Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript

#1

Post by twalichiewicz » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

HN is great for the links people share, but a big part of the value I get comes from reading the discussion around them. I realized I was always opening the article in one tab and the comments in another, constantly switching back and forth.

I figured there was probably a simpler way, so I threw together this userscript to merge the two.

1. Clicking a link from Hacker News opens the article with a side panel containing the discussion. It doesn't require your credentials, is resizable, and is easy to tweak if you want to customize it.

2. If you land on an article that has previously been shared on HN, the script finds the existing discussion and adds a button in the top-right to open the panel.

Feedback welcome.

Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript
github.com

Re: Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript

#2

Post by ahachete » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:38 PM UTC

I feel ya. I'm always middle clicking twice, story and comments.

This shouldn't be a script (no offense, great job!). It should be built into the browsers!

Re: Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript

#3

Post by djfdat » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:45 PM UTC

This is great and is also something that I've always had an issue with.

What I do now is open the HN comments, and then when I'm ready to look at the link + comments, right-click on the title and Open in Split View.

Re: Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript

#4

Post by hugopuybareau » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:48 PM UTC

Nice idea ! How do you handle duplicates ?

Re: Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript

#5

Post by pluc » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:48 PM UTC

Firefox has a new Split View that's useful for this, but you still have to left click and select open in split view (M) then click the link. You also used to be able on some browsers to craft a link that was href="tab1.html|tab2.html", no idea if that's still a thing or if it was limited to "home page" setting.

Re: Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript

#6

Post by perpil » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

This is slick. 2 things.

1. If you name your script with the extension .user.js it is easier to click on to automatically install at least with tampermonkey. 2. When I went to this link from the main page, on mobile I had to scroll to the right to see the (-) to minimize because the sidebar was too large: https://elizabethtai.com/2026/06/10/substack-writers-you-nee... It may make some sense to start minimized so I can read the article first, but I can easily modify the script to do that.

Re: Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript

#7

Post by blopp99 » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:53 PM UTC

Thought I was the only one hahaha

Re: Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript

#8

Post by dagurp » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:55 PM UTC

pluc wrote: post #5

Firefox has a new Split View that's useful for this, but you still have to left click and select open in split view (M) then click the link. You also used to be able on some browsers to craft a link that was href="tab1.html|tab2.html", no idea if that's still a thing or if it was limited to "home page" setting.

Vivaldi has included split view for years (called tiles). You can also right click a link and choose open in follower tab. This lets all links clicked in one tile open in another tile. I use this regularly on HN.

Re: Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript

#9

Post by Topology1 » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:55 PM UTC

Phew, thought I was the only one doing that. I thought I was missing some core site feature lol.

Re: Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript

#10

Post by swyx » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

perpil wrote: post #6

This is slick. 2 things. 1. If you name your script with the extension .user.js it is easier to click on to automatically install at least with tampermonkey. 2. When I went to this link from the main page, on mobile I had to scroll to the right to see the (-) to minimize because the sidebar was too large: https://elizabethtai.com/2026/06/10/substack-writers-you-nee... It may make some sense to start minimized so I ca…

is this better than using a chrome extension? i guess people need to have tampermonkey installed and so thats a slightly higher barrier to entry? i wonder if chrome would be interested in "sherlocking" userscripts so that we can distribute non security nightmare code easier.