I just shipped biggest updates to Hackers since 2017: 4.0. A lot of changes come with this new versions, some highlights include:
- You can now login to your Hacker News account in the app
- That means swipe right to up vote posts and comments
- And swipe left to collapse a whole comment thread
I put in a big effort in the past couple months to tidy up the code base ready for iOS 13. If you didn’t know, Hackers is an open source project. You can see all the Issues and Pull Requests that went into this update in the 4.0 Milestone, and if you want to get your hands dirty, there are a few easy to pick up features in the list.
Hackers has reached an interesting place; it has been the top result when you search for “Hacker News” on the App Store for a while. It’s the most popular it’s ever been, even though there are dozens of competing apps. I think one of the reasons Hackers has risen to the top of the pile is my persistance since 2013. There was a period between 2014-15 that I experimented with paid pricing, ranging from 99p to £2.99, and there was a small chance than it could make me a small amount of recurring revenue. But I was never really happy with charging people to use a pet project, and I had wasn’t deluded enough to think that an iOS Hacker News app could do any more than fill a niche.
Since 2016 I’ve tried to update it regularly, adding support for new iOS versions, iPad support, making each interaction with the app slicker with every release. It’s also a exercise book for my own programming skills, something I use to keep my tools sharpened.
I want to thank the people who’ve taken the time to contribute to the app, and also to all the users who left a review or sent me a kind message. It’s really appreciated.
Here’s to the next six years.
Hi, I'm Weiran Zhang. I work as a Senior Engineering Manager at Capital One. I have a passion for technology and building thriving software teams. This blog is where I write about things I find interesting. You can follow me on Mastodon.