Show HN: Hack – my Hacker News mobile client now lets you block AI posts
Hello HN!
I am the developer for HACK, a hacker news client that I have been building and maintaining for over 8 years now on iOS, iPadOS, MacOS and Android.
Wanted to share this news as there's been a ton of interest in these features recently.
Now, you can block AI related posts in the app. You can also disable infinite scrolling to prevent you from doomscrolling.
To enable these, go to app's home screen, then go to settings (top right), then scroll all the way to the bottom and enable these settings.
You can see an example of the effectiveness of the AI blocking toggle below. Across 3 pages of the HN front page which would typically load 90 posts (30 posts per page), a total of 32 post titles were blocked:
Full list of all titles which were blocked can be seen here:
You can see this list of blocked posts by tapping the menu button, then "See Blocked Posts".
Currently, these features are available on Apple platforms. I am adding them to the Android client at this moment too.
You can try the Apple versions here:
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/hack-for-hacker-news-yc-reader...
Feel free to ask questions.
I used HACK frequently on Android, and recently there has been more sites started blocking built-in browser due to being old version. Is there any plan to upgrade it?
Coincidence that I literally just submitted an update for that issue earlier today (along with the AI related post block feature). It's still waiting for Google's approval. Hopefully be approved tomorrow or so.
If you email me from the app (or my email address in my HN profile), I can notify you as soon as the update is approved.
The update for the built-in browser issue got approved by Google and is now available on the Play Store. Please give it a try and let me know if you have any issues!