The interface fetches stories from six different feeds: top, new, best, ask, show and job. The default feed is top stories, which corresponds to the Hacker News homepage.

Each story is displayed as a clickable title widget, followed by metadata (score, comment count, and author) with color coding. The header includes navigation buttons for switching between feeds and refreshing the current feed.

Content is formatted to a configurable width (default 80 characters). If the visual-fill-column package is installed, it will be used to center the content automatically.

Clicking or pressing RET on a story title opens it with browse-url, which uses the system default browser. Clicking a comment count opens the comments page in the same way.

Keymap

Key	Description
`RET`	Activate widget at point (open link)
`n`	Move to next story
`p`	Move to previous story
`TAB`	Move to next widget (buttons, links, etc.)
`m`	Load more stories
`g`	Reload stories
`f`	Prompt for a feed to switch to
`q`	Quit

All feed loading commands accept an optional numeric prefix argument denoting how many stories to fetch. For example, M-50g reloads the current feed and fetches its top 50 stories. With no prefix argument, the value of hackernews-modern-items-per-page is used.

Installation

use-package with :vc (Emacs 29+)

Recommended method for Emacs 29 and later:

;; Optional but recommended for centering content
(use-package visual-fill-column
  :ensure t)

(use-package hackernews-modern
  :vc (:url "https://git.andros.dev/andros/hackernews-modern-el"
       :rev :newest)
  :config
  ;; Optional: enable emoji icons in the header and comment counts
  (setq hackernews-modern-enable-emojis t)
  ;; Optional: customize display width (default 80)
  ;; (setq hackernews-modern-display-width 100)
  )

use-package with :load-path

For manual installation or Emacs < 29:

(use-package visual-fill-column
  :ensure t)

(use-package hackernews-modern
  :load-path "/path/to/hackernews-modern-el"
  :config
  ;; Optional: enable emoji icons in the header and comment counts
  (setq hackernews-modern-enable-emojis t)
  ;; Optional: customize display width (default 80)
  ;; (setq hackernews-modern-display-width 100)
  )

Manual

Clone the repository and place the files in a directory on your load-path:

git clone https://git.andros.dev/andros/hackernews-modern-el.git

Then add to your user-init-file:

;; Add directory to load-path
(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/hackernews-modern-el")

;; Load on demand
(autoload 'hackernews-modern "hackernews-modern" nil t)

Or, to load it immediately at startup:

(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/hackernews-modern-el")
(require 'hackernews-modern)

Usage

Run M-x hackernews-modern RET. The feed is determined by hackernews-modern-default-feed, which defaults to top stories. Direct commands for each feed are also available:

hackernews-modern-top-stories
hackernews-modern-new-stories
hackernews-modern-best-stories
hackernews-modern-ask-stories
hackernews-modern-show-stories
hackernews-modern-job-stories

Customization

Run M-x customize-group RET hackernews-modern RET to list all available options.

Key options:

hackernews-modern-items-per-page (default 20): Number of stories to fetch per page.
hackernews-modern-default-feed (default "top"): Feed to load on startup.
hackernews-modern-display-width (default 80): Maximum content width. Content is centered automatically when visual-fill-column is installed.
hackernews-modern-enable-emojis (default nil): Show emoji icons in feed buttons and comment counts.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see the contribution guidelines for instructions on how to submit issues or pull requests.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.