, if they were sorted strictly by time-since-posting, I would probably quickly be able to tell once my scan of the list reached the part of the list I had already seen.

Someone else (many years ago) had the same thought as what I wrote above, motivating him to create http://hckrnews.com/, which is mainly what I use to find stories to read. (I also use https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%s&sort=byDate to find stories to read.)

> if they were sorted strictly by time-since-posting

Isn't that exactly what you get on the “New” page?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

That page shows all stories whereas hckrnews.com shows only stories that are or were on HN's front page.

Ah. But... If you don't want to trust the front page's ordering of items, then why trust its choice of which to include? Seems a bit weird to me. Or, well, at least arbitrary.

It has nothing to do with trust.

OK, so let's use another word: If you're satisfied with letting HN's front-page algorithm select which posts you even get to see, then why not with the much smaller matter of ordering? (But of course it does: You being OK with an algorithm doing something for you is just another way of saying you trust the algo to do it for you.)

Anyway, trivial problem: The post IDs in the URLs are monotonally increasing over time. Just sort by ID and the lowest is the oldest, the highest the newest.

>why not with the much smaller matter of ordering?

I explained already, but am happy to explain again, adding a little background information. I need to keep to an absolute minimum the amount of time I spend looking for generally-interesting things to read on the internet.

Why? Because I have learned the hard way that I need to minimize the amount of time I spend doing things that are pleasurable and effortless and absolutely safe (not in the least dangerous). Consequently, if the project I am currently engaged in is to learn more about oxidized cholesterol, for example, I give myself permission to use hn.algolia.com to search HN for that phrase and read all I want. In contrast, I strictly limit the amount of time I use HN just to see if there are any interesting new stories when I don't have a definite goal for my reading.

hckrnews.com differs from the standard HN home page in that it gives me an easy way to tell when there are no headlines I haven't read already. Specifically, after reading 1 or 2 or 4 headlines I've already read, I know I've seen all the headlines below those 1 or 2 or 4 headlines, too, because the order never changes. That means that most headlines I only read once.

The order hckrnews.com or news.ycombinator.com chooses to sort the headlines is immaterial to me. What matters is that the order does not constantly change.

And that is my answer to "How do you browse Hacker News?" (the headline of the OP).

Ah, I see.

Then I'd recommend you use HN's “new” page instead. It gives you that exact advantage you seek, of knowing that when you recognise a headline (perhaps by it showing up as “followed” in your browser), then you've seen the ones after (i.e. chronologically before) it, and it gives you the chance to see the ones that didn't make the front page.

Now sure, the HN algo really isn't all that bad; if you do this, you'll get to scan past a lot of dross. But every once in a while, there's a pearl in amongst the muck, some quirky bit of stuff that speaks to you, even though it didn't to almost all of the readership whose input the algorithm is based on.

That's what I do (when I'm at my most compulsive).

Or you could press hide once you've seen a story.

I sometimes use hckrnews.com, but not for that reason - it's good for catching up on what's been on the front page if I haven't been here lately.

I hadn't considered that.

I use https://hn.buzzing.cc/ to browser Hacker News in both Chinese and English.

I use the Glider app, which runs great on GrapheneOS.

I just use safari on my phone

Obsessively. HTH!

Website.

Also, there's a way to make polls on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

Web mainly.. And glider for Android.

Too much.

Sometimes.

Good luck.

(sent from my iPhone)

news.ycombinator.com with 150% zoom

The website

I use a combination of the following:

Browser:

1) news.ycombinator.com 2) daemonology.net/hn-daily 3) hckrnews.com 4) hn.premii.com 5) hn.algolia.com