Version 0.8.0 of the hackernews package is able to fetch stories from six different Hacker News feeds, namely top, new, best, ask, show and job stories. The default feed is top stories, which corresponds to the Hacker News homepage.

The interface features a modern, widget-based design. Each story is displayed with a clickable title widget, followed by metadata (score, comments count, and author) in styled text with color coding. Interactive buttons for accessing comments and external links are provided for each story, and stories are separated by horizontal dividers for easy reading.

The header includes clickable navigation buttons for switching between feeds (Top, New, Best, Ask, Show) and refreshing the current feed. Content is centered and formatted to a configurable width (default 80 characters) for optimal readability. If the visual-fill-column package is installed, it will be used to center the content automatically.

Clicking or typing RET on a widget opens it with the command browse-url, which selects a browser based on the user option browse-url-browser-function. This defaults to the system's default browser. Comment buttons use the user option hackernews-internal-browser-function, which defaults to eww for in-Emacs browsing.

A future hackernews version may support upvoting and interacting with comments.

Keymap

Key	Description
`RET`	Activate widget at point (open link/button)
`t`	Open link in text-based browser within Emacs
`r`	Mark link as visited
`R`	Mark link as unvisited
`n`	Move to next story
`p`	Move to previous story
`TAB`	Move to next widget (buttons, links, etc.)
`S-TAB`	Move to previous widget
`m`	Load more stories
`g`	Reload stories
`f`	Prompt user for a feed to switch to
`q`	Quit

All feed re/loading commands accept an optional numeric prefix argument denoting how many stories to act on. For example, M-50g refreshes the feed of the current hackernews buffer and fetches its top 50 stories. With no prefix argument, the value of the user option hackernews-items-per-page is used instead.

Screenshot

Installation

Using the built-in package manager

Those who like the built-in package manager package.el need only point it to a MELPA repository, which can be achieved by adding the following code to your user-init-file:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))
(package-initialize)

Note that this will follow the bleeding edge of hackernews development. Though hackernews contributors make every effort to keep the latest snapshot usable and bug-free, to err is human. If this thought scares you, a more stable experience can be achieved by replacing:

'("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/")

in the example above with:

'("melpa-stable" . "https://stable.melpa.org/packages/")

or equivalent. See https://melpa.org/#/getting-started/ for more on this.

Once package.el is configured, you can run M-xpackage-installREThackernewsRET.

Manual download

Place the hackernews.el file into a directory on your load-path and add the following code to your user-init-file:

(autoload 'hackernews "hackernews" nil t)

Alternatively, if you always want the package loaded at startup (this slows down startup):

(require 'hackernews)

Configuration Examples

Classic Mode (Default)

The classic mode provides a minimal, text-based interface with no additional configuration needed:

(use-package hackernews
  :ensure t)

Modern Mode with Visual Enhancements

The modern mode offers an enhanced interface with widgets, colors, and centered content:

;; Install visual-fill-column for centered display
(use-package visual-fill-column
  :ensure t)

;; Configure hackernews with modern UI
(use-package hackernews
  :ensure t
  :config
  ;; Use modern UI with enhanced visual elements
  (setq hackernews-ui-style 'modern)
  ;; Enable emoji icons in the interface
  (setq hackernews-enable-emojis t)
  ;; Optional: customize display width (default 80)
  ;; (setq hackernews-display-width 100)
  )

Usage

Just run M-xhackernewsRET. This reads the feed specified by the user option hackernews-default-feed, which defaults to top stories, i.e. the Hacker News homepage. A direct command for each supported feed is also supported, e.g. M-xhackernews-top-storiesRET or M-xhackernews-ask-storiesRET. These direct commands are not autoloaded, however, so to use them before hackernews has been loaded, you should autoload them yourself, e.g. by adding the following to your user-init-file:

(autoload 'hackernews-ask-stories "hackernews" nil t)

Customization

You can list and modify all custom faces and variables by typing M-xcustomize-groupREThackernewsRET.

Key customization options:

hackernews-ui-style (default 'classic): Choose between 'classic (minimal text-based interface) or 'modern (enhanced widget-based interface with colors and visual separators).
hackernews-display-width (default 80): Maximum width for displaying content in modern mode. Content is automatically centered when visual-fill-column is installed.
hackernews-enable-emojis (default nil): Whether to display emojis in the modern interface. When non-nil, feed navigation buttons (Top, New, Best, Ask, Show) and comment counts will include emoji icons for visual enhancement.

In modern mode, buffers are displayed using display-buffer-same-window for a full-screen experience. Classic mode uses the traditional display behavior.

Troubleshooting

In general, errors and misbehavior pertaining to network retrieval and JSON parsing are probably due to bugs in older Emacsen. The minimum recommended Emacs version for hackernews is 25. Emacs 24 should work, but suffers from network security vulnerabilities that were fixed in version 25. Emacs 23 is no longer officially supported as of 2018-06-08, i.e. since hackernews version 0.5.0.

In any case, please report any problems on the project's issue tracker, so that the possibility for mitigation can be investigated.

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/.