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Hacker News Tech Reader - HACK app icon
#3in Tech News

Hacker News Tech Reader - HACK

A Tier
Excellent
90
4.72.1K ratings
4dsince update
FreeIn-App Purchases
News
category
Developer Tools
category
9+age rating
1language
Made for iPhone
Made for iPad
Made for Mac

What is Hacker News Tech Reader?

Third-party iOS reader for Hacker News with threaded comments, search, account login, and customization options.

HACK is a News app for reading Hacker News stories and comments on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It supports logging in to a Hacker News account to submit posts, reply, vote, favorite, and receive reply notifications. The listing also describes search with Algolia-powered tags, nested comment threads, and display customization such as dark mode, fonts, and colors.

Pricing. Hacker News Tech Reader is free to download, with in-app purchases on the App Store.

Good for

  • Reading Hacker News threads on iPad in split view
  • Browsing Hacker News with a compact, customized layout
  • Searching Hacker News comments and stories by user or date

Screenshots

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Why this app is in A tier

90/100The average of 4 parts, with no weights
Rating93
Ratings73
App Store search rank92
Update recency100

A tier follows from that score within this list. The full explanation, as data.

Hacker News Tech Reader scores 90 out of 100: rating 93, rating count 73, App Store search rank 92, update recency 100. The four parts are averaged and A tier follows from that score within this list.

Description

HACK for YC's Hacker News is the most beautiful and easy way to read about the latest tech, startup and STEM news.

Read more
  • No Ads. No subscriptions.
  • Login or Register your Hacker News account
  • PUSH NOTIFICATIONS for Hacker News replies to comment or post
  • Supported on iPhone, iPad, and Mac
  • Setting to block AI posts on HN.
  • Comments are presented in nested threads
  • Tap a comment to collapse that thread
  • Swipe left or right on stories and comments to upvote and favorite
  • Ability to submit new posts including drafts
  • Long press a story, link or comment to share
  • iPad supports split view
  • On iPads, you can drag a story / comment / story's image (link) to open it in safari in split view. This is useful for when you are viewing the app in split view / multitasking and like opening the link / story / comment in a browser side by side.
  • Landscape and Portrait support
  • 3D touch for peek, pop support
  • Home screen 3D touch shortcuts
  • Hide posts from the feed
  • Tap the bottom button to scroll to the next root comment in the thread. Long press it to go to the previous one
  • All known hacker news endpoints - News, front page, Ask HN, Show HN, Show HN Newest, classic, active, best stories, best comments, new stories, new comments, noob stories, noob comments, jobs, over 100-500 points
  • Submit posts, reply, comment using your HN account
  • Browse top 100 leader accounts
  • Browse stories from a specific site, user or date
  • Search in comments and usernames! Search is case and diacritic insensitive and ignores punctuations. Search uses an CONTAINS, OR operation if multiple words are typed.
  • Can select / highlight the comment/post title text for lookup/copy/translate etc iOS native operations.
  • Powerful search (powered by Algolia API) - use @date to sort by date, #story to filter for stories, #comments to filter for comments, #author_username to filter by user etc. These tags can be separated by commas. Refer to https://hn.algolia.com/api for more tags.
  • Dark mode - both pure black and gray mode
  • Low contrast text mode to make the text not be pure white
  • Many color choices & color picker for customization
  • App icons in variety of colours for light and dark mode
  • Font choices
  • Ability to change font sizes, padding etc to make the layout as compact as you like!
  • Threaded comments with color bar to maintain visual orientation
  • Articles open in Safari view with setting to automatically open in "readability" mode
  • Tap the domain in a story to see all stories from that site
  • Tap the username in a story or comment to go to the user profile
  • Browse your submitted stories and comments, favorited stories and comments, upvoted stories and comments
  • Archive: View an archive of the post website. archive.is, archive.org & google cache.
  • Share comment as image
  • Articles can be opened in built in safari or 3rd party browsers. Supports Brave, Firefox, Firefox Focus, Orion, Opera Touch, Dolphin, DuckDuckGo, iCab Mobile, Microsoft Edge and Chrome. Go to settings > Disable the "Use in-app Safari" setting > tap that row to change the default browser.

All stories and comments are via Algolia API and Hacker News API:
https://news.ycombinator.com/
https://hn.algolia.com/api
https://github.com/HackerNews/API

Profile picture robots lovingly delivered by Robohash.org

There are ongoing costs of developing and maintaining HACK. I am a small indie developer and need your help keep the lights on. I offer a beautiful app for the absolute best user-experience. I don't use intrusive ads, trackers, third-party analytics, subscriptions, or other nonsense. I need to run my own server for caching high quality favicons shown in the app plus for push notifications for replies to hacker news posts. If you can afford it, please support me by purchasing the one-time-only in-app-purchase or giving me a tip. No subscriptions. It's a small and fair amount which helps cover development costs of future updates.

Contact me at

pran@pranapps.com

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Questions about Hacker News Tech Reader

Does the app show ads or require a subscription?

The description says it has no ads and no subscriptions.

Can I use my Hacker News account in the app?

Yes. You can log in or register your Hacker News account, then submit posts, reply, comment, upvote, and favorite.

Which devices does it support?

It is supported on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with split view support on iPad.

Is Hacker News Tech Reader free?

Hacker News Tech Reader is free to download, with in-app purchases.

Is Hacker News Tech Reader right for me?

Hacker News Tech Reader is built for reading hacker news threads on iPad in split view, browsing hacker news with a compact, customized layout, searching hacker news comments and stories by user or date. It sits in the tech news list on AppTierList.

Is Hacker News Tech Reader worth it?

Hacker News Tech Reader is A tier, ranked #3 of 18 tech news apps with a score of 90 out of 100, from a 4.7 App Store rating across 2,135 ratings. It is in the list's top tiers; 2 apps rank above it.

How does Hacker News Tech Reader compare to Phonegram?

Hacker News Tech Reader is A tier at 90; Phonegram is A tier at 90. They score the same. Hacker News Tech Reader is free to download, with in-app purchases, Phonegram is free to download, with in-app purchases.

How often is Hacker News Tech Reader updated?

Hacker News Tech Reader was updated 4 days ago, which counts in its favour.

Alternatives

Categories

All the facts

Ranking

List
Tech News (A tier, #3)
Tier
A (Excellent)
Score
90 / 100
Rank in list
#3 of 18
Ranking certainty
settled

Ratings

App Store rating
4.7 out of 5, every App Store country
Ratings
2,135

App

Price
Free + IAP
App Store category
News
Current version
(4 days ago)
Size
30 MB
Requires
iOS 15.0 or later
Age rating
9+
Languages
1
Runs on
iPhone, iPad, Mac

Links

Developer pages
Website · Support · Privacy policy
Maker
not verified
App Store data read

App Store data read · ranking