Ember, a native iOS Hacker News reader I built around accessibility
Key takeaways
- A native Hacker News reader for i OS — calm, fast, and built for everyone.
- The full comment tree is fetched from Algolia in one request and flattened into a list with depth, so collapsing a thread is instant.
A native Hacker News reader for i OS — calm, fast, and built for everyone.
Ember is a Swift UI app that reads Hacker News the way a native i OS app should: threaded comments rendered natively, a personalized first-run setup, full dark mode, and accessibility treated as a feature rather than an afterthought.
Every feed — Top, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN, and Jobs, switchable from a pinned filter bar. Native comment threads — Hacker News comment HTML is parsed into native text with tappable links, italics, block quotes, and code blocks. Threads are collapsible with depth indicators, and the whole tree loads in a single request. Smart onboarding — a short first-run flow that reads your device's appearance and accessibility settings, pre-configures the app to match, and shows a live preview as you choose a theme, accent, and home feed. Search — full-text search across Hacker News by relevance or recency. Saved for later — bookmark any story; saved stories are stored on device and work offline. Read tracking — visited stories are dimmed so you can pick up where you left off. In-app reading — open links in an in-app Safari view with optional Reader mode, or hand off to your default browser. Profiles — view any user's karma, join date, about, and recent submissions. Thoughtful design — a warm, hand-tuned color system, full light/dark support, six accent themes, haptics, and fluid animations. Accessibility Accessibility is a first-class part of Ember, with particular care for color vision.