Better HN

Better HN is a free Chrome extension that rebuilds the Hacker News UI from the ground up. Same content, same community, same HN login, completely different reading experience.

No account needed beyond your existing HN credentials. No data ever leaves your browser. Settings sync through Chrome's built-in storage. The extension talks directly to news.ycombinator.com and nowhere else. Completely local, completely free, forever.

Reading experience

The feed renders in three modes: cards, list, and table. Each one is optimized for a different context. Cards for leisurely reading, list for scanning, table for power users who want density.

Sort by points, comments, or velocity (stories gaining traction fast). Set a minimum-points threshold to filter noise. Search by title, domain, or author. Scroll infinitely or page, your call.

Every story gets a hover preview card. Domain and content badges call out PDFs, GitHub repos, YouTube videos, arXiv papers, and Ask/Show/Launch/Tell HN posts before you click.

Keyboard-first

Navigate the entire feed without touching your mouse:

• j / k: move through stories
• o or Enter: open the selected story
• c: open comments
• s: save or unsave a story
• u: copy the story URL
• h: hide the story
• /: open spotlight search
• ?: open the keyboard shortcuts overlay
• 1 through 4: switch sort modes
• v: cycle view modes

On item pages, J / K navigate top-level comments. z / Z collapse or expand all.

Comments

Comment threads are fully reconstructed from HN's markup: depth-tracked, visually nested, and collapsible per comment or all at once. OP highlighting. New-user badges. High-engagement markers for comments with multiple children. Reading progress bar while you scroll.

17 themes

Light and dark variants across: Monokai, Dracula, Nord, Bubblegum, High Contrast, Synthwave, Brainrot, .md, Matrix, Solarized, Gruvbox, Catppuccin, Tokyo Night, Rosé Pine, Kanagawa, Amber, and Paper.

Font family (sans or mono), font size (small / default / large), and layout width (compact / wide) are all configurable. Settings persist across reloads.

The Matrix theme includes an optional matrix-rain visual. Because of course it does.

Writing and auth

Submit, vote, save, and comment without leaving the extension. An in-page auth overlay handles sign-in, account creation, and password reset. The submit modal handles title, URL, and text fields. A sticky composer sits at the bottom of item pages for top-level replies, with inline reply composers threaded into comments.

All write actions go through HN's own form tokens. Better HN doesn't touch your credentials, it only forwards what HN expects.