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plibither8
refined-hacker-news
JavaScript2019–2026
plibither8 / refined-hacker-news

refined-hacker-news

✨ Hacker News, but refined — Interface tweaks and features to make the HN experience better

48Distinct people
84Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
834GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

✨ Hacker News, but refined — Interface tweaks and features to make the HN experience better

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

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 year84 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2019-06-13 12:12:09 UTC to 2026-08-21 18:44:01 UTC.

05101520252019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 1 submissions, 6 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 1 submissions, 7 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 2 submissions, 9 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 23 mentions; 0 submissions, 23 comments20222023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 18 mentions; 0 submissions, 18 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 1 submissions, 7 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* 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
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC716
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC817
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1129
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC23023
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC18018
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC817
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Refined Hacker News ✨ Browser extension that adds useful features and tweaks a few stuff on Hacker News to make the experience better... without changing the look and feel. The minimalist design of Hacker News is best at offering news the way we like it. Yet there are a few small interface tweaks and additional features that can drastically improve our experience while browsing through items and comments which this extension implements. Hopefully, in due course, a few of these tweaks can be implemented by Hacker News themselves. You can help too by emailing hn@ycombinator.com! Inspired by Sindre Sorhus's extension Refined GitHub. Contents Contents Install Highlights - Added features - UI tweaks - More actions - More info at a glance - Miscellaneous - Keyboard bindings - On items and comments - On input fields - Site-wide navigation - Abandoned features Customization and Options Contribute Donate Extension Permissions License Install Chrome extension Firefox add-on Opera extension: Use this Opera extension to install the Chrome version. Highlights Reply to comments without leaving page Navigate through items and comments using your keyboard Easily favorite items and comments Hide and sort stories, and auto-refresh the page from the options bar Show user or item information when hovering over the links Highlight new, unread comments on subsequent visits Added features reply-without-leaving-page Reply to a comment, edit and delete your comment just below the parent comment, without leaving the page. auto-refresh Options bar: Auto-refresh stories on the page periodically, after a fixed interval, without reloading the page. hide-read-stories Options bar: Hide/show stories already opened by you. sort-stories Options bar: Sort stories basis of their score, age, or by their default rank. fetch-submission-title-from-url When submitting an item, get the title of the page of the URL entered. list-hn-polls-separately Show HN Polls on a separate page (like Show HN, Ask HN, etc). Linked on topbar: https://news.ycombinator.com/#polls. prefill-submit-title Prefill submission title field with "Show HN: " or "Ask HN: " when 'Submit' link is accessed/clicked from Show HN or Ask HN pages. past-choose-date Choose a custom date in /front to go back to that date. UI tweaks change-dead-comments-color If "showdead" is enabled in user settings, color of dead comments changes to light-red (#d89899) instead of the barely visible light-grey (#dddddd). comments-ui-tweaks Tweaks include: Add border to indentation to make to show indent separation between comments. Custom indent-width (default is 40px), which can be set using the extension popup. Highlight item's original poster, displayed as [op] next to username. Make <pre></pre> tags more visible. highlight-unread-comments Highlight new and unread comments after your second and subsequent visits to the comments page of an item. Data resets after three days. backticks-to-monospace Convert backticks-wrapped (`like this`) inline text to monospace (like this). linkify-user-about Linkify all links and emails IDs that are on the "about" of the user's profile. More actions key-bindings-on-items Enable key bindings on items and comments to improve navigation and item/comment-related actions. Go to mappings. key-bindings-on-input-fields Enable key bindings/shortcuts on input fields. Go to mappings. site-navigation-key-bindings Universal, site-wide key bindings/shortcuts to quickly navigate to a page (eg. Home, Show HN, Threads etc.). Go to mappings. more-accessible-favorite Add a 'favorite' button next to items and comments to quickly favorite them. Go to https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=<your-username> to view favorite-d items. more-accessible-flag Add a 'flag' button next to comments to quickly flag them. archive-submission Add "archive" button at the top of the comments page of a submission to view the archived version of the story's webpage or archive the webpage to the Wayback Machine. click-comment-indent-to-toggle Click indentation of the comment (on the left of it) to toggle (show/hide) that comment. click-rank-to-vote-unvote Increase hit-area of upvote button by clicking the rank number of the item to upvote it too. open-story-links-in-new-tab Open items in a new tab, instead of the same tab. preview-and-set-top-bar-color Quickly "test" topbar colors and set them on https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors. Note: you must have 250+ karma to set a custom topcolor. toggle-all-comments-and-replies Clickable button to toggle all comments on the page, or all replies to a certain comment. More info at a glance load-more-links-in-navbar Click "load more" on the topbar/nav bar to show more links. profile-links-dropdown Show profile-specific pages in a dropdown when clicking your username on the top-right of the page, instead of directly opening the the profile page. show-item-info-on-hover Hover over a Hacker News item link in the comments to quickly display the item's details. show-similar-submissions List all HN submissions that are duplicates/have been posted before with the same URL, at the bottom of the comments. show-top-leaders-karma Load and show karma of the top-ten leaders on HN's leaderboard (not shown by default). show-user-info-on-hover Hover over a Hacker News user link next to item or in the comments to quickly display the users's details. Miscellaneous input-field-tweaks Tweaks include: Show how many characters are left in the 'title' field when submitting an item. Increase width of 'title' field dynamically. Increase height of any textareas (even those that are dynamically created), dynamically. on-link-focus-comment Navigate to that specific comment when clicking the 'on: ' link. Keyboard bindings On items and comments On items/stories: Key-binding Action J Next item
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

84 sources
Refined hasn't received an update in 4 years. https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news/issues/135... I used refined for years as well. Great product, but the underlying code was meh, and the author abandoned it. If you're using refined today, you're experiencing a lot of bugs as the HN DOM has changed over time. I maintained my own fork for a long time but finally motivated myself to try out AI assisted coding and this is what came out of it. It isn't a port, it is a clean rewrite from the ground up. I took every feature that I enjoyed from refined, re-implemented it from scratch, with a totally different architecture that allows much more control over the DOM and runs a whole lot faster. I had AI write hundreds of of unit tests, so that we can make sure that bugs don't appear in the future. I also fixed a whole ton of edge case
Read the rest
s along the way. The entire deployment, all the way to the browser stores, is fully automated with CI/CD, so that we know that the supply chain is safe. In other words, you might as well migrate. If there is something missing that you enjoyed, file an issue, or even better... a PR.
In Show HN: Orange Juice – Small UX improvements that make HN easier to read
I use refined Hacker news Extension. https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news#highlights It might be beneficial to tell me what the difference between these two can be? A lot of the features from my first glance (I can be totally wrong though) are within HN refined. I would really appreciate a short summary of differences. Personally I am really happy by HN refined though so kudos to @plibither8
In Show HN: Orange Juice – Small UX improvements that make HN easier to read
qsantos·Feb 18, 2024Submission

Show HN: Vi-style key bindings for browsing Hacker News (Firefox/Chrome addon)

Yes, this is yet another Hacker News extension. But other people with my obsession for killing the mouse might enjoy it. While I have toned down from my Ratpoison/fbi/libcaca days, I still use Vim. This led me to Refined Hacker News [1]. Unfortunately, it looks like it is now unmaintained and does have some annoying limitations. So, I finally made my own browser extension for Firefox and Chrome. It is primarily focused on keyboard-based navigation, should introduce no visible delay, and minimize surprises. It has many Vi-like key bindings to navigate comments (not just j and k). I'll let you take a look at the README for the list! Also, I stole the idea from bakkot's SlateStarComments [2] to quickly find new comments. I never quite liked tracking the user's last visit for this. Instead, you can easily browse the comments in reverse chrono
Read the rest
logical order and stop when you get to those you already read. Among other features, you can quick-reply/edit/delete comments, preview comments when replying/editing, it highlights op, and it spreads request in time to handle the fact that Hacker News 503s if you go too fast. The extension is written is vanilla JavaScript [3], with no build step. Although I like strong typing, I found that type annotations added more friction than they found bugs, at least for small projects, so no JSDoc either. This results in a single 1k LoC file that I can mostly keep in my head, and no package.json or vendored library. [1] https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news [2] https://github.com/bakkot/SlateStarComments [3] http://vanilla-js.com/
1 points · Open discussion

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