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Life & fun · December 18, 2022

IB

I built a Hacker News userscript to make this site more legible

My personal itch to scratch just recently has been the umpteen formatting foibles of HackerNews. So, in the spirit of making the web more personal again, I knocked up a TamperMonkey userscript to fix up the worst of my personal bugbears. This isn't an attempt at a complete rebrand/redesign of the site, instead it's just fixing up what I think are the biggest design/readability issues whilst trying to remain true to the site's existing aesthetic. Key features: * Base font size increased * A little more room around headings * Top menu bar is full-width and with a little more padding…

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In plain words

This is a TamperMonkey userscript that improves the readability of Hacker News by adjusting typography and layout. It increases base font size, adds spacing around headings, expands the top menu bar, makes downvoted comments easier to read with background styling instead of faint text, limits comment line length for better readability, and formats quoted text to look like proper blockquotes. The script maintains Hacker News's existing aesthetic while addressing common formatting issues.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

My personal itch to scratch just recently has been the umpteen formatting foibles of HackerNews. So, in the spirit of making the web more personal again, I knocked up a TamperMonkey userscript to fix up the worst of my personal bugbears. This isn't an attempt at a complete rebrand/redesign of the site, instead it's just fixing up what I think are the biggest design/readability issues whilst trying to remain true to the site's existing aesthetic. Key features: * Base font size increased * A little more room around headings * Top menu bar is full-width and with a little more padding * Downvoted comments no longer faint hard-to-read grey. Instead they're rendered with a light gray background and in a smaller font size. * Comments have a more readable max line length * Quotes are parsed and transformed to look like genuine quotes. I.e. any p or span that starts with '>' is transformed and rendered with a light orange background and in italics. * The 'Add comment' box on items is hidden by default. (Surely you'd want to read all the comments first before leaping in with your own 2p's worth!?) Check out the repo's readme for example screenshots.

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