01What happened
The story, straight
A developer going by Sylwester on GitHub released Ember, a free and open-source Hacker News client for iPhone, iPad, and Mac built in SwiftUI. The app renders threaded comments natively — not as webviews — with collapsible threads, depth indicators, dark mode, offline reading, and a smart onboarding flow that auto-detects the user's accessibility preferences. It covers all major HN feeds (Top, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN, Jobs) via a pinned filter bar, and its single codebase adapts from a tab-bar layout on iPhone to a three-pane layout on iPad and Mac.
a dev just dropped Ember, a native SwiftUI Hacker News reader for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that treats accessibility as a core feature, not an afterthought. threaded comments render as actual native text — collapsible, with depth indicators and tappable links — not webviews. there's offline reading, dark mode, full search, and a first-run setup that reads your device's accessibility settings and pre-configures everything. all HN feeds are there (top, new, best, ask HN, show HN, jobs) on a pinned filter bar. one codebase, tab bar on iPhone, three-pane on iPad and Mac. it's open source and free.
02Spread timeline
Where it actually started
03Source receipts
Every claim, linked
04What's solid, what isn't
What's solid and what isn't
- Ember is an open-source SwiftUI Hacker News client for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- The app parses HN comment HTML into native text with collapsible threads, depth indicators, tappable links, italics, block quotes, and code blocks.
- It includes a smart onboarding flow that reads the user's device appearance and accessibility settings and pre-configures the app accordingly.
- All major HN feeds (Top, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN, Jobs) are supported via a pinned filter bar.
- The app supports dark mode and offline reading.
05Why it matters
The editorial take
Most Hacker News clients are web wrappers or clone UIs that treat accessibility as a checkbox. Ember's approach — parsing HN's comment HTML into fully native SwiftUI text with proper voiceover support and auto-detecting device-level accessibility settings during onboarding — is uncommon in the space. It's a reminder that the tools many developers use daily (HN, GitHub, Slack) often have the worst accessibility of any software they touch.
most HN readers are glorified webviews with a coat of paint. this one actually parses the comment HTML into native SwiftUI text with voiceover, collapsible threads, and accessibility-aware onboarding. kind of ironic that the platform developers live on has such garbage native clients — ember might be the first one that doesn't feel like a punishment to use.