Agree, Kat, the interface reminds me a bit of slack and having it as a desktop app makes it quite easy to browse when you have a couple of minutes of free time.
Focusing on macOS version and building more plugins at the moment, thinking about Stackoverflow and StackExchange next, but also open to suggestions. Let me know what you think :)
Linux and Windows support will be added with the final release.
Yack! is a native desktop app built for online communities such as Hacker News, Reddit, YouTube, Indie Hackers and many more.
It has an open source plugin architecture which allows anyone to build a plugin for their favorite communities. If you're interested in helping out, shoot me an email at hello[at]yack.io
This looks nice but "Many Communities, one UI" just doesn't work for me. The way I use hacker news is different than the way I use youtube. And it is different than how I use reddit.
There are many posts on Reddit where I don't particularly care about the comments, and others where I'm just looking for a specific answer. In contrast, I'm actually far more likely to open an HN link in the first place if it has some comments.
Like the_watcher said, a lot of times in reddit I will just look at a pic of a meme or something that isn't pure text. Sometimes it is a discussion post or something where I do read comments but it isn't a discussion of something on another site. On HN, I almost always click to read the article and if it is interesting I will read the discussion on HN. I rarely look at something that isn't primarily text on HN.
I can see this being a nice alternative to a few browser options for checking the latest across multiple sites. Pinned tabs, "Open All" bookmark folder, loose tabs, etc. Not ideal, imo, so having them all in one place and unified under a single UI might be kind of nice.
Can't really speak to the UI though since this is unfortunately macOS only :(
Besides when working with web workers I've actually had an overall better experience with FF dev tools in the recent couple of years. I recommend trying them out again if you haven't already.
Ha, that's a good point. I never could really get into using RSS feeds for whatever reason. It's possible I'd lose interest in this approach to media consumption for similar reason (whatever they are).
Does Feedly/RSS right now with community sites like HN/reddit support all the comments? Do they support comments in blog posts? I may have not played around enough or missed something.
When I tried rss with Feedly before. I wasn’t getting blog post comments. I don’t think reddit/HN comments either but could be wrong there.
You get the title which is a link to the submission, a picture and a link to the comments. I'm on Android so hitting either opens a webview (powered by Firefox) with an X in the top left which leads back to feedly. I also have scrolling past a submission set to mark it as read.
Admittedly something which handled unread comments and notifications for replies could be more engaging, but I feel like I get enough HN as it is and I want to remain somewhat productive.
It's interesting that the Slack UI design is becoming so popular. Also the VS Code UI (which is very similar to Slack) is another style growing in popularity... Maybe it's easy to find templates for these styles?
Looks cool! Reminds me of (YCs) Station with a focus on online communities. Hint: Says "0 beta users signed up since August 1st 2019" in the bottom left corner. Maybe refresh the cache?
thanks for the feedback. Yep, currently looking into the issue. There're over 1.5k beta testers so far.
Didn't know Station was from YC. Yack is a native app with a custom UI/UX built specifically for browsing online communities. As far as I remember, Station was another wrapper that points to actual websites, no?
Really like the concept--I think you're on to something in creating a unified UI for all these similar services.
But..getting into the beta was a giant PITA.
1. Enter email
2. Check email
3. Download client
4. Go back to email, copy code
5. Paste code
6. Go back to email, click sign in link
7. Browser asks if it's ok to open Yack
8. Create profile in Yack (at this point I bounced)
Honestly, just let me download the beta directly, open it and have it Just Work. This is a new product and people will be skeptical. Friction is therefore your enemy.
Would it be possible to skip profile creation as well?
Will consider making the Yack profile optional. For the beta version it was necessary because the app has a "Feedback" community, which is built on top of Discourse - This is where users provide feedback and report bugs. Thought about creating a subreddit on Reddit for feedback/bug reports but for users who are on HN or YT, it was necessary to have Yack's own community.
Creating Yack profile automatically creates an account on Yack's Discourse instance but it never associates plugin accounts (hacker news, reddit, etc) with your Yack profile.
Would second that this should be optional ASAP. I understand your need and desire to collect feedback but I don't think it's a great idea to require users to create a profile for something that is a client.
There are other ways to collect feedback than a Discourse instance. Why not just stand up a contact form, Twitter account, or email address?
You know what would be really impressive? To act on that feedback as fast as possible. Like: now. I agree with the parent poster and I think you should make it damn easy for anybody here to test Yack.
I'd love to do this right now, but the thing is that workflow is rather complicated and needs through testing after change. Would adding a download button to landing page suffice ;)
I can see some issues with trying to unify disparate communities / features for power users, but I would love a streamlined HN / Reddit comment browser with better nesting that sits on my Mac desktop. Signed up for the beta.
EDIT: Oof, not so interesting in making a profile for it, though.
Will consider making the Yack profile optional. For the beta version it was necessary because the app has a "Feedback" community, which is built on top of Discourse - This is where users provide feedback and report bugs.
Creating Yack profile automatically creates an account on Yack's Discourse instance but it never associates plugin accounts (hacker news, reddit, etc) with your Yack profile.
> Do more with less clutter, fewer clicks, less scroll, fewer tabs, fewer pages, fewer buttons, fewer ads, less mess...
Looks very promising if it is really a native desktop app, but then if it is electron, then that is the equivalent to having a fixed set of Chrome tabs open with an ad-blocker on.
I hope when you say 'native' that this app actually is native, otherwise it will be yet another bloated app to add to my collection of electron apps on my MacBook.
It's a mix of Electron & native code (Swift). I have done so many optimizations to make it lightweight, smooth and fast. If you have an older Mac, try it on it and see how fast it is. I use Apple Mail app for my emails and for my benchmarks so far, Yack works faster and smoother than Apple Mail.
Give it a try and don't forget to report back here :)
It's really not. Even on my MacBook Air 2019 loading of the different communities is slow. Feedback for example at least takes 3,4,5 seconds. While Apple Mail is measurable in milliseconds.
Also when logging into hacker news it's loading an internal web view instead of a popup, a popup safari web view would be better because of password autofill.
Hey, thanks for the heads up. The app is ready and can be downloaded and unlocked via the landing page. It's beta at the moment but is very stable based on the feedback we've received from over 1.5k beta testers.
Actually, I was just thinking of something like this. In particular, I'd like to be able to keep tabs on a group of YouTube creators, without being dependent on the whims and machinations of what the YouTube team wants to promote. There are also certain creators who post to both YouTube and BitChute, but prefer BitChute, and I'd like to have a browser that will show me the BitChute version preferentially, without my having to think about it.
It looks pretty, but I'm having trouble understanding the use case.
A core part of browsing Hacker News or Reddit is opening the links and reading the articles, which are web pages. Once I'm opening web pages, then I want to be able to bookmark them, arrange them in tabs, find them in my history, have them saved in sessions by my session manager extension, configure how they are handled by my ad blocker, search for related information, and so on. In other words, I want a web browser.
The same issue applies the other way around, too. When I follow a link _to_ Hacker News, I want it to show up consistently. I don't want to end up with some Hacker News pages in browser tabs and some in a separate app, and then have trouble remembering where to find that page I was looking at yesterday.
I get that it can be nice to have a slimmed-down UI for specific purposes. But I'm puzzled by this particular use case because there is no neatly contained navigation sandbox — as soon as you follow a couple of links, you're just browsing the Web.
So why won't there be an inexorable push to expand Yack's feature set until it is a browser? Why won't users eventually switch back to using their regular browsers?
Yack has a built in browser with reader mode. You can also configure it to open all links in your default browser. It will also allow you to bookmark (and schedule for later) links, posts, comments.
In the future, it will allow users to curate their own feed and share it with others. For example; you can create a feed that has posts from specific channels on YouTube, subbreddits on Reddit and people on Twitter.
I'm in this camp - I want to share content with Pocket (and increasingly Notion for personal use, then outward to Twitter/LinkedIn/Automation and all of that is already in my browser.
I'm definitely in the target group for this. I consume this content just like a faucet and don't care about bookmarks or tab arranging or that. And I generally like the app experience better for most of the social media I consume, so if someone pulls off a really well made UI that consolidates Reddit and HN I might well end up using it.
My reaction is pretty much the opposite. This looks like what I've wanted the web to be for years now. It's the best parts of RSS, Gopher, and the web.
What's terrible about the modern web? Mountains of JavaScript, for trackers, and advertisements, and custom UI so every page acts differently (and slowly) even though they're 99% the same. This appears to cut through that crap, and just give me easy access to articles and comments.
I want just a 'web browser'. What we've got today are network-native application runtimes that happen to run over the web. There are some cases where that's good, but for "reading an article", it's somewhere between "a waste" and "a channel ripe for abuse".
You talk about bookmarks, tabs, history, etc. I rarely use those for articles I see on HN. I use web browsers for a few very distinct use cases. (They just all happen to be delivered over the web because, I don't know, nobody wants to write applications any more.) "Reading an article" doesn't require bookmarks/tabs/history. I read it, and then I'm done. I mostly read HN in Private Browsing specifically so it doesn't litter up my history with some article I only want to see once. I mostly use Reader Mode, when possible, because I don't want any other junk besides the article. A full 2019 web browser for reading an article is a liability, not a feature. I rarely follow any links from them.
Saying that one needs to "configure an ad blocker" to read articles on the internet almost sounds like an admission of failure.
There shouldn't be an "inexorable" drive to make this into a full web browser, any more than there is for an email program. Email programs display HTML and let you click links, too. They are specific to one type of data, and display it using native controls. Nobody is browsing the web in Mail.app. They are browsing the web in their regular browsers, for the types of online experiences that require that.
Keeping conversations going and following threads that don't just live inside forums but also commenting sections etc. is something very difficult and annoying with a web browser.
This could be a solution to keep conversations going longer than one keeps the tab/window with the according thread open.
> Saying that one needs to "configure an ad blocker" to read articles on the internet almost sounds like an admission of failure.
But having to install a completely new browser for your desktop isn't? Installing uBlock Origin solves all your problems with trackers all over the web. Installing this electron app solves it for a few sites.
In addition to uBlock Origin, if you've got some spare hardware lying around, I highly recommend Pi-Hole. Here's a link of typical numbers from my home LAN. https://imgur.com/YfAJUlv
Mine are even higher, more like 30-40% of requests blocked. I have a ROKU tv and it makes constant tracking requests that get blocked. I think I'm over 100k per month at this point
This is really promising and I'm fully set up and using it.
One question I have for the author is about keyboard access - there seem to be no keyboard shortcuts at all right now, or even basic navigation (up/down, etc.)
Is there any timeline on those sorts of things being available (or possible to add with a plugin)? Once those are in place it'll be far more practical for me to use Yack day-to-day...
It's a mix of Electron and native code (Swift). Focusing on perfecting the macOS version for the time being. Will release both for Linux and Windows very soon.
If anything, the biggest inadvertent feature is that its resemblance to Slack means you can browse those things at work and look like you're being productive.
178 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] threadLinux and Windows support will be added with the final release.
PS: you mention Windows in the landing page, but not Linux.
It has an open source plugin architecture which allows anyone to build a plugin for their favorite communities. If you're interested in helping out, shoot me an email at hello[at]yack.io
Looking forward to your feedback :)
What does native mean in this context? Looks like Electron from the screenshots.
You mean like a browser?
> Intuitive UI
I understand I'm probably not the target market for this - but I'm very uninspired by the Slack-copy design trend happening everywhere.
I can see this being a nice alternative to a few browser options for checking the latest across multiple sites. Pinned tabs, "Open All" bookmark folder, loose tabs, etc. Not ideal, imo, so having them all in one place and unified under a single UI might be kind of nice.
Can't really speak to the UI though since this is unfortunately macOS only :(
It's just another walled garden approach
Currently i use another browser for this(firefox is for browsing hackernews, chrome is for work since devtools are better)
Have you tried Firefox Developer Mode? I find it to be lots better, especially if you are using grid or flexbox.
Nice work, and looks pretty, but Feedly scratches this itch for me almost perfectly. And it expands well beyond Reddit and HN.
The only better solution would be if I hosted my own and used an open source app. I'll get around to it.
When I tried rss with Feedly before. I wasn’t getting blog post comments. I don’t think reddit/HN comments either but could be wrong there.
You get the title which is a link to the submission, a picture and a link to the comments. I'm on Android so hitting either opens a webview (powered by Firefox) with an X in the top left which leads back to feedly. I also have scrolling past a submission set to mark it as read.
Admittedly something which handled unread comments and notifications for replies could be more engaging, but I feel like I get enough HN as it is and I want to remain somewhat productive.
Didn't know Station was from YC. Yack is a native app with a custom UI/UX built specifically for browsing online communities. As far as I remember, Station was another wrapper that points to actual websites, no?
But..getting into the beta was a giant PITA.
1. Enter email
2. Check email
3. Download client
4. Go back to email, copy code
5. Paste code
6. Go back to email, click sign in link
7. Browser asks if it's ok to open Yack
8. Create profile in Yack (at this point I bounced)
Honestly, just let me download the beta directly, open it and have it Just Work. This is a new product and people will be skeptical. Friction is therefore your enemy.
Would it be possible to skip profile creation as well?
Will consider making the Yack profile optional. For the beta version it was necessary because the app has a "Feedback" community, which is built on top of Discourse - This is where users provide feedback and report bugs. Thought about creating a subreddit on Reddit for feedback/bug reports but for users who are on HN or YT, it was necessary to have Yack's own community.
Creating Yack profile automatically creates an account on Yack's Discourse instance but it never associates plugin accounts (hacker news, reddit, etc) with your Yack profile.
There are other ways to collect feedback than a Discourse instance. Why not just stand up a contact form, Twitter account, or email address?
EDIT: Oof, not so interesting in making a profile for it, though.
Creating Yack profile automatically creates an account on Yack's Discourse instance but it never associates plugin accounts (hacker news, reddit, etc) with your Yack profile.
Looks very promising if it is really a native desktop app, but then if it is electron, then that is the equivalent to having a fixed set of Chrome tabs open with an ad-blocker on.
I hope when you say 'native' that this app actually is native, otherwise it will be yet another bloated app to add to my collection of electron apps on my MacBook.
Give it a try and don't forget to report back here :)
Also when logging into hacker news it's loading an internal web view instead of a popup, a popup safari web view would be better because of password autofill.
> Blog posts, sign-up pages, and fundraisers can't be tried out, so they can't be Show HNs.
Read the “Show HN” rules please: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yack
But it's social media though, so the other yakking will be involved...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yak
https://joinpeertube.org/en/
I have no involvement with them, but I like the PeerTube project. Might contribute to it in the future.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak
A core part of browsing Hacker News or Reddit is opening the links and reading the articles, which are web pages. Once I'm opening web pages, then I want to be able to bookmark them, arrange them in tabs, find them in my history, have them saved in sessions by my session manager extension, configure how they are handled by my ad blocker, search for related information, and so on. In other words, I want a web browser.
The same issue applies the other way around, too. When I follow a link _to_ Hacker News, I want it to show up consistently. I don't want to end up with some Hacker News pages in browser tabs and some in a separate app, and then have trouble remembering where to find that page I was looking at yesterday.
I get that it can be nice to have a slimmed-down UI for specific purposes. But I'm puzzled by this particular use case because there is no neatly contained navigation sandbox — as soon as you follow a couple of links, you're just browsing the Web.
So why won't there be an inexorable push to expand Yack's feature set until it is a browser? Why won't users eventually switch back to using their regular browsers?
In the future, it will allow users to curate their own feed and share it with others. For example; you can create a feed that has posts from specific channels on YouTube, subbreddits on Reddit and people on Twitter.
What's terrible about the modern web? Mountains of JavaScript, for trackers, and advertisements, and custom UI so every page acts differently (and slowly) even though they're 99% the same. This appears to cut through that crap, and just give me easy access to articles and comments.
I want just a 'web browser'. What we've got today are network-native application runtimes that happen to run over the web. There are some cases where that's good, but for "reading an article", it's somewhere between "a waste" and "a channel ripe for abuse".
You talk about bookmarks, tabs, history, etc. I rarely use those for articles I see on HN. I use web browsers for a few very distinct use cases. (They just all happen to be delivered over the web because, I don't know, nobody wants to write applications any more.) "Reading an article" doesn't require bookmarks/tabs/history. I read it, and then I'm done. I mostly read HN in Private Browsing specifically so it doesn't litter up my history with some article I only want to see once. I mostly use Reader Mode, when possible, because I don't want any other junk besides the article. A full 2019 web browser for reading an article is a liability, not a feature. I rarely follow any links from them.
Saying that one needs to "configure an ad blocker" to read articles on the internet almost sounds like an admission of failure.
There shouldn't be an "inexorable" drive to make this into a full web browser, any more than there is for an email program. Email programs display HTML and let you click links, too. They are specific to one type of data, and display it using native controls. Nobody is browsing the web in Mail.app. They are browsing the web in their regular browsers, for the types of online experiences that require that.
Keeping conversations going and following threads that don't just live inside forums but also commenting sections etc. is something very difficult and annoying with a web browser.
This could be a solution to keep conversations going longer than one keeps the tab/window with the according thread open.
But having to install a completely new browser for your desktop isn't? Installing uBlock Origin solves all your problems with trackers all over the web. Installing this electron app solves it for a few sites.
One question I have for the author is about keyboard access - there seem to be no keyboard shortcuts at all right now, or even basic navigation (up/down, etc.)
Is there any timeline on those sorts of things being available (or possible to add with a plugin)? Once those are in place it'll be far more practical for me to use Yack day-to-day...
Not nit picking here, but may put off some of us with mild OCD. :)
Otherwise, great concept! When are sign-ups for Mac opening?
Or is this just for the cool kids in the exclusive Apple community?
Are you using a bunch of secondary accounts just to comment on your post?