2/20/2026 at 3:26:55 PM
Congrats and building and releasing something. I guess for reading things like this, I'm just a browser kind-of guy. But I still appreciate youre building a NATIVE app that's using around 85MB of working memory (according to my Activity Monotor), and not some Electron thing.I'm probably just a anti-app guy, but I tried it out.
First thing I went to do was CMD-F to search for some strings in the comments section.
Actually, the real first thing I did, was click on the left-side article preview on the text that said "1 hr ago | 63 comments" thinking it'd navigate me to the comments. See, I like my native hyper-links.
by taude
2/20/2026 at 4:28:28 PM
I've never understood the concept of an app wrapper for a link aggregator (HN, reddit, etc). The whole goal is to provide links to external sources, and now I'm browsing the web in a limited web browser without all my extensions etc.Am I missing some core concept here? Why would I want to browse the web in this app as opposed to a web browser?
by luma
2/20/2026 at 4:54:24 PM
As someone who used to use native RSS readers a ton back in the day, the limited web browser usually isn't a problem for just reading a few articles.I like native apps for things, even link aggregators, because my I want to use my OS's native window management and app management instead of just shoving everything into a browser tab, of which I already have too many. Because then it's just CMD+Tab to Chrome, and then figure out which of the 20+ tabs I'm trying to get to instead of CMD+Tab directly to that specific app.
Anyway, just a bit of old man yelling at cloud but I've always disliked the proliferation of "web app all the things." Might as well not even use a desktop OS at this point and just have a full screen browser window and call it a day.
by thewebguyd
2/20/2026 at 9:32:16 PM
If you want to use your native window manager, why don’t you just disable tabs and have every link open a new browser window?by cortesoft
2/20/2026 at 10:24:06 PM
On MacOS that would be an amazing poor UX, cmd+tab works on Applications, not specific windows.Switching windows within the same Application is cmd+` ; and only works on the current workspace.
by dijit
2/20/2026 at 5:00:42 PM
I'm trying to understand your position here. An app with it's own way to manage multiple browser windows is better, because you have too many tabs open in your browser. If you have multiple links open, the tab management is now a problem in your desktop app instead of the browser. If you don't, then you don't have to manage tabs anyway. What does this solve that a separate browser window doesn't, except not having any way to add extensions like ad blockers or tampermonkey scripts etc?by luma
2/20/2026 at 6:31:41 PM
if you read HN a lot, then it makes sense to have have native app for ityou might not be aware of how how much power is at your fingertips on a Mac with a tool like Hammerspoon plus some other utilities
obviously you can bind the app with it's own shortcut without calling my entire browser, but I can move it to any part of any of my monitors easy with my one handed shortcuts: https://gist.github.com/pazimzadeh/b1c70f5f205d0b63264e7c021... you get the gist https://github.com/peterklijn/hammerspoon-shiftit
I guess you could make a web app or app clip but I think this is a cool project. would be good to have a theme engine.
Look at NetNewsWire how good a native app of this kind can be. NNW in particular has great shortcuts, like or opening links in the native browser, and read/unread functionality
by pazimzadeh
2/20/2026 at 5:08:33 PM
I usually don't have multiple HN articles open at a time, but I can see how that would just be replacing one problem (too many browser tabs) for a worse problem (too many, now limited, browser tabs).It's just nice to have HN as it's own app instead of just another tab in a single app. Same reason I use mail.app vs. webmail, native music app vs the web player, etc.
PWAs also solve the problem, more or less, but it is nice to have something native.
by thewebguyd
2/20/2026 at 9:59:59 PM
> But I still appreciate youre building a NATIVE app that's using around 85MB of working memory (according to my Activity Monotor), and not some Electron thing.Well, assuming you have a browser open anyway, you're still using more memory than if HN is running in another browser tab.
In fact, if every website that you use frequently had its own native app, that would use more memory than you're using now.
by amelius
2/20/2026 at 10:08:23 PM
You should probably check that.hackernews tab uses 120MiB (Sandboxed) in Chrome for me, and HN is a pretty lean site by all accounts.
by dijit
2/20/2026 at 10:31:18 PM
In Firefox (Linux) it says 34MB.by amelius
2/20/2026 at 3:57:53 PM
If you're looking for an alt frontend on the web (+PWA), check out https://hcker.newsThere will be a way to do user actions like upvote/comment/favorite/flag soon.
by postalcoder