A feature-rich Hacker News client | Hacker News Reader

A feature-rich Hacker News client

github.com

115 pointstaubek78 comments

Pretty nice but unfortunately scroll performance is extremely choppy like many other Flutter apps. Also, like many other Flutter apps, it can’t use system font stack. Still, on iOS, this is probably a better option than many other open source clients. On Android, I like Glider[1] and Harmonic[2] a whole lot more.

[1]: https://github.com/Mosc/Glider

[2]: https://github.com/SimonHalvdansson/Harmonic-HN

Scrolling is extremely smooth on my iPhone 14 Pro.

The app, though, feels like an Android transplant. No tap to scroll to the top, odd widgets, and no rubberband scrolling. The tip bubbles are also very “Google”.

That said, while it’s not for me, it appears to be very solid for Android users (or people who are, to their benefit, less picky than I am).

> no rubberband scrolling

unfortunately that's not true

Harmonic is great. Been using it for years ! Has the best UX/function quality ratio imho.

Harmonic is great, been using it a long time now. Prior to that I used Materialistic... I'll give this other one a try but I've been totally happy with harmonic, so it'll take a lot to move me I think.

Same for me!

After looking at the screenshots of this, I came here to say the same. It's gonna take a lot to persuade me to switch from Harmonic.

I am having a pixel 6a and scroll feels normal.

Not much love for Android, so here's and Android option;

https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic

I like glider too but they did a redesign at some point which I didn't like (too many buttons taking up space on the screen) so I'm still using the ancient version :)

For iOS I really like Octal. This is where I’m replying from!

Harmonic is nice, but it doesn't always submit stories.

Reading (and replying) on Glider. Love it.

scroll is smooth for me - android 9 / 6 yo phone

I used to use a client app like this. But after I switched phones, I never re-downloaded it and have found that using the browser works just as good for such a simple application.

I'd love actually an "app" that was just the bookmark manager for launching the browser.

Chrome, firefox, etc on android all either push me to use piles of shortcut icons w/folders (cluttered and exhausting to manage), or click through a hierarchical menu thats 20 clicks away.

You can always just "Saved to home screen" from Chrome on mobile, and then create a shortcut folder with your collection of "web" apps. I've been doing this for the past couple years for a few local restaurants that use Square for direct online ordering, in order to shortcut the link to their ordering site.

This would be great! Especially if it could sync bookmarks from multiple browsers. And URLs could be custom set to open in a non-default browser.

maybe it's just mobile safari, but hacker news in the browser on mobile is unusable for me.

What's the problem? It's almost perfect on android, for me.

Text links/buttons are terribly small, almost impossible to click. Text is too small too, but manageable. And of course mobile browser don't just let you zoom like on a PC

> And of course mobile browser don't just let you zoom like on a PC

You absolutely can. Press button to the left of URL bar (don't know how it is called, where you can also enter reader mode) and at the bottom you'll find 100%. Press it and you'll have to A buttons that allow you to scale.

There's more than one browser. And neither the default chromium-esque browser in GrapheneOS nor Firefox let me do anything like that.(Firefox surely has some plugin but that's besides the point)

> maybe it's just mobile safari

Text works ok for me (you also can zoom in iOS Safari in the "tab menu" bar button!), but I've definitely downvoted things I've been meaning to upvote when reading on a shaky bus/train.

Example: https://imgur.com/a/qzvhyfF

I’ve been reading hacker news only through hckrnews.com for years and never looked back

Thanks! Never knew about that one!

I love hckrnews! I even cloned it to tailor it to how I use it[1]. Still working on filters and point threshold.

[1] https://hnr.app

Is there a way to search?

Does it? It doesn't even notify you of new replies.

I've come to view this as a feature, personally. It means I'm a lot slower to respond to things, but it helps me to avoid getting drawn into heated conversations.

+1, it's definitely a feature, not a bug.

Getting a push notification or just seeing a little red badge makes me optimize for "be the first to answer". Seeing responses in a polling/async way means I can take a breath, read others' answers, and only respond if somebody else hasn't made the same point already anyway.

I run a service that does that: https://hackernewsalerts.com

http://hnreplies.com/

I actually got it last night from someone else reaching out and that's why I was alerted to this, haha. Cheers!

It's not a dating site.

What's this even mean?

Why not?

Whatcha doing tonight? ( ͡~ ω •`)

I am obviously not the target audience for this, because it seems to be the opposite of what I want: I'd much rather just have a text-only homepage than anything with thumbnails.

I'd really love an iOS app for Reddit that made the site look more like this one (or like the old `.compact` version did).

> I'd much rather just have a text-only homepage than anything with thumbnails.

The mostly-text HACK is my favorite iOS client for that reason, so if you use iOS you might enjoy it too. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hack-for-yc-hacker-news-reader...

Been using Hack for years. The dev is responsive if you have questions.

I like Glider. It's just text and easy to navigate through comments

I use Octal app, pretty good

I bounce between Hack and Octal (I like both for different things)

This looks decent but it misses a feature that I won't give up from Octal which is Apollo-like swipe left->right anywhere to go back (and reverse to drill back into the story you were on, which Octal doesn't support).

There is an option that changes the behavior for the swipe at the root level. Agreed this would be really nice to also work within a story to go back by using left -> right. Leaving the options to reply with a long press.

Other than that I do appreciate the reader settings and this is one of the better ones. Most are just readers — this allows logging in.

Another thing, editing of comments is a bit odd. It said a comment was updated but wasn’t? Logged into the site and didn’t see the change.

> Apollo-like swipe left->right anywhere to go back (and reverse to drill back into the story you were on, which Octal doesn't support).

The feature is also present in HACK! It's called "Full screen swipe to go back" (you really need to search for it, the settings list is kind of messy). Also the reverse you mentioned is implemented.

What does Octal has over Hack?

I just find that Octal not as "tight" UI-wise. Hack feels a little too dense and I'm completely unable to hit the upvote/downvote/reply buttons reliably, I just have to long-press to bring up all the options.

I like Hack's notification replies and showing karma for comments you wrote. The UI just feels too tight to me and I can't quite explain it, it's just harder for me determine where one comment starts/stops/indention/etc. Maybe I could fiddle with the settings enough to get it to where I want but Octal had almost everything I wanted out of the box and I didn't need to fiddle with settings as much.

Ha, configurable tightness is precisely what I love about Hack (though using side swipe to upvote as it's the most frequent action, so better be convenient), and the colored vertical lines are as good as indents to delimit comments.

I like the compactness of the UI, really well done!

I was trying to build the app locally, but it's failing:

``` wojtek@Mac Hacki % flutter run Launching lib/main.dart on iPhone 16 Pro in debug mode... Running Xcode build... Xcode build done. 51.3s Failed to build iOS app Error (Xcode): lib/blocs/stories/stories_bloc.dart:254:15: Error: Property 'isEmpty' cannot be accessed on 'List<int>?' because it is potentially null.

Could not build the application for the simulator. Error launching application on iPhone 16 Pro. ```

This app feels so much more responsive than what I've been using. I think the login option should be a little easier to find (maybe visible when tapping the person in the corner instead of hiding in the Settings option).

I really love the display options for something as minimalist as Hacker News or as detailed as Reddit.

Really exceptionally done. Great work. Is this a free trial? (How) do you plan to monetize?

Do a lot of people use HN clients? It never occurred to me to look for one.

Looking at the feature list here, most of them I can already do (comment, vote, submit, etc.). Some of the other features I feel like would degrade my experience (polls, notifications).

If you are someone that uses a 3rd-party client to access HN, can you sell me on the killer features (of whichever client you use)? Am I missing out?

- text contrast

- text larger than 12pt

- tap targets larger than 8px across

- collapsible threads without scrolling back to top level comment

Just basic fixes for HN’s broken mobile usability is enough for me to never directly use this site outside of a desktop anymore.

I actually use Hacki, and in fact was a bit surprised to see this listed here hehe.

I use it on my phone for three particular reasons: 1) Good dark color-scheme (easier on my eyes when I'm inside) 2) Adjustable font (HN default is way too small for me on a small phone screen) 3) Easily collapsible threads (you just tap anywhere on the comment

Everything else is irrelevant to me, as I barely comment. I'm more interested in the reading, most of the time, and the app helps with that.

Dark Reader works fine on a phone, you just need a browser capable of extensions. iOS has a few, and Android has many.

Polls are actually a Hacker News feature (albeit a rather hidden one). Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29755614

The default design is rather unergonomic (you're less likely to downvote by tapping on the wrong closely located button if you want to upvote since you can have the more frequent upvote action in a convenient side swipe gesture, but the less frequent downvote in a separate hamburger menu - things like this you won't get from reading a feature list) and ugly (fonts, padding, colors) , but if it doesn't even occur to you, then maybe you won't appreciate all the improvements, so maybe not missing out?

I really like it. A few suggestions:

- Make the preview text length configurable, I'd like to read more of the original post before I dive into comments

- The search is rather annoying. I found the post on hn web then it took me a while to find it in the app to comment on it. Maybe implement a filter on the main page for precached stories?

- A bit of styling / spacing / coloring would be nice. For example the stories feel like they blend into each other. The app is monochrome by design but I think a bit of color could guide the eye on content heavy views

Does anyone here use Hazumi for HN? I’m looking for new features to add and would love your feedback.

https://apps.apple.com/ie/app/hazumi-for-hacker-news/id16702...

I'm still on iOS 17 so can't

I like Octal [1] and even bought the paid version. It’s been a pleasant experience!

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

Also love using the paid version of Octal on iOS, really worth it.

I’ve been a proud paid user for years. The developer even accepted and swiftly implemented my feature request several years ago to support downvotes! Best app purchase I’ve ever made.

Hacki is nice, but like most (all?) HN clients, it lacks a way to filter posts based on topic. Actually, now I wonder if there's even any client out there that offers topic-based categorisation and filtering, preferably LLM backed.

The features might be nice but I really dislike the visual design.

It has dark mode, which, alas, HN still does not have.

Looks nice. FWIW I use Hack and have been pretty happy with it -- only gripe is that it lacks a feature to edit a comment after posting.

Please add a "read-later" feature, or add to your "reading list". need that for the scroll sessions.

I like it! Would like to have a share article/hn link to be able to direct it into wallabag or some other read later app

It looks like this developer has 2 Hacker News reader apps in the app store: Hacki and Z Combinator. Which is the good one?

I'm going to guess that it's Hacki. It's the one in the OP link, and it's been more recently updated. Plus it's cross-platform with iOS and Android. I've used the Android version previously (I'm now using Harmonic), but couldn't tell you which is the better iOS app.

I love the super-compact mode, but why does tapping on the favicon bring you to the comments and not the article?

Cue the evergreen "there's a reason why the HN UX ia the way it is" conversation.

The best HN news client is ##hntop on Libera IRC network!

Can you integrate AI to summarize the talking points from the comments?

At that point might as well have AI summarize the post as well and then boil everything down into a few seconds of reading. Maybe AI summarize the whole site into a once daily morning AI voiced podcast....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com