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Ask HN: Good Hacker New iOS Apps

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Ask HN: Good Hacker New iOS Apps

#1
Does anyone recommend any particular iOS app for Hacker News?

I used to use "MiniHack", but it seems to have gone out of maintenance and no longer works. This was the best one by far, that I found when I searched last time.

So far, I've tried HACK, Starling, and Hackers. I haven't been impressed by any of them. Octal looks like it might hit the spot, but I'm loathe to spend money on apps without much to go on...

Re: Ask HN: Good Hacker New iOS Apps

#2
Have used Octal for over two years--been mostly happy with it.

* High-quality reading experience. Appends the title and other helpful info to the message if you want to share something, and provides easy options to share the HN discussion or the original article. The UI also prioritizes reading the discussion first which, let's be honest, many of on HN are known to do. ;)

* It mostly stays in sync with the front page of HN (and you can keep scrolling down, making it easier to read stuff that has fallen off the front page but is still valuable).

* The search function finds what I want about 80% of the time.

* You can log in with your HN account and see account stats, I sometimes see issues with the account stats (recent submissions, karma, etc.) staying up-to-date, but that's not a big deal to me.

Re: Ask HN: Good Hacker New iOS Apps

#4
I am facing the same issue. I have tried all of these apps and none deal with text formatting as nicely as MiniHack for both readability and user interface.

Even before last weeks changes in HN’s HTML that broke MiniHack beyond use, there were quite a few bugs on modern iOS. Still MiniHack was the best.

Currently replying using HACK

Re: Ask HN: Good Hacker New iOS Apps

#5

Have used Octal for over two years--been mostly happy with it. * High-quality reading experience. Appends the title and other helpful info to the message if you want to share something, and provides easy options to share the HN discussion or the original article. The UI also prioritizes reading the discussion first which, let's be honest, many of on HN are known to do. ;) * It mostly stays in sync with the front page…

+1 for Octal - I use it daily on iPad as well

Re: Ask HN: Good Hacker New iOS Apps

#7
I maintain a relatively new one called HN Pro [1]. It was rated 5/5 on the iOS App Store until Friday's HN updates broke parsing, but that bug has since been fixed. I'd love more folks to try it out and provide some feedback.

The app is privacy-first; no tracking or analytics SDKs are installed. You can log in with your username, upvote, downvote, and comment. The idea is to provide as close to the web experience as possible in terms of "feel" and not to add any extra flair.

I'd love to work more on it, so if folks have any ideas with respect to monetization or marketing, I'm all ears! FWIW, I've been recently toying around with the idea of just open-sourcing it and making it donation-only. Haven't really come to any conclusions yet.

Also, I'm aware of some UX/UI issues with the latest update—it had been a while since the previous build and recent UIKit changes have created some wonkiness. :)

[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hn-pro/id1384303792

Re: Ask HN: Good Hacker New iOS Apps

#8
post #5

Have used Octal for over two years--been mostly happy with it. * High-quality reading experience. Appends the title and other helpful info to the message if you want to share something, and provides easy options to share the HN discussion or the original article. The UI also prioritizes reading the discussion first which, let's be honest, many of on HN are known to do. ;) * It mostly stays in sync with the front page…

+1 for Octal - I use it daily on iPad as well

I took the plunge and forked out the £4.49 for Octal (shocking, I know ;) I like it enough. It doesn’t look quite as nice as MiniHack did, but it’s pretty good and way better than the competition.

Re: Ask HN: Good Hacker New iOS Apps

#9

Have used Octal for over two years--been mostly happy with it. * High-quality reading experience. Appends the title and other helpful info to the message if you want to share something, and provides easy options to share the HN discussion or the original article. The UI also prioritizes reading the discussion first which, let's be honest, many of on HN are known to do. ;) * It mostly stays in sync with the front page…

Me too - by chance I was an early adopter and am now kindly grandfathered in to the fully functional app, it seems.

Only thing I wish for is better handling of my comment history: it would be good to have a threaded view of old comments and any replies (as on the website) and maybe even the option to be notified of a reply.

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