I’ve been working on a Chrome Extension that enables full keyboard navigation of Hacker News, I named it Hackercut.
After some learning and crafting, now it’s released in Chrome Web Store. If you watch Hacker News and like keyboard shortcuts, you should definitely check it out.
The source code of Hackercut is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/zinanxing/Hackercut
Here are some instructions on how to use to improve your efficiency of Hacker News-browsing:
After installation, refresh(or open) Hacker News website, press “?” key to bring up the instructions:

Instructions Page of Hackercut
Arrow Navigation
Arrow Navigation is the most powerful feature of this extension, you can go through the story links using just your up/right arrow keys and open/vote up/view author/view comments as you like.
Press “Tab” to turn on arrow navigation mode, you should see a green arrow to the left of the first link:
You can move the arrow up and down using your arrow keys, then you may choose to:
key press | function |
---|---|
ctrl(⌘)+enter | open current link in new tab |
v | vote it up |
a | select its submitter(which you can then use ctrl+enter to open in new tab) |
c | select its comments |
And pressing “esc” key will turn off Arrow Navigation mode.
Page Switching
Switching pages with Hackercut is just one key press away:
key press | function |
---|---|
right arrow key | next page |
n | “newest” page |
t | “threads” page* |
m | “comments” page* |
w | “show hn” page |
k | “ask” page |
j | “jobs” page |
s | “submit” page |
h | Hacker News front page |
p | “my profile” page |
l | “login” page |
*arrow navigation does not work on “comments” and “threads” pages at this moment.
I hope you can better enjoy Hacker News with Hackercut.
Could you make it into a userscript so that people can add it in any browser with greasemonkey?
I would consider porting it to firefox in the future.
Left arrow key?
Good catch! I didn’t find any sensible use of it, so it’s not included as a short key.
Awesome!
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