HackerWeb - Hacker News client3.0.1 - App Store

HackerWeb is a super-clean Hacker News app built for maximum readability and has a lean set of features to optimize the reading experience.

It’s created specifically with iOS design guidelines in mind, so it feels native and blends well with the operating system.

It has a simple set of features that are usually invisible:

- Dual Web and Comments tabs for easy switching between the story’s web page and the list of comments
- Revolutionary comments thread UI for easy navigation, with smart collapsing to prevent being overwhelmed by too many comments
- Automatic Dark mode, respecting the system’s appearance settings.
- Smart indentations and formatting for comments, complementing the existing limited formatting from Hacker News.
- Automatic syntax highlighting for code blocks in comments, with best-effort programming language detection.
- Allow interactions like upvoting and replying, which opens up web view with login information and sessions stored in itself, instead of the app.
- Comment’s “Thread view” to list all parent comments of a comment, on a flat list, for easy reading instead of manually drilling down the nested comments.
- “Share as Image” for comments, which allows sharing of a specific comment, optionally including the parent comments and/or story, as an image.

HackerWeb is an unofficial Hacker News client, built with React Native and Expo.

This is a passion side project for learning and experimenting ideas. Since 2012.

Open-sourced: https://github.com/cheeaun/hackerweb-native-2

Version History Bug fixes 3.0.1 12/02/2025 Updated for iOS 26 3.0.0 11/18/2025 - Upgrade to Expo SDK 45
- New HTML parser
- More readability formatting for lists, block quotes, and inline code
- New native modal view to open HN story links
- Add underlines to hyperlinks
- Add option to enable interactions like upvoting and commenting (inside web views)
- Add option to enable automatic syntax highlighting for code blocks
- Subtle UI hints for identifying depth of comment thread modals
- Large header for Settings screen
- Full screen gesture for Story screen
- Reduce haptics
- Expandable parent comment in Comments screen
- Add ‘View Thread’ visualization
- Add ‘Share as Image’ 2.1.0 06/14/2022 Fix crash bug. 2.0.3 04/15/2022 - Upgrade to Expo SDK 43
- Strip indents from code blocks
- Tiny bug fixes 2.0.2 11/23/2021 - Slightly better support for iPad
- Significantly smaller download and build size
- Tiny bug fixes 2.0.1 06/17/2021 Everything rebuilt from scratch (since 2016).
- Supports notch
- Supports dark mode
- Revolutionary comments thread UI
- Easy-switch between web view and comments view 2.0 12/13/2020 Hello there.

This is the first ever update for HackerWeb. I've squashed a few tiny little bugs here and there, hopefully you wouldn't even notice them. I mean, by the time you read this, all those bugs that you should have noticed are *gone*. Never gonna see them again. Oh well, I've also added a few UI "links" that you might not notice. If you notice the changes, fine, go ahead and look at them. I mean, those changes are supposed to be *subtle* but sometimes it's difficult to "hide" them. Anyway, a *huge* thanks for continue using this app. It means a lot to me. As always, any feedback is welcomed. Tweet me @cheeaun or send me an email. I'll definitely read your feedback but no guarantees that I'll reply, because you know, life.

Thanks for reading. 1.1 04/14/2016 1.0 03/01/2016