Alternatives
Products that do what I'm 35 and couldn't finish reading articles anymore, so I built this does
Hey HN, the full story is on the page, but here's the TL;DR: I'm 35 and somewhere along the way I lost the ability to finish reading articles. I'd open them, read 2-3 paragraphs, get distracted, and close the tab feeling like a failure. My "Read Later" list became a graveyard of 2,000+ unread articles. I tried everything – focus apps, reader modes, blocking extensions. Nothing worked. Then I realized. 'maybe the problem isn't me'. Modern web articles are designed for engagement metrics, not comprehension. Sidebars, popups, related articles, comment sections – everything is optimized to pull…
- 1TY
Hi HN! Being locked down with plenty of time in my hands, I clearly noticed a problem that I faced and also felt passionate about tackling. - Excessive screen time in our day-to-day - Diminishing attention spans It was consistently tough to properly read quality longform content online. From screen related tiredness to having ads and notifications pop up and demand a share of my attention, my focus was compromised. Long story short, I wanted to read longform content that lives online (and there is a ton of high quality out there), in an inherent offline medium, paper :p Fast forward 5…
2020
- 2CT
I’ve spent a lot of time reading articles that promise a lot but never give me what I’m looking for. They’re full of clickbait titles, scary claims, and pointless filler. It’s frustrating, and it’s a waste of my time. So I made a tool. You give it a URL, and it tries to cut through all that noise. It gives you a shorter version of the content without all the nonsense. I built this because I’m tired of falling for the same tricks. I just want the facts, not a bunch of filler. What do you think? I’m also thinking of making a Chrome extension that does something similar—like a reader mode, but…
2024 · cut-the-crab.streamlit.app
- 3
- 4
- 5AB
Hey HN, maker here. It was a serious 4-6 months of effort to build this. I have never poured as much love, attention and detail into a project before. So I really appreciate you having a looksie! The homepage has a fresh list of articles every hour and is open to all. Still, I recommend signing up so you can add stuff to your reading list and follow blogs. My initial plan was to monetize this with subtle ads, but that didn't work out as the traffic to the site isn't nearly enough for that. That said, I have a fair bit invested in this and I need your help figuring out a way to make this…
2023 · boredreading.com
- 6BM
Hey HN crowd! Two days ago I realized I'm almost unable to read a book or a long article without getting distracted by Twitter/HN/Reddit/Work. The situation is so terrible, I'm even getting afraid of big articles, and my ReadItLater list is getting pretty long (shameful I know) ... and I'm pretty sure most of you are in this situation :) Being used to TL;DRs on long reddit posts, I thought it would be great to have these for everything, so I quickly hacked this website: http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/ Here is an example of TL;DR: http://www.too-long-didnt-read.com/5tropy I would love to…
2011
- 7
- 8IM
I recently decided to try out Google Tasks as my only task management system, and while I find some things about the interface great, it really isn't suited for someone like me who has multiple lists with lots of elements on each. So, I whipped this together real fast and I can't imagine using Google Tasks without it anymore. I realized you might want it too, so I put it on the web. Enjoy :)
2011 · gtasker.com
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13SR
Hey all, this is a small bookmarklet my partner made last week to save short summaries of long-winded web posts. Hopefully you can help others save time by sharing your TL;DRs with the world. You can also up/downvote the TL;DRs other users post. It should work with your iPad, too. http://tldrplz.com
2011
- 14IB
I built Read Fast after realising I was saving hundreds of things to read and reading almost none of them. It automatically turns saved content into a scheduled briefing and sends it to my inbox at whatever time I choose. New version since last post actually allows you to bulk upload URLs. So you can just dump links here and Read Fast will scrape and brief for you. Great for actually reading the things I want to. Curious if that resonates with people?
Dec 2025 · read-fast.replit.app
- 15LT
I struggle with wanting to read heaps of stuff I come across on the internet daily, as well as being subscribed to a bunch of tech-related newsletters that I never get around to reading. I made this to get through that content much faster while working or otherwise multitasking. Check it out and please lmk your thoughts! Also, curious if others also feel this pain of too much interesting content to get through daily. FWIW I probably listen to this for >1 hour daily atm.
2024 · lavalamp.ai
- 16IN
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
- 17T
HN, With an overwhelming amount of tech news being reported every day - I have always struggled to find the time to read the articles, even when I want to. So I created a solution for myself where I extract key points of the articles and present them as bullet points, for readability. I figured others might be feeling the same way, so I am making it available publicly. I update it every hour. I would really appreciate any suggestions on improvement. I look forward to hearing your thoughts/feedback. URL: https://techbullets.com
2015
- 18IM
It's dead simple. There's no fancy interface. Basic features are gone. That's all on purpose. If you're like me, you're always writing down ideas on pieces of paper. My webapp is like that, but for the internet. Let me know if you find it useful.
2012 · ideab.in
- 19AW
Hey, I've made a pdf reader with ai assistance, you can quickly ask questions about the text and the images, and it will have context about all of your reading material so you can ask questions freely, try it now, I'm in open beta to find bug and get feedback. upcoming features: - Highlighting - Highlighting with Notes - Bibliography - Automatic Reference file opening - Improved UX and robustness currenlty alot of bugs so please let me know if you found any. feedback appreciated
2025 · pdf-hub.com
- 20IB
My wife recently started her PhD and while she uses Zotero as a citation manager, she was really missing a tool for keeping track of what she's reading right now/has already read/needs to read next. This overwhelming experience might be familiar to other researchers working on a niche field where every paper is called pretty much the same thing So I built her Paperstack. It's basically Goodreads, but for research papers: - Save articles to familiar To Read/Reading/Read stacks - Tag articles with logical projects/chapters/whatever your system is - Get…
Jan 2026 · paperstack.ac
- 21BA
Hey guys, I drive to work a lot, spending on average of 2 hours each day. So I have plenty of time to listen to Podcast and audiobook on my ride. And I think it would be nice to be able to do the same with my reading list, but I couldn't find any decent app on the market that doing this. So I set out to do it myself. Sooo this is the product: http://sendtopod.com/ You may ask why? The reasons are simple: - It's more convenient to listen to articles while you driving, running, or even before going to bed. - Listen take less effort than reading. - Your eyes need to rest after…
2022 · sendtopod.com
- 22ON
I’ve always wanted a news app designed for people who don’t stay up-to-date daily. That pays attention to when I check-in and what stories I’m aware of and adapts to me. You see, I’m not a good “follower” of the news, and I “catch-up” fairly infrequently. When I do, I want to see the most important things I’ve missed in the meantime, not today’s top stories. I’d like to emerge from my metaphorical cave after a week, a month, or longer, and quickly see what I missed. That’s Old News. I built it for myself, but if you’re like me (statistically, you probably aren’t!) you may like it too. It is…
2022
- 235A
Hey everyone! I wanted to share a project that I've been working on the last few days that I finally finished last night: https://50books.org This is a simple site designed to track your reading list into 2015. My personal goal is to read 50 books this year, and I wanted to hold myself accountable. Major sites like Goodreads are great, but were too much of a social network for my personal taste; on the other hand, using a text file (which was my 2014 solution) was too difficult to track and share. I built https://50books.org using Sinatra, sqlite3 (via datamapper), and…
2015
- 24IC
On my new large screen, it was a little cumbersome to read PG's essays because they are sticking so far off to the left. I center aligned it so it's a bit more readable. Took 2 hours with chatgpt to ideate, build, and publish.
2025 · github.com
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Refine with a description →