Octal for Hacker News

Description of App

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

Version

4.12.0

Free or Paid

Free With In-App Purchase

Apple Watch Support

No

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

16.4

Accessibility Comments

The latest version of the app introduces a host of VoiceOver improvements including posts and comments related controls being grouped together so that each flick navigates through one item with additional options being offered as rotor actions and all of the buttons being labelled. VoiceOver compatibility is also mentioned in the app's description. The developer is really open to suggestions, although it seems that the app is developed in their free time and it may take a while to receive a response from them.
The app is open source and the discussion regarding its accessibility can be found at:
https://github.com/dangwu/octal/issues/262
Feel free to contribute to it if you find anything missing or contact the developer any other way offered.
I find this the most convenient to browse Hacker News anywhere. Enjoy!

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Other Comments

The app offers everything you might need to handle Hacker News: reading, browsing through comments, exploring the different categories of Hacker News, searching for older stories etc.
The one-time premium purchase unlocks the ability to, among others, post your own content.

Recommendations

1 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Paweł Masarczyk 1 year 4 months ago

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