Why doesn't HN have a mobile app? I think its much more convenient to access from a mobile app. My reddit usage grew massively when the reddit mobile came upto on par with other third party apps over last couple of years. |
Why doesn't HN have a mobile app? I think its much more convenient to access from a mobile app. My reddit usage grew massively when the reddit mobile came upto on par with other third party apps over last couple of years. |
Without ads, the incentives aren’t such that they should want to drive excessive engagement.
Maybe a design decision to reduce infra load.
I find this an interesting topic. Since many users have requested my websites have an app, but I'm loathed to go through all the hoops of the app stores.
I’m also not sure how an HN app (buried among the trillions of other in the respective app store) would necessarily be any more "discoverable" than the site itself.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal-for-hacker-news/id130888...
Mostly from discoverability and experience wise.
What's really missing is a userscript like on imageboards where under each comment there's a link showing who replied to it, with auto expansion preview of in depth reply hierarchy. But honestly, it's not that hard to do now. Just give the task to Codex or Claude Code.
For those seeking ways to track replies to their messages, HNRSS[0] exists.
I don't even visit HN, I just pull the filtered RSS feed, and engage where I feel I'm interested or can provide value.
and that's a good thing?
I was thinking from a product standpoint, why wouldn't they want one if it increases usage.
The experience drops there for me. I once forgot to check back on a post and saw it had relevant questions about a year later.
This prevents a lot of the long back and forths, or getting pulled into an old conversation, that would often happen on other platforms with notifications.
It makes a reply more of an intentional act. With notifications it feels more like a task that needs to be completed.
How about you saw the comment number go up and you open and now have to scroll entire thread to find where the new comment is at.
Here on HN, if I have a popular comment, I can see that it generated a lot of discussion and tend to scroll through it and read/skim it like I would most other comments, especially once they start nesting further.
The net result of the HN model feels like less stress, as notifications imply some form of obligation. Why would I be getting a notification if it wasn’t important?