CTctippett·Jan 1, 2026
Wish granted.
https://github.com/MostlyEmre/hn-anti-paywall
In Web Browsers have stopped blocking pop-upsMostlyEmre
hn-anti-paywall
JavaScript2022–2026
MostlyEmre / hn-anti-paywall
hn-anti-paywall
A userscript for Hacker News that adds archive links under submissions that include paywalled articles.
7Distinct people
8Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
72GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A userscript for Hacker News that adds archive links under submissions that include paywalled articles.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year8 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2022-11-29 23:08:53 UTC to 2026-01-01 07:35:31 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
8 sourcesSave yourself the angst and give this userscript[1] a go. It adds some nice quality of life improvements for posts that link to paywalled articles.
[1] https://github.com/MostlyEmre/hn-anti-paywall
In Where Glaciers Melt, the Rivers Run RedThere are some userscript filters you can customize : https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts?q=hacker+news+filter
Not a filter, but this one "bypass" paywalled links https://github.com/MostlyEmre/hn-anti-paywall
In Ask HN: How to filter out HN news by URLThis userscript will be of use to you then
https://github.com/MostlyEmre/hn-anti-paywall
In Hacker Newsy: a pretty Hacker News clientAre you against Userscripts to "fix" this? https://github.com/MostlyEmre/hn-anti-paywall I have this setup on my iPhone and iPad, and it works fine to see paywalls and get links to archive so I can view them.
In Tech sector Salaries have fallen up to 15 per cent as fired talent floods marketHeads up this is vulnerable to cross site scripting [1]. If someone submits a link like:
https://example.com"><script>alert(1)</script>
Then simply viewing the hackernews index page with this extension installed will let the submitter execute whatever javascript they want in your logged in hackernews context - no user interaction necessary.
[1]: https://github.com/MostlyEmre/hn-anti-paywall/blob/main/scri...
In Show HN: A userscript that adds archive URLs below the paywalled HN submissionsShow HN: A userscript that adds archive URLs below the paywalled HN submissions
This userscript adds archive URLs to the metadata section of HN submissions without breaking the immersion. Here are 2 screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/PdUu6oG
GreasyFork: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/452024-hacker-news-anti-pa...
Source code: https://github.com/MostlyEmre/hn-anti-paywall
Now let me overexplain.
-Why?-
I never liked paywalled articles. I understand where they come from, but I don't like where we cross our paths.
This is why I don't use major news aggregators anymore. Instead, I spend my "catching-up-with-the-world-time" on Hacker News. However, Hacker News (HN) also has its fair-share of paywalled articles. (Around 11.6% according to my short-lived, half-assed attempt at measuring it. See my super old data https://hpa.emre.ca/ I tell the story below.)
-First try-
Around a year ago, when I ran the above experiment, my
Read the rest
goal wasn't to run that experiment. It was during my self-teaching & career-changing process, I decided to build a React HN clone. To make it stand-out from the bunch, I added a paywall feature. It would detect paywalled articles and would add an archive URL into the metadata.
The issue with archiving is unless someone archived the link before on the {archiving-project} then the link is most likely not archived. So me sending people to those projects meant nothing. It kinda meant something for me from an ideological standpoint but I assume you are not me.
This rubbed me the wrong way. I decided to build a backend (See https://github.com/MostlyEmre/HN-Paywall-Archiver) that would scan the links and automatically to detect paywalls close to real-time and submit paywalled ones to archive.is for archival. I used Nodejs, Firebase, and React. I was -still am- really proud because I believed it was doing public good in terms of digital preservation. Only 1 person needed to run this script to benefit everyone. As an extra, I was curious on how many paywalled articles were being shared, by whom, at what time. So I also created some analytics functionality to gather the data. And later created a UI to present it.
HN-Paywall-Archiver was great but I stopped running the backend at some point. Because at that point couldn't find a way to continuously run my backend code on some platform for cheap or didn't try hard enough.
P.S. Recently I've been thinking of remaking this version with Cloudflare Workers.
-Hacker News Paywall Archiver Userscript-
After almost a year, I got into userscripts. Super great super awesome concept. People seem to hate javascript unless it is presented as a userscript. So I decided to get my hands dirty to create a simple solution that solves the paywall issue on HN without breaking any hearts.
My solution is not perfect as it had to be simple. But here's the rundown.
Pros:
- Does not beg for attention.
- Simple code, simple concept.
- Unintentionally, indicates which submissions are paywalled without you interacting with anything.
- Not-yet-archived archive links can make you feel like you are contributing to the society after you click on the "archive this URL" button on project page.
- Uses HN html defaults, so I hope it plays well with the HN skins/plugins/userscripts you use.
Cons:
- It doesn't automatically archive the links.
- It uses clone of a static list of paywalled websites sourced from a popular Chrome extension. (https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/blob/ma...) So changing the paywall list is slow and manual.
- No guarantees of archived links actually having the archive readily available for reading. Though there are currently 3 projects added, so it should be enough for most links.
So, there you go. I hope you enjoy it. It can break occasionally due to changes in news.ycombinator code, if you let me know on Twitter, I can fix it ASAP. Otherwise you have to wait until I notice that the script is broken, which can take quite a while as I browse HN on mobile.