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Hackers is a fast, elegant, and accessible way to read Hacker News on iPhone and iPad.
It’s open source (MIT), rebuilt from the ground up in version 5.0, and obsessively focused on performance, readability, and accessibility.
- Thread mastery — collapse/expand nested comments; swipe or tap to move smoothly through long discussions.
- Fresh design — clean typography, dark mode, thumbnails on posts, and distraction-free reading.
- Native gestures — swipe to upvote/downvote posts and comments.
- New Active feed — see what’s trending on Hacker News in real time.
- Platform native — iPad multitasking, Safari View Controller, Share Extension (“Open in Hackers”), Apple Silicon Mac, and visionOS support.
- Accessibility first — VoiceOver support, full Dynamic Type, high-contrast themes.
- Privacy-respecting — no tracking, no ads, no data collection.
- App Store: Hackers for Hacker News
- TestFlight (beta): Join here
Requires iOS/iPadOS 15 or later. Also runs on Apple Silicon Macs and visionOS.
- Complete rewrite with modern iOS frameworks
- Cleaner UI and smoother navigation
- New Active feed
- Faster pagination and rendering
- Improved comment collapsing/expanding
- Accessibility upgrades across the app
- Foundation laid for future features and stability
See the full changelog on the Releases page.
Hackers is written in Swift.
To build locally:
- Clone the repo
- Open
Hackers.xcodeprojin Xcode 26+ - Build and run on iOS Simulator or device
Contributions are welcome — see below.
We welcome issues and pull requests!
- Check the issue tracker for open tasks
- Please follow the Swift style defined in
.swiftlint.yml - Add tests where reasonable (we use Swift Testing)
Hackers collects no data.
The App Store privacy label is Data Not Collected.
Hackers is released under the MIT License.