
Materialistic – Ad free, open source Hacker News client - finspin
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.github.hidroh.materialistic
======
ec109685
As a counterpoint, I find the web version pretty great on iOS. Minimal
JavaScript, loads fast, everything on one long screen, and the back button
always works, leaving you exactly where you left off.

It is a nice counterpoint to overly heavy web that we have unfortunately
gravitated towards.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
I've been doing the same on Android for a some time now. Before HN was
responsive, I preferred native apps for presentation, but the good ones lacked
voting, commenting, etc. Honestly the web client is quite usable on mobile
now.

------
hs86
Its source is hosted on GitHub:
[https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic](https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic)

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PieterH
Just installed it, used it for a few hours, loved it, and deinstalled it.
Here's why.

First, no downvote action. We need this to push down trolls and sockpuppets.

Second, voting is inside a menu, yet this is a really common action.

Third and worst, when I use a browser on HN, every single link now asks me to
select an app. Not once, but for each different link type it seems. After the
fifth time (choosing 'Remember my choice' each time), I was so annoyed I
uninstalled Materialistic.

End of report.

~~~
hidro
Sorry you don't find it useful :(

No downvote is a known issue, partly because I can't test it, so I'm not
confident I'll deliver a reliable feature.

I agree that upvote should be more visible. Currently it's available as an
option tucked in popup menu, as well as via swipe gesture, which is not very
discoverable.

3rd one is a feature called 'deep link' which is quite common in Android. It
should remember your choice if you choose 'Remember my choice'. I don't know
what went wrong here as it is a platform feature and out of my control :(

Thanks for checking it out anyway.

~~~
PieterH
I found it very useful and really liked it, just these problems were so
irritating I dropped it again. I'm hoping you can fix this, because I have
trouble with reading HN on a browser, with its tiny font size.

I suspect you've got a bug with the deep link feature because other apps only
show this menu one time. Yours shows it over and over.

While we're talking, I also found the UI rather busy with stuff that seems
unnecessary. Half the fun with HN is its simplicity. If you ever get the urge,
think about doing an Apple and removing stuff that people don't use.

Nice work, anyhow, and thanks for that. Consider making a paid version of the
app with no differences, except you get some money back from it.

~~~
hidro
Thanks! Would be helpful if you can share your device info so I can try to
reproduce that issue. If you still keep the app around you can just send an
in-app feedback and it will automatically include such info. Or you can reply
here. Or if you can email me, my email should be available on Play Store
listing.

~~~
PieterH
OK, so I reinstalled Materialistic and checked the problem is still there (it
is), and then sent a Feedback about "Deep linking", that you should see.

~~~
hidro
Got it thanks!

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kaushalmodi
Materialistic is the only way I access Hacker News. But it would be awesome if
the developer took some inspiration from the Reddit client Relay
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=reddit.news](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=reddit.news))
too :) Great job hidro!

~~~
hidro
Thanks! I have incorporated the idea of on-screen navigation button and
grouping setting options. What else you think I should consider from Relay?

~~~
jray
Great work Hidro, But i prefer 'hackernews 2', why? because the list view is
more compact (only 2 lines). Can you add a 'compact view'?

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksof...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksoftware.hackernews)

~~~
hidro
Disable card view (which is the default for new installations) + choose
smaller text size would achieve more or less the same. I have already gone
thru few iterations of compacting the UI and I'm afraid I can't squeeze it
anymore :(

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SparkyMcUnicorn
I've been using this for a at least a month now and it's really great, and I'd
almost rather browse HN from Materialistic than the site itself.

If there's anything I could change, it would be to add a setting that turns
off swiping when I'm inside a story (to switch between
comments/article/readability) along with swipe vote/reply for comments.

~~~
mdaniel
_I could change..._

I just cloned the repo, opened it in Android Studio and after a few version
tweaks in its Gradle setup, it sprang to life on my Nexus. So I can attest
that it's painless to clone and build it, which in my experience with open
source is 95% of the battle (where the other 95% is getting the PR accepted
:-/ )

~~~
colemickens
>So I can attest that it's painless to clone and build it, which in my
experience with open source is 95% of the battle

This has been my experience often times as well. Especially when it's
node/ruby/python projects that expect the privilege of dumping files all over
my global file system. Anyway, there's no excuse for un-reproducible build
environments like that these days.

All of my (new) projects have exactly two requirements: `make` and `docker`.
Everything else needs by the build environment is handled by nature of using
docker. `make docker-dev` drops you in an environment with build tools
installed, with the project source code mounted as a volume so you can use all
your normal tools on the host.

------
nl
Why doesn't YCombinator just fix the mobile style sheet for the website?

It's pretty clear the site is terrible on mobile, and it's not a hard thing to
improve. Make the font bigger, and (especially) make the buttons much, much
bigger (or further apart).

Actually - why don't they fix that on the desktop version? Fitt's law and all
that.

~~~
pjc50
Indeed. And stop doing whatever crazy CSS thing is used to implement the
upvote/downvote arrows and just make them images in an href. Why? Because on
some touchscreen browsers there's a fuzzy snap to nearest link, which turns a
press on the upvote into a click on the username.

My own personal solution to this was to write an intercepting proxy in Perl
CGI like it's 1999. Then I can fix the HTML with regexes.

------
viraptor
While I think it's the best of what's available, it still misses some
features. No downvoting, no flagging, preformatted text gets mangled, and the
own comments/conversations view is not ideal.

It's so close...

~~~
hidro
I plan to implement downvoting but I'm not sure of the logic involved (I don't
have enough karma to test it myself). Probably I'll add it to a beta channel
and let users help test it.

Performance can be laggy and is something I'm trying to improve.

~~~
viraptor
Up/down voting works the same. It's just the "how=" parameter that changes
from "up" to "down".

There's also a "/flag" call with only "id" and "auth" to flag comments /
articles. (with "un=t" it unflags) The link says "flag" or "unflag".

~~~
Retr0spectrum
It's also worth noting that some comments cannot be downvoted.

------
raddar4
It's definitely the most feature-rich HN client. Sad that something comparable
is not on iOS :(

(But the ones on iOS aren't bad..I've had the most luck with one called
"Hacker News" by Premii)

~~~
lobster_johnson
MiniHack! Been using it for a couple of years. Easily the best native HN
client on iOS.

~~~
otterpro
I'd love to use it, but it's not free.

~~~
Analemma_
Dude, just pay the $1.99. It's a quality app with no ads, and it's, what, 0.3%
the cost of the device you're running it on?

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mei0Iesh
What does the word "Materialistic" have to do with Hacker News? I did a web
search to see if I'm missing something, but it looks like it's just a name
that does not fit.

How about "Hacker News client by Trung", or "Trung HN" for short.

~~~
hidro
When I created it material design was a hot thing, so I just randomly came up
with that name. Now it's not relevant anymore but I keep the name to avoid
confusion for existing users.

~~~
dublinben
You might consider updating the name to something like "Materialistic for
Hacker News" so it's more clear and easy to find.

------
os7borne
I quite like your app. It's way better looking and serves my functional
purposes of reading and voting. Of course improvements can be made - it's an
iterative process. More power to you.

------
thirtyseven
I've been liking this app a lot too, but the scrolling gets very choppy on
long comment threads. Is this a common issue?

~~~
hidro
I'm aware of the issue and trying to find a way to mitigate it.

------
BenfromOz
Big fan of Materialistic here. By far the best Android HN app I've found.
Didn't realise this but I must have downloaded it just after you put it on the
play store. Even the first versions were solid.

No shopping list of features :). Just wanted to say good job (posted with
Materialistic)

------
kaushalmodi
I have few bug and enhancement reports:

1\. The vote up status seems to get reset or so it seems from the app. I had
invited this post yesterday, by today the thumbs up icon color was black
again. It looked as if I did not vote this thread. So I clicked on that, and
then the thumb icon was green. Then I went back to the main page, and
remembered to type the following point. So I came back to this thread and the
thumb icon was black again. It looks as it the app is remembering if I have
already voted for that thread. Does HN allow one to vote any article multiple
times?

2\. I like the concept of the navigation overlay. But can you please add an
option to disable the vibrations each time that button is used? It gets pretty
annoying after navigating few comments.

~~~
hidro
1\. I can't sync vote status so it's only a best effort at the moment to let
you vote. Of course after the 1st vote is recorded subsequent votes will not
count. This for sure can be improved.

2\. Sure. I added vibration because I tend to mis-swipe so I added vibration
to give me some feedback. But I understand not all users may like it.

~~~
kaushalmodi
Thanks for your quick replies!

Also I realized that I have a crazy number of typos and incorrect auto
corrections in my comment above.

Would you add the ability to edit comments in future? :)

Thanks!

------
markatkinson
Read this on Materialistic! Also feel it's the best client I have used.

------
altrent
Its a great app. A couple of things that would make it even better: \- a
refresh button \- an "are you sure you want to quit" warning when I click the
back button.

~~~
kaushalmodi
+1 A per-story refresh button is badly needed so that the comments of only
that story can be refreshed.

~~~
hidro
Single story refresh is a nice idea. I just added it to my backlog. Thanks!

------
bitmage
Trying it out and liking it so far. I've noticed it does make my phone (Droid
Turbo) heat up. May be from the frequent data reloads while I'm scrolling.

------
gexos
Materialistic is what I use and I'm very satisfied with the app, the lack of a
downvote button is an issue but I can live with out it. Good job Hidro!

------
colemickens
Nothing much to say other than that I think Materialistic is definitely the
best HN client on Android. Cheers hidro, it's great, nice job.

------
maxpert
Have used it already and it's pretty neat!

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mdaniel
Oh, wow, it's beautiful and it uses the firebaseio stream instead of parsing
the HTML. Outstanding job!

------
jazoom
It's nice, but I don't like how the comments view wants to keep scrolling
sideways. I wish it worked more like the articles view with swipe to vote.
I'll never use the readability mode so I'd love to just disable it.

------
homarp
FYI per
[https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic/issues/23](https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic/issues/23)
it will no be on F-Droid

~~~
hidro
I have made releases available to download here, effectively same as F-Droid,
but easier for me to publish:
[https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic/releases](https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic/releases)

~~~
bisby
Appreciate the effort. Ive had lots of issues with other open source HN apps.
This one looks and works great so far. Would've loved an fdroid release, but
an open app with github releases is more than can be said about most other
apps, so no real complaint there.

------
randomsofr
It's funny how there are hundreds of HN apps on the play store.

------
oli5679
Ironic name for a free app with no ads! Just downloaded, thank you.

------
ddavidn
This has been my main HN client for several weeks. It works well.

~~~
jordonwii
Same. I discovered a setting that brings up a little arrow pad on comment
pages, so that I can swipe up/down on it to go to the previous/next comment at
that level in the tree, and left/right to go out/in a particular comment
thread. It's extremely useful for e.g. skipping over long comment threads I'm
not interested in.

~~~
hidro
It supports Konami code as well :)

~~~
jordonwii
This is great! Although, I'll shamefully admit that after just doing the
Konami code and seeing nothing happen, I went so far as to take a look at the
source to get the last step. :)

You did indeed get a 5-star review out of it, though :)

------
dbalbright
While you can bookmark stories, it doesn't seem to be tied to the new(-ish) HN
feature that allows one to favorite stories and comments.

~~~
hidro
You're correct. Saved/bookmarked stories have been there way before HN has
favorite. I'm thinking of syncing these two, but it's not very straightforward
without API support.

------
ForFreedom
Is there an efficient iOS app for Hacker News?

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namlem
It's the best HN app I've used, though that's not saying much since all the
others are terrible.

------
Kiro
How do you store my login details?

~~~
hidro
It's stored under your device's accounts, which you can manage via Settings ->
Accounts. The same way Google apps work.

------
bitmapbrother
It's a nice app and I've been using it for some time, but one thing that's
always bothered me is the strange scrolling / caching behavior of the app. A
quick scroll down displays a blank page while content is gradually "plugged"
in. I don't think I've ever seen this odd scrolling behavior in another app.

~~~
hidro
It's because stories/comments are loaded on demand. If you never scroll to it
it won't be loaded. It was designed this way partly due to how HN API works,
which doesn't provide all data up front.

Alternatively app can aggressively load everything up front, which is slow; or
paginate content. To me it tends to feel faster when u have progressive UI
change (empty card then fill it) than abrupt change (completely empty then all
items appear), so I decided not to paginate.

~~~
shostack
I used another app called HN before yours. It did not have this problem. TBH
I'd rather have it aggressively load all the content. It isn't that much data
and the current experience is frankly jarring.

I also can't seem to figure out how to consistently jump to the next top level
parent comment with the nav button. It seems to jump to other comments lower
in the current thread which I'm trying to skip past. Am I missing something?

Overall love the app though. Love that I can click a user name and see their
profile.

One other odd thing is when I open a HN Notify email link telling me I have a
response, I can't figure out how to go up a level from the response comment to
my parent comment they responded to in order to remind myself what I posted.

~~~
hidro
I already did some optimization to load 1 extra page of comments in advance,
which I believe should improve the experience. I also tried the same trick for
stories but got some janky issues that I need to figure out first.

Swipe down the button should go to next same level comment, or if none it goes
to the next one, which is the 1st child.

User-related content support is quite limited at the moment as I need to crawl
HN web for that.

~~~
shostack
Do you have any user data on whether people would prefer the downswiping went
to the next comment at the same level, or the next parent regardless of if
they are currently on a child?

My use case is that I'm scrolling and I get bored with a thread. It isn't much
different to swipe up on the thread to scroll down further if I wanted to keep
reading, and there is no easy way to just jump to the next top-level thread.
I'm left either having to collapse several levels of comments to condense
things, or scroll until I hope I find the next one and don't miss it.

At the very least, I feel like this should be configurable behavior for the
button.

But again, this is just me, so you might have data saying people want
otherwise, and this is free so I shouldn't complain :)

~~~
hidro
It's the 1st version of on-screen navigation so for sure there are rooms for
improvement. I think of it as a D-pad, as in games, when you make selection
with D-pad, down means selecting below item. I can make a toggle option to
reverse scroll direction though.

