Hacker News, newest first, on your Mac.
HN Reader is a native macOS app that lists Hacker News stories in reverse-chronological order and remembers what you have already seen. The web version that used to live here has been retired.
- Points filter — set a minimum score and only stories above it show up
- Unread divider — a line separates stories that are new since your last refresh from the ones you have seen
- Background checks — the app looks for new stories every few minutes and shows the count on the dock icon
- Hide AI stories — an experimental filter classifies titles with the on-device Apple Intelligence model, nothing leaves your Mac
- Read-only and private — reads the public Hacker News API, no account, no tracking
Install
With Homebrew:
brew tap tbeseda/tap
brew install --cask hn-readerOr download HNReader.zip from the latest release and move the app to your Applications folder. The app is not signed, so on first open macOS will ask you to allow it under System Settings › Privacy & Security. The Homebrew cask handles that step for you.
Requires macOS 26 Tahoe. Free and open source.