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Growth · alternatives · 2026

AM

24 alternatives to A Modern HN Client (iOS)

There are many like it but this one is mine: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pivit/id705715915?mt=8 Seriously, though, this Hacker News reader is better than what's out there, or I wouldn't have spent time on it. How? Most importantly, it utilizes the background refresh APIs, so content is always up to date. Pull to refresh is there, but you probably won't need it. The more addicted you are, the more often it updates. So if you check every few hours, you'll always get the current front page. Complementing this, it helps you see not only what you've read but what…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. A Modern HN Client (iOS) launched in 2013; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1
    hn.▲78

    Yet another client to browse Hacker News

    2016 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2FH

    Hey HN. I created this website. https://pj4533.com/hn-overlooked/ It's just a simple web app that discovers overlooked posts on Hacker News. I created it because I was often coming to Hacker News and realizing that I was missing a lot of stuff, and there just didn't seem to be an easy way to surface content that was interesting to me but just didn't bubble up to the top of the page. So I built this. I got the idea a while back, one night when I was recording (you can watch it here, it's pretty funny: https://youtu.be/FDyDb4sX30w?si=E3rby-DaGWA6gy0R ). But I…

    2025 · pj4533.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Alerts, AI summaries, and easy search for Hacker News

    2025 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    This is probably the first Hacker News client on AppStore that uses the newly introduced official Firebase HN API. One of the cool features of the new API are updates pushed in real time. There’s...

    2014 · hnclient.weebly.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5AP

    Hello! I’ve been reading Hacker News for years and have a bad habit of favoriting articles but never actually going back to read them. I finally built hnbuffer to scratch my own itch and help me work through that backlog. I also mainly built this as an excuse to learn/use some of the languages/frameworks/tools since I have another backlog of things I wanted to try too. It syncs your favorites into a queue with a reader mode and swipe gestures. The streak tracking is something I'm still experimenting with. Note: It requires an HN login to scrape the favorites list (credentials…

    2013 · hnbuffer.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6ID
  7. 7HA
  8. 8

    A new simple and fast HN Reader for iOS

    2015 · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Hi! I’m Julien and I built a recommendation engine for Hacker News. I feel like this website is a gold mine. Every day, I find some very interesting stories about a topic. And sometimes, I want to find other stories covering that same topic but I can’t. Hacker News has years of history of awesome discussion and ressources. Unfortunately, I think HN Algolia isn’t helpful in searching these old threads. As a student, I want to learn a lot from this website. This is why I created HN Recommend. Input a sentence or the URL of an article, and get the most popular and similar posts from Hacker…

    2023 · hn-recommend.julienc.me · its alternatives →

  10. 10IN

    I noticed I was getting side tracked reading Hacker News, checking back, reading articles, comments, etc. It felt like my productivity was being hampered so I created a simple web app to receive the most popular stories in a daily email. http://dailyhn.com

    2011 · dailyhn.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Hey HN! I'm excited to share a tool I've been working on - a native Hacker News reader built with Rust and egui. Here's a screenshot: https://github.com/haojiang99/hacker_news_reader/blob/main/s.... As a daily HN reader, I've always struggled with keeping track of interesting posts I want to read later. Browser tabs pile up, bookmarks get forgotten, and I lose track of what I've already read. I needed a way to: 1. Browse HN efficiently (across all sections - hot, new, show, ask, jobs, best) 2. Quickly mark posts as "todo" for later reading 3. Mark posts as…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    I thought building something that I would use while learning iOS SDK was a good idea so I built HN Browser. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hn-browser/id578535095?ls=1&mt=8 HN Browser is a simple app which lets you to read articles and comments on Hacker News. (no voting and writing comment yet) For the logo, I reached out to Joel Glovier(http://joelglovier.com) for his previous work on Hacker News logo(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4731140) and he kindly granted the use of his work. It was really fun experience to collaborate and build a mobile app using iOS SDK. (although…

    2012 · itunes.apple.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13EM

    Yesterday I decided I wanted to experiment with different ways of reading HN. After considering a few options, I settled on a Mac app and spent a couple of hours planning/sketching on paper. This morning I fired up Xcode and spent 4 hours hacking away and I must say I'm liking how it's looking. Since the project is in its very early stages, I though that it could be a very good time to get some feedback. I've posted a few screenshots at http://imgur.com/a/rCbVN and uploaded a binary at http://abra.rm-fr.net/~fiam/HackerNews.zip If you have some free time, give a try and let me know what you…

    2011 · imgur.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    macOS HackerNews client that aims to be a Mac-assed Mac app. Written in Swift + AppKit. - goranmoomin/HackerNews

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15HN

    Since I got an iPad I was looking for a better Hacker News reading experience than the one you can get using the web version. On the iPhone I use the ihackernews.com web app (and soon going to try news.yc). It's decent for the iPhone, but it doesn't scale good on the iPad. To my surprise, when I checked there was no decent iPad app for HN (i.e. lacking ability to comment or vote, no readability support and more). I anyway wanted to give a try to iPad development, and was looking for an interesting project to work on. Making HN reader app seemed as a good candidate. Over the last weekend I…

    2011 · bit.ly · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    A more informative and less addictive Hacker News.

    2020 · hackerdaily.io · its alternatives →

  17. 17HN

    I made a little website with a server that collects only HN submissions with > 500 upvotes chronologically. https://hn.moritz.pm/ It's quite simple because I wanted to learn from the project. But I think it's useful, to get a summary of what was important over the last days. The UI is almost identical to the HN frontpage, you can click on the comments to view the thread and on the username to see the profile. The rest of the cards takes you to the submitted URL.

    2024 · hn.moritz.pm · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Native mobile experience forged for Hacker News. Journey through stories, delve into comments, vote, post and more.

    Jul 2026 · hackernows.app · its alternatives →

  19. 19
    Read.HN▲86

    Read Hacker News with Instapaper

    2018 · readhn.netlify.app · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Hey HN folks, Last week I released the first public version of 120 HN — a fully native Hacker News client for macOS. This week, I'm excited to share version 0.2.1 with some essential updates: The app now remembers window size, position, and sidebar state between sessions Improved AI summaries: more concise, relevant with link back to the comments, easier to read with short paragraph form. Minor tweaks to navigation and layout for a smoother experience Sneak peek: local LLM support is coming in the next release. As always, the app is free to use. Any suggestions or comments would be…

    2025 · 120.dev · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    I actually started it June 2011 to learn iOS, launched it in September, and have been steadily adding features and making improvements. It's something I use every day and I hope other people find it useful. Enjoy!

    2012 · itunes.apple.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    We at Emerge Tools (YC W21) recently released open source Hacker News apps for both iOS and Android. The apps use the latest SwiftUI and Compose frameworks and are entirely native. Our goal is to help dogfood our products, but more importantly our team just enjoys reading HN every day and wanted an app to hack on and call our own. :) We are still missing some features but should otherwise be pretty solid. And open to any contributions. iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news-by-emerge/id674092... Android:…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Download HACK for Hacker News YC Reader by Pranoy Chowdhury on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips and more apps like HACK for Hacker…

    2020 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24AH

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