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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

HX

24 alternatives to Hacker XP – Hacker News styled as a Windows XP Outlook email client

Hello HN, sharing my weekend project. I'm a fan of retro GUIs and fan of HN, so I built an alternative HN front end that resembles a Window XP desktop with an old Outlook email client. Archive and github links if you get 500 errors: https://web.archive.org/web/20220122190454/https://hackerxp.... https://github.com/assemblylanguage/hacker-xp

Hacker XP is an alternative frontend for Hacker News styled as a Windows XP desktop with an Outlook email client interface. Built as a weekend project, it presents HN stories and discussions within a retro GUI… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Hacker XP – Hacker News styled as a Windows XP Outlook email client launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Hi folks this is a project I worked on with some of my students when I was running an online JS programming course. Although the online course is no more, I finally got around to releasing Hacker Herald with a former instructor and student - thanks Arnav and Archis! To those wondering if there is a need for such a Hacker News front end, I would just point out that most newspaper websites are laid out like this - clearly some people like this kind of layout! Also for some stories a picture really does help - currently there is a HN story titled, "Portland airport grows with expansive mass…

    2024 · hackerherald.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Hey HN, I made this free browser extension that modernizes the Hacker News design. I previously launched Modern for Wikipedia [1] here back in December, and it seemed like the obvious next choice to build one for HN too! So I've taken what I learned from building that, and have spent all my spare time this year building Modern for HN. I realize this won't be for everyone, but it was a fun project to work on, and I'm really happy with the result so far. Hope you like it too! Lots more planned for future updates, and suggestions welcome :) [1]…

    2022 · modernhn.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    A different way to browse the discussions on hackernews. Control everything intuitively with your keyboard.

    2021 · haxplore.pabue.co · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    ✨ Hacker News, but refined — Interface tweaks and features to make the HN experience better - plibither8/refined-hacker-news

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    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 →

  6. 6

    Hey HN! Just for fun, I built an interactive Hacker News Simulator. You can submit text posts and links, just like the real HN. But on HN Simulator, all of the comments are generated by LLMs + generate instantly. The best way to use it (IMHO) is to submit a text post or a curl-able URL here: https://news.ysimulator.run/submit. You don't need an account to post. When you do that, various prompts will be built from a library of commenter archetypes, moods, and shapes. The AI commenters will actually respond to your text post and/or submitted link. I really wanted it to feel…

    Nov 2025 · news.ysimulator.run · its alternatives →

  7. 7LB
  8. 8WH
  9. 9

    Hey HN! I built a native macOS desktop client for Hacker News and I'm open-sourcing it under the MIT license. GitHub: https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News Download (signed & notarized DMG, macOS 14.0+): https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News/releases Screenshots: https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News#screenshots I spend a lot of time reading HN — I wanted something that felt like a proper Mac app: a sidebar for browsing stories, an integrated reader for articles, and comment threading — all in one window.…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    I love HN but always felt the search with algolia is okay but does have some limitations. Since I work at Vectara I decided to try and create a better search for HN. It's based on data from roughly the last 6 months of HN stories and comments. Would love to hear feedback and how useful this is relative to the existing search.

    2024 · hackernews.demo.vectara.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11HN

    Hello everyone! This is a browser extension that attempts to enhance Hacker News user experience, while your data is kept secure, and private (never leaves the browser). Browsers have evolved significantly since doing a v1 back in 2010, which was one of the contributing factors, for attempting a complete re-take few months ago. Personally, I was surprised how useful it turned out to be when browsing around HN. On the linked page you can find install link(s) from web-browser stores, and demo video/screenshots of the features[1] What do you think ? [1] including, browsing content with…

    2023 · carina.app · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    I wrote this small client to read hackernews from my favorite editor. It's currently using an external HTTP API [0] but I'm working on my own proxy [1]. I'd love to actually scrape and cache all the info I need using lisp. However, my time constraints are keeping me away of that goal. I could definitely use some help here! :) I'm also planning to add support for comments and posting new things. Any feedback is highly appreciated! Thank you! [0] http://api.ihackernews.com/ [1] https://github.com/clarete/rhn

    2013 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Hacker News Delivered to Desktop :dancers:. Contribute to owenthereal/hacker-menu development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2015 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    A Gnus backend for Hacker News. Contribute to dickmao/nnhackernews development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15NH

    2014 · hack.ernews.info · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    A beautiful, clean, modern web UI for Hacker News

    2022 · modernhn.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    HN Deck: An alternate way to browse Hacker News

    2020 · hndeck.sagunshrestha.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    A fast, keyboard-friendly Hacker News client. Browse Top, New, Show HN, Ask HN, and jobs, read comment threads, and sign in to vote, comment, and submit.

    2019 · hn.matthewblode.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19
  20. 20AD

    We (Nick, Dens, Denzell, Fede, Drew, Aaryan, and Daniel) have been building HN Discovery, a discovery-focused search engine for Hacker News, in our spare time for the past 6 months and are excited to show it! It adds the following features relative to the existing keyword search interface and preserves the existing ones: - no-JS version (hnnojs.trieve.ai) - site:{required_site} and site:{negated-site} filters - public analytics - LLM generated query suggestions based on random stories - recommendations - dense vector semantic search - SPLADE fulltext search - RAG AI chat - order by…

    2024 · hn.trieve.ai · its alternatives →

  21. 21FH

    Hi HN! I’ve been lurking for a while, but out of fear of being steamrolled by HN readers or maybe just natural introversion, I’ve always been too scared to post or comment. Which is why 1. this is my first real Hacker News submission 2. my friend Michael and I built "Fake" Hacker News, a place to post and see what AI-generated HN comments might say. Here’s a video of me using fakeHN to test this very submission: https://www.loom.com/share/4b9f4f9d7c77489a86baeb92ec55a1ed?... And an example of one of our generated posts:…

    2023 · fakehn.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    It's been 2 years since the initial release [here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36102610). The initial version was a very basic prototype which was not available anywhere beyond the GitHub repo. You had to install it as a userscript or load the extension manually. Since then, it remained simple but better, new features include: - Improved accuracy by also using comments to help gauge the topic of discussion and the right keywords. - Published as plugin for more browsers: Chrome, Firefox (including android), and more recently Microsoft Edge. - Support for narrow screens…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23HN

    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 →

  24. 24IM

    I noticed the who's hiring threads are very popular every month, so I decided to create a job board specifically for hacker news. You can tag jobs, search, view user's profiles and more. Tell me what you guys thing! Any feedback is appreciated.

    2013 · hnjobs.org · its alternatives →

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