Octal for Hacker News 9+

Social developer & tech news

Daniel Wu

Designed for iPad

    • Free
    • Offers In-App Purchases

Screenshots

Description

Discover and discuss the latest stories from Y Combinator's Hacker News. Your community-powered source for news in technology, computer science, programming, and more.

Octal is your go-to news feed for breaking tech news, putting the biggest stories of the day with engaging discussion right in the palm of your hand.

Beautifully designed for both iPhone and iPad, Octal focuses on what you care most about: design, speed, and usability. It's the modern, full-featured Hacker News app you've been looking for.

You'll find an unparalleled, community-powered source of stories about anything ranging from self-driving cars to the latest Apple gadgets. Octal has all the features you need, including the ability to vote on stories, submit posts, add comments, and manage favorites. Best of all, it's free of all that annoying stuff, like ads, subscriptions, and tracking. If you want to keep up to date with the latest popular and trending tech headlines, Octal is made for you.

• NEWS FOR NERDS: Read and share the most important stories in the tech world, submitted and voted on by Hacker News users. Stories are constantly changing, and often focus on areas like programming, startups, technology industry and companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, etc.), and key technology categories such as mobile, computers, internet, design, coding, and security.

• ENGAGE AND VOTE: Vote on stories and comments you like and dislike, and report stories with objectionable content. Found something you need to read later? Add it to your favorites!

• DISCUSS THE NEWS: Read and engage with stories by viewing their discussions with a fast, fully-threaded, collapsible, buttery smooth comments experience. Add your own comments. If you're a fast reader, you can instantly jump to the next top-level comment thread with a single tap.

• SUBMIT LINKS: Got a cool story or news link to share to Hacker News? Submit new posts directly in the app. You can also share links directly to Octal to quickly submit them.

• SEARCH STORIES: Search Hacker News stories and sort search results by relevance or date.

• JOIN THE COMMUNITY: Log in or register to Hacker News to easily track your karma, activity and favorites. Browse user profiles, including their karma, about, activity, and favorites.

• THEMEABLE: Total Dark Mode support. Turn on 'True Black' to use a pure RGB #000 background color - perfect for devices with OLED displays.

• CUSTOMIZE YOUR NEWS FEED: Tap or swipe between story filters such as 'Top Stories', 'Ask HN', 'Show HN', 'Best Stories', 'New Stories', and 'Jobs'. Rearrange them to your desire.

• ACCESSIBLE: Increase or decrease the text size to one that's comfortable for you, or enable 'Dynamic Type' to use the system's 'Larger Text' font size. And VoiceOver is fully supported!

• DEEP LINK SUPPORT: You can open Hacker News links in Octal by sharing them to Octal. You can also use apps like 'Opener'. Most Hacker News links starting with 'octal://' are supported!

• READY FOR ANY SCREEN: Octal looks great on iPads with an optional 2-pane interface. Say goodbye to wasted screen real estate.

• WEB BROWSER SUPPORT: Open links in your web browser of choice.

• AD-FREE, PRIVACY AWARE: No ads, no subscriptions, and no tracking.

ABOUT OCTAL PREMIUM:
To unlock advanced features, including the ability to submit posts, add comments, manage favorites, switch themes, change app icons, use custom gestures, and more, you can buy Octal Premium via an In-App Purchase. Octal Premium is a one-time payment and there is no subscription. Purchases support the development of Octal, which is developed solely by me!

ABOUT HACKER NEWS:
Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. It is run by Paul Graham's investment fund and startup incubator, Y Combinator. In general, its content can be submitted is defined as "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". You can think of Hacker News as reddit for tech. It's the go-to news aggregator for tech.

SUPPORT:
Found a bug or have a feature request? Create an Issue on Github, or e-mail me: https://github.com/dangwu/Octal/issues

What’s New

Version 4.15.1

• Updated 'Share HN link' option to share the URL only.
• Restored story ranks when using the 'Compact' story layout.

Ratings and Reviews

4.8 out of 5
2.3K Ratings

2.3K Ratings

HCWes ,

Great HN viewer with smart UX, missing just a few features

I’ve really enjoyed using this app! The experience of reading through linked pages and comment threads is very smooth. There are some optional quality-of-life features that can be toggled in settings (tab refresh, pure-black UI for OLEDs, quick collapse, etc.); these are nice features that really make interacting with the app feel fluid, and enabling users to enable/disable them according to preference is evidence of very thoughtful design.

My only (minor) complaint: the app doesn’t seem to respect certain account settings, specifically regarding whether or not to hide “dead”/downvoted comments. It’s not a dealbreaker by any means, but I would appreciate being able to see comments according to my account preferences.

Overall, a terrific app - great work!

probablynotben ,

Incredible

Without a doubt, this is the best HN client on iOS. It’s sleek, fast, and there are plenty of settings to tweak if you so desire. And no ads!

The developer also seems very responsive to feedback - I posted a tiny styling issue to Octal’s github and an update with a fix was pushed to the App Store in less than 72 hours.

I’d love to see some custom icons in the Premium version down the line, but that’s about the only nitpick I can find, and I found it to be worth the price already without them!

Developer Response ,

I appreciate the review. Thanks for the feedback! Alternative icons are now available in Octal.

AnthOlei ,

Great app, daily user

Bought premium not because I like to comment but that the app is so great I felt like not paying was a crime.

One feature request - please add a “swipe left to dismiss” when I click on a post. I click on a post and the post comes in from the right - after I am done reading my finger needs to go to the top of the screen to click the back button. I’d like to be able to just swipe LTR to go back to the posts list.

Thanks!

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the review! Swiping to go back is already a feature in the app! You can even enable the “Easy Pop” gesture to swipe to go back from any location - not just the left edge. Please contact me if it isn’t working for you.

App Privacy

The developer, Daniel Wu, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Collected

The developer does not collect any data from this app.

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Supports

  • Family Sharing

    Some in‑app purchases, including subscriptions, may be shareable with your family group when Family Sharing is enabled.

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