Hacker Pulse: HN Reader

Hacker Pulse: HN Reader

Read Hacker News, beautifully

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Released
September 8, 2026
Updated
October 27, 2026

Features

Hacker Pulse: HN Reader screenshot #1 for iPhone
Hacker Pulse: HN Reader screenshot #2 for iPhone
Hacker Pulse: HN Reader screenshot #3 for iPhone
Hacker Pulse: HN Reader screenshot #4 for iPhone
Hacker Pulse: HN Reader screenshot #5 for iPhone
Hacker Pulse: HN Reader screenshot #6 for iPhone
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About

Hacker Pulse is a Hacker News reader built for reading — the article and the discussion, together, beautifully. THE ARTICLE, RE-TYPESET Every story is fetched, parsed and laid out natively — no web view, no reader-mode shortcut, no external service. Set your type size, and with Premium the typeface, line height, margins, spacing and paper colour; images, code blocks, tables, quotes and lists all survive the trip. The discussion continues below the article in the same scroll, and your place in a long read is remembered. BUILT FOR LONG THREADS The whole discussion arrives at once. Fold a subtree, step between conversations with the navigator, pull a deep reply's ancestors into view, open any comment on its own screen, or search inside the thread. Hold a comment to copy, share, translate, block or report. YOURS TO KEEP Read state, saved stories and reading positions live on your device, and a mis-swipe can be undone. With Premium, a saved story is downloaded whole — article and discussion — and stays readable offline until you remove it. TRANSLATE ON DEVICE With Premium, on iOS 26 and later, articles and comments translate entirely on your device. Nothing is sent to a server. The interface itself speaks nine languages — English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語, 한국어, Français, Deutsch, Русский and العربية — including full right-to-left layout. TWELVE LISTS, A WIDGET, AN iPad LAYOUT Top, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN and Jobs from the official API, kept on disk so a cold launch is instant; Active, Classic and the front page from any day back to 2007; three score thresholds; and two lists of comments rather than stories. A widget in three Home Screen sizes — four on iPad — and one for the Lock Screen follows the list you choose. On iPad, a real two-column layout — list beside reader. TAKE PART, IF YOU WANT TO Reading needs no account. Sign in with your own Hacker News account and you can also upvote, downvote, reply, submit a story, and edit or delete your own comments — without leaving for a browser. Your password is never saved; only the session, in your keychain, until you sign out. QUIET BY DESIGN Block users, and with Premium mute title keywords or whole sites. No analytics, no tracking, no ads; the one server of ours the app ever talks to hands out reader-engine updates and learns nothing about you. Your reading habits are nobody's business — including ours. FREE TO READ, ONE PURCHASE FOR THE REST Every list, every discussion, search, profiles, your account and the reader itself are free, with no ads and no time limit. One purchase — no subscription — unlocks Premium: your own type and paper, saved stories kept offline, iCloud sync and library import, on-device translation, read aloud, automatic archive lookup, discussion detail, hiding read stories, four more colours with their icons, and keyword and site filters. One purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac, and Family Sharing shares it. AN HONEST NOTE Hacker News publishes no API for signing in, voting, replying or submitting, so Hacker Pulse does those the only way the site allows: by posting its own web forms, exactly as a browser does. They work today and could be broken by a redesign tomorrow. Hacker News itself has no downvote for stories, and it allows editing and deleting only for a couple of hours after posting. Hacker Pulse first shipped in 2012. Version 2.0 is a complete rewrite that keeps the original's look — the same rust-and-orange chrome, the same pulse — and the same two-finger flick to switch between light and dark. Hacker Pulse is an independent app, not affiliated with or endorsed by Y Combinator. Story and comment data come from the public Hacker News and Algolia APIs.
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What's New in Hacker Pulse

2.1.1

October 27, 2026

New • Full-width reading on iPhone Duo: on the cover display, and on the inner display shared with another app, the article, the discussion and a comment on its own screen run under the bar down the side of the screen, with the page's own buttons beside the title. Turn it off in Settings › Folding Display › Full-Width Pages • Hide Back Button with Title Bar: on a full-width page, the back button goes as the title bar shrinks away while you read on, and so do the time and signal where they stand in the bar beside the page, leaving the corner above the text clear. Scroll back up a little and they all return. Turn it on in Settings › Folding Display Improved • Opened and held upright, iPhone Duo's inner display shows the list and the article in turn across the whole display, rather than an empty page waiting for a story • The image viewer's close and share buttons are glass on iOS 26 and later, and on iPhone Duo they move into the bar down the side • A comment's text now starts at the same edge as the article above it, rather than a little further in • The jump between an article and its discussion changes direction with a transition rather than all at once • More pages read whole: bylines, captions, changelogs, accordions and lists keep their place, and a report split into sections is read to its last line; a footer, a sponsor's card, a paywall badge or the section titles in a search dropdown are no longer read as the article or its author Fixed • Opening or folding iPhone Duo just as you go into a page or back out of one no longer quits the app • After iPhone Duo is opened or turned on its side, the jump between article and discussion no longer appears twice • Swiping back on iPhone Duo's cover display no longer leaves the tabs askew over the page • An article or a discussion reopened where you left off no longer jumps as you scroll back up • Pulling to refresh a long article no longer sets it shaking up and down for seconds Most of this version is for iPhone Duo — and thank you again to everyone who sent in a page that read wrong.

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$4.99

Hacker Pulse Premium

Reader type, offline, sync, translation

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