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Show HN: A native macOS client for Hacker News, built with SwiftUI

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Re: Show HN: A native macOS client for Hacker News, built with SwiftUI

#11
post #3

Neat! One feature I'd love to see is to follow/block users. Like this Chrome extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hn-followblock/dkbn...

My experience would indeed be so much better with a content filter I can control, yes.

Also would be nice to be able store notes or short blurbs about usernames that will show up in the app. Maybe as a tooltip?

Re: Show HN: A native macOS client for Hacker News, built with SwiftUI

#12

> Built-in ad blocking — a precompiled WKContentRuleList blocks 14 major ad networks (DoubleClick, Google Syndication, Criteo, Taboola, Outbrain, Amazon ads, etc.) right in the WebKit layer. No extensions needed. Toggleable in settings This is a good start, but I think a better approach would be to piggyback off of ublock origin's lists. Hopefully less maintenance that way too.

Sweet, I will have a look. Thank you.

Re: Show HN: A native macOS client for Hacker News, built with SwiftUI

#13
If my work PC was a Mac I'd give it a try!

One thing: I really like the colors of Hacker News. It feels weird to me when Hacker News is presented in other colors. If I were to use your app I'd want to change the color pallet back to what it looks like on HN.

> Getting macOS code signing and notarization working in CI was honestly the hardest part of this project. If anyone is distributing a macOS app outside the App Store via GitHub Actions, I'm happy to answer questions — the workflow is fully open source.

Yes, in a past life I shipped a Mac application. This aspect is always a little bit of black magic. I will say that the Windows installer situation was a lot worse, IMO.

Re: Show HN: A native macOS client for Hacker News, built with SwiftUI

#15
post #14

It is great! Very native feel and it's quick too. I don't have to keep a Safari window open all the time...the ram usage of this app is around 10% of a Safari window with a single tab. A font size setting would be nice, I found the font is a bit small.

Thanks for the feedback! I will prioritize working on allowing users to adjust the font.

Re: Show HN: A native macOS client for Hacker News, built with SwiftUI

#16

> Built-in ad blocking — a precompiled WKContentRuleList blocks 14 major ad networks (DoubleClick, Google Syndication, Criteo, Taboola, Outbrain, Amazon ads, etc.) right in the WebKit layer. No extensions needed. Toggleable in settings This is a good start, but I think a better approach would be to piggyback off of ublock origin's lists. Hopefully less maintenance that way too.

Sweet, I will have a look. Thank you.

I love the idea but what keeps me in the browser is things like uBlock Origin + uMatrix + a bunch of other extensions that I know keep me safer. On top of that, Firefox has anti-fingerprinting.

I don't necessarily have a ready solution to offer, but these are the obstacles preventing someone like me from being able to use apps like this comfortably and safely, especially knowing we are entering a transitional period where new apps are being vibe-coded every day and formal verification has not yet caught up.

Even if a given app has had every line of code reviewed by a human, or has well-defined interfaces that allow for sloppier internal code, how do I know that without cracking it open myself or asking an agent to help me audit it?

Re: Show HN: A native macOS client for Hacker News, built with SwiftUI

#17

> Built-in ad blocking — a precompiled WKContentRuleList blocks 14 major ad networks (DoubleClick, Google Syndication, Criteo, Taboola, Outbrain, Amazon ads, etc.) right in the WebKit layer. No extensions needed. Toggleable in settings This is a good start, but I think a better approach would be to piggyback off of ublock origin's lists. Hopefully less maintenance that way too.

> I think a better approach would be to piggyback off of ublock origin's lists

That won’t work. uBlock origin is licensed GPLv3 (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock), this code is MIT licensed (https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News).

Re: Show HN: A native macOS client for Hacker News, built with SwiftUI

#19

No No. Don’t do that, don’t make it better and easy to use. I’m already addicted and spent more time than I should. Now, this app that I can keep it open all day! Btw, can you allow me to set the font-family, font-size, etc. for the interface? I can’t even do the default `CMD + +` to zoom in.

> I’m already addicted and spent more time than I should.

noprocrast + maxvisit + minaway on https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Brajeshwar is your friend for this :)

> In my profile, what is noprocrast? - It's a way to help you prevent yourself from spending too much time on HN. If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Re: Show HN: A native macOS client for Hacker News, built with SwiftUI

#20

Looks nice but I don't have/want a Mac so I can't really use it. Support for other platforms would be nice.

Supposedly people are raving about Swift being cross-platform nowadays, this seems like a simple example where the Swifties can prove how useful/practical that is in practice.
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