Privacy Policy

Hacker Reader (“we”, “the app”) is an unofficial iOS client for Hacker News, made by an independent developer. This page explains what the app collects, what stays on your device and which services are involved. It matches the App Privacy section of our App Store listing.

• No account required. You can browse, search and bookmark without signing in.
• No tracking. We don't track you across other companies' apps or websites, and we don't use an advertising identifier.
• No data sale. We never sell or rent your data.
• Open source. The code is public, so you can check all of this.

None of the data below is linked to your identity: we never send your Hacker News username or password to these services. Each install gets a random anonymous ID instead.

Usage analytics (PostHog)

• Events about how the app is used: app opens, feed switches, stories you open (story ID and title), links you open, and actions such as upvote, bookmark, share, hide and flag (with the story ID)
• Searches you run in the app (the search text and the number of results)
• Taps captured automatically, whether you are signed in (true or false), theme changes and widget taps
• Session replays: recordings of app screens that help us find confusing or broken flows. They can include what was on screen, such as stories and comments
• Your approximate location (country or city), derived from your IP address

Diagnostics (Sentry)

• Crash reports and errors: stack traces, device model and iOS version
• App logs and performance data used to diagnose problems
• Your IP address, which comes with each report

We use this data only to understand how the app is used and to fix bugs. On the App Store, these appear as Product Interaction, Search History, Coarse Location, Crash Data and Other Diagnostic Data.

• Your name, email address or phone number
• Your Hacker News password, which is sent only to Hacker News
• Precise location
• Your contacts, photos, health or financial data
• Advertising identifiers (IDFA)

• Your Hacker News session cookie, stored in the iOS Keychain until you sign out
• Bookmarks, hidden stories, blocked users, votes, recent searches and settings, stored in the app's local storage

Deleting the app removes all of it. Signing out removes the session cookie.

• Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com and its API) for stories, comments and profiles. When you sign in, your upvotes, comments and flags go directly to Hacker News under its own terms and privacy policy.
• Algolia's HN Search API receives your search text to return results.
• Google's favicon service receives the domain of each story to show its site icon.
• Story websites are contacted directly to load link previews and when you open an article.
• PostHog and Sentry as described above (see the PostHog and Sentry privacy policies).

Like any web request, these services can see your IP address.

Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR or the CCPA), you can ask what data we hold about you, ask us to delete it, or object to its use. Because the data isn't linked to your identity, send us the details you can (such as roughly when you used the app) and we'll do our best to find and delete it. The app doesn't have an in-app switch to turn analytics off yet.

Hacker Reader is rated 13+ on the App Store because it shows user-generated content from Hacker News. It isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe we have, contact us and we'll delete it.

When our practices change we update this page, the App Store privacy details and the release notes. Questions or requests: privacy@hackerreader.app. We reply within 30 days.