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