I've been using Octal on iOS and https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News on Mac that was showcased here 4 months ago.

Got to give you kudos for the Accessibility enablement though - while some of it is baked-in support, it’s worth appreciating your work in whittling down whatever else can be supported.

Here is a comparison for the two on Mac, if you're interested. https://gq6o9uxicyzuw8es6qxe78bnml9wc3re.pastehtml.dev/#core

HN is quite nice inside a desktop browser, but mobile browsers are a different story altogether. But even there, it fares slightly better than old.reddit.com. So looks like I should dust off that xcode.

Looks great, do you plan on publishing to the AppStore?

Well done. As a colour blind person (and iOS developer) I am thrilled anytime an app doesn’t rely on colour cues alone. I’ve used Hack and Octal but I am going to give your app a try.

I love to see an open source implementation.

I’ve been using [Octal](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal-for-hacker-news/id130888...) for a while now but it’s not open source.

Would you be opposed to a pull request adding login/posting support? I think the way it works in Octal is webview for login, snatching the cookies out of the webview, then using the same posting endpoints as the website with the cookie.

Are you planning to release Android version as well ?

Any chance of HN getting angry about this, à la Reddit?

I read HN on my phone every day and never really settled on a reader, so I wrote my own and finally tidied it up enough to put out there.

It's plain SwiftUI with no third-party dependencies. A few things I spent the most time on:

Comments are parsed and drawn as native text instead of being dumped into a web view. Links, italics, quotes and code blocks behave like the rest of the OS, text selection works, and threads collapse instantly. The whole comment tree comes back from the Algolia API in a single request, which felt a lot nicer than walking the Firebase API node by node.

Accessibility. Nothing depends on color on its own, so points, read state and selection all carry a shape or an icon too. VoiceOver reads each story as one coherent element with proper actions, Dynamic Type and Reduce Motion are respected, and there's a color-blind mode. The first-run setup actually looks at your device's accessibility settings, switches on the matching options, and tells you what it changed instead of making you hunt for them.

Then the usual things you'd expect: Top/New/Best/Ask/Show/Jobs, search, saved stories, read tracking, an in-app reader, light and dark, and a handful of accent colors.

It only talks to the public HN APIs, there's no account and nothing is tracked. Source and screenshots are in the repo.

I'd most like feedback on the comment rendering and the accessibility choices, since those were the parts I cared about getting right. Happy to answer anything about how it's put together.

I've been using Octal on iOS and https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News on Mac that was showcased here 4 months ago.

Got to give you kudos for the Accessibility enablement though - while some of it is baked-in support, it’s worth appreciating your work in whittling down whatever else can be supported.

Here is a comparison for the two on Mac, if you're interested. https://gq6o9uxicyzuw8es6qxe78bnml9wc3re.pastehtml.dev/#core

Well done. As a colour blind person (and iOS developer) I am thrilled anytime an app doesn’t rely on colour cues alone. I’ve used Hack and Octal but I am going to give your app a try.

I love to see an open source implementation.

I’ve been using [Octal](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal-for-hacker-news/id130888...) for a while now but it’s not open source.

Are you planning to release Android version as well ?

Looks great, do you plan on publishing to the AppStore?

If it is possible and Apple accepts the app.

Any chance of HN getting angry about this, à la Reddit?

Ok. I don't need or want this.

Doesn't mean others can't find it useful. e.g. I bet some portion of users would appreciate Dark mode without resorting to CSS tweaks. /rant

I read HN on my phone every day and never really settled on a reader, so I wrote my own and finally tidied it up enough to put out there.

It's plain SwiftUI with no third-party dependencies. A few things I spent the most time on:

Then the usual things you'd expect: Top/New/Best/Ask/Show/Jobs, search, saved stories, read tracking, an in-app reader, light and dark, and a handful of accent colors.

It only talks to the public HN APIs, there's no account and nothing is tracked. Source and screenshots are in the repo.

I'd most like feedback on the comment rendering and the accessibility choices, since those were the parts I cared about getting right. Happy to answer anything about how it's put together.

Looks great. Does it support pinch zoom like webpage hn does

Thanks for the app. Wanted to remind you of the HN guidelines though: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans.

If it is possible and Apple accepts the app.

Ok. I don't need or want this.

Doesn't mean others can't find it useful. e.g. I bet some portion of users would appreciate Dark mode without resorting to CSS tweaks. /rant

Thanks for the app. Wanted to remind you of the HN guidelines though: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans.

Looks great. Does it support pinch zoom like webpage hn does

Ember

A native Hacker News reader for iPhone, iPad, and Mac — calm, fast, and built for everyone.

Ember is a SwiftUI app that reads Hacker News the way a native app should: threaded comments rendered natively, clean reading typography, a personalized first-run setup, full dark mode, offline reading, and accessibility treated as a feature rather than an afterthought. One codebase adapts from a tab bar on iPhone to a three-pane layout on Mac and iPad.

Highlights

Every feed — Top, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN, and Jobs, switchable from a pinned filter bar.
Native comment threads — Hacker News comment HTML is parsed into native text with tappable links, italics, block quotes, and code blocks. Threads are collapsible with depth indicators, and the whole tree loads in a single request.
Smart onboarding — a short first-run flow that reads your device's appearance and accessibility settings, pre-configures the app to match, and shows a live preview as you choose a theme, accent, and home feed.
Search — full-text search across Hacker News by relevance or recency.
Saved for later — bookmark any story; saved stories are stored on device and work offline.
Offline reading — feeds, stories, and comment threads you've viewed are cached to disk, so Ember keeps working without a connection and falls back to the cache automatically. Cache size is shown in Settings and can be cleared.
Read tracking — visited stories are dimmed so you can pick up where you left off.
Runs on the desktop — the same app runs on Mac (via Mac Catalyst) and large iPad with a native three-pane layout: a source-list sidebar, a story list, and the discussion side by side.
Reading typography — body and comments are set in Inter with comfortable leading and a constrained measure, so long threads are easy to read.
In-app reading — open links in an in-app Safari view with optional Reader mode, or hand off to your default browser.
Share — a standard share button on every story (article or discussion link).
Profiles — view any user's karma, join date, about, and recent submissions.
Thoughtful design — a warm, hand-tuned color system, full light/dark support, six accent themes, haptics, and fluid animations.

Accessibility

Accessibility is a first-class part of Ember, with particular care for color vision.

Never color alone. Status is always carried by an icon, shape, or text in addition to color — points and comment counts pair an SF Symbol with their value, read state shows a checkmark, and selection states use rings and checkmarks.
Color-blind friendly cues. A dedicated setting (auto-enabled when the system "Differentiate Without Color" is on) adds explicit non-color indicators throughout.
VoiceOver. Story rows, comments, and controls expose meaningful labels, hints, traits, and custom actions; each story reads as a single coherent element.
Dynamic Type. Typography scales with the system text size, and layouts — including comment indentation — adapt at accessibility sizes.
Reduce Motion. Animations and the loading shimmer are minimized when Reduce Motion is enabled.
Underlined links. Links in comments can be underlined so they remain identifiable without relying on color.
The onboarding adapts. On first launch Ember detects VoiceOver, Reduce Motion, Differentiate Without Color, Bold Text, and large text, turns on the matching options, and tells you exactly what it changed.

Screenshots

Feed	Story & comments	Search

Settings	Onboarding · welcome	Onboarding · accessibility

Architecture

Ember is pure SwiftUI with no third-party dependencies.

UI: SwiftUI, targeting iOS 18, with a Mac build via Mac Catalyst. The root layout adapts on horizontal size class: a TabView on iPhone, a three-column NavigationSplitView on Mac and regular-width iPad.
State: the Observation framework (@Observable) for view models and stores.
Concurrency: async/await networking; feed pages fetch concurrently with TaskGroup and tolerate individual missing items.
Persistence & offline: UserDefaults for settings and read state; a JSON file for saved stories; a bounded JSON disk cache (DiskCache, an actor) that stores feed lists, items, and comment trees and is served as a fallback when the network is unavailable.
Typography: the bundled Inter variable font for reading text, scaled with Dynamic Type; the system font for dense metadata and code.
Data sources:
- The official Hacker News Firebase API for feeds, items, and users.
- The Algolia HN Search API for full comment trees (one request per thread) and search.

Project layout

Sources/
  App/              App entry, root tab view, environment wiring, in-app Safari
  Models/           HNItem, HNUser, Feed, Algolia models
  Networking/       HNService protocol, live client, mock for previews
  Stores/           Settings, bookmarks, read state
  DesignSystem/     Theme, typography, haptics, reusable components
  Utilities/        HTML comment renderer, relative time
  Features/
    Feed/           Feed list, filter bar, view model
    StoryDetail/    Story header + threaded collapsible comments
    Search/         Search with relevance/recency
    Saved/          Bookmarks
    Settings/       Appearance, reading, accessibility, data, about
    User/           Profiles
    Onboarding/     Smart first-run personalization
    Desktop/        NavigationSplitView layout for Mac / large iPad
Resources/          Assets, app icon, Info.plist, bundled Inter font
Tools/              Icon generator, screenshot device-framer

Getting started

Requirements

macOS with Xcode 16 or newer (built and tested against Xcode 26 / iOS 26 SDK).
XcodeGen to generate the project: brew install xcodegen.

Build and run

# 1. Generate the Xcode project from project.yml
xcodegen generate

# 2. Open it
open Ember.xcodeproj

# 3. Select the Ember scheme and an iPhone simulator, then Run.

Or build from the command line:

xcodegen generate

# iPhone / iPad simulator
xcodebuild -project Ember.xcodeproj -scheme Ember \
  -sdk iphonesimulator \
  -destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 17 Pro' build

# Mac (Mac Catalyst)
xcodebuild -project Ember.xcodeproj -scheme Ember \
  -destination 'platform=macOS,variant=Mac Catalyst' build

The generated Ember.xcodeproj is intentionally git-ignored — regenerate it with xcodegen generate after pulling.

Regenerating assets

swift Tools/GenerateIcon.swift                                   # app icon
swift Tools/FrameScreenshot.swift in.png docs/screenshots/x.png  # device-framed screenshot

Design notes

The comment HTML renderer is a small purpose-built parser for the limited tag set Hacker News emits (<p>, <i>, <b>, <a>, <pre><code>, <br>, and entities), producing native AttributedString blocks rather than relying on a web view.
The full comment tree is fetched from Algolia in one request and flattened into a list with depth, so collapsing a thread is instant.
Colors are appearance-adaptive tokens defined in code, so light and dark are both deliberately tuned rather than auto-derived.

Acknowledgements

Hacker News and its public Firebase API.
Algolia for Hacker News search and comment data.

Ember is an independent project and is not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator.

License

Released under the MIT License.

Hacker Times