Comments Owl for Hacker News3.8.1 - App Store

Browser extension which makes it easier to follow Hacker News comments threads across multiple visits, by automatically highlighting new comments and showing which items have new comments. It also adds the ability to annotate and mute other users, plus other UX tweaks.

Features:

List pages

. Show new comment counts since you last viewed each item - clicking on the "X new" link will highlight new comments and collapse trees without any new comments
. Hide "AI" items in the main list pages
. Prevent accidental flagging and hiding on mobile by making the "flag" and "hide" controls require confirmation, or hiding them

Item pages

. Highlight new comments and collapse trees without any new comments when you revisit an item - you can configure whether or not this happens automatically when you revisit without using an "X new" link
. Default comment folding controls are replaced with a Reddit-style left-aligned control, with a slightly larger hit target
. Manually highlight the X most-recent comments if it's your first visit or there are no new comments to show
. Mute users to hide their comments and replies to them - muted users can be managed on your own profile page
. Logged out users get a new 'muted' link in the header they can use to manage their muted users
. Add notes to users on their profile page - the first line will be displayed next to their comments
. Toggle display of "reply" links below comments, to make more room for comments on the screen
. Increased distance between the upvote and downvote arrows at mobile sizes
. Increase the contrast of submission text

Navigation

. Hide navigation links you don't use
. Add an "upvoted" link to the navigation for more convenient access to items you recently upvoted
. Improved mobile navigation - navigation links are displayed underneath other header contents

Version History • Added an option to toggle user profile hovercards
• Added a --mobile-header-spacing variable (default: 6px)
• Made mobile nav items line up with the HN logo 3.8.1 May 4 List page changes:

• Items with new comments are now marked as read if the user visits them in another tab
• List page functionality now works for new items added the end when you hide an item
• Item hiding features now apply to all list pages, except those showing things a user did (e.g. their hidden items)

Item page changes:

• Added options to individually hide the root/parent/prev/next nav links on comments
• Added an option to hide all nav links on collapsed comments
• Made the child count on collapsed threads clickable to expand them
• Comment threads now support unmuting
• Item pages now react to mute and note changes in other tabs
• Reduced flashing by processing more page elements as soon as they appear
• Removed extra space above and below the comment tree
• Fixed toggle control changing width when toggled
• Fixed storage listeners being accumulated when opening user hovercard, these will now only use initial mute and note state

Theming:

• Added page attributes to html for the top level pages we support, e.g. [item], [item-list], [user]
• Added an --item-spacing variable to control space between list page items
• Added missing --hovercard-text variable derived from --text-secondary, and a rule to apply it
• Derive default --link value from --text-primary
• Derive default --hovercard-bg from --bg-content

Other:

• Rearranged option groups and split some options out into new General and Comments groups
• Don't hide the Custom CSS "open in tab" link on iOS, as it lets the textarea grow
• Fixed a navigation stylesheet being created when no related features are active
• Fixed performance highlighting new comments in very large threads 3.8.0 Apr 27 • Reduced or eliminated most flashes of original HN style when navigating between screens while using a theme
• Added basic styling to more unstyled auth / error pages which were missed
• Fixed nav bar features on the custom /muted page for logged-out users to manage their mutes 3.7.1 Apr 22 • Added an option to hide the submission comment form behind a "reply" link (pairs with the option to hide "reply" links)
• Added html[desktop] and html[mobile] styling hooks for more convenient responsive styling
• The header is no longer themed if the user's topcolor isn't the default #ff6600 (case-sensitive, set it to #FF6600 to force HN Orange)
• The option to make submission text (toptext) more readable now also underlines links
• Fixed the bar above the footer not being themed & added a #footer id to it
• Fixed some footer text not having theme variables applied
• Fixed pages which don't have a nav bar having their title duplicated
• Fixed the submit URL input not being themed
• Don't run on .html URLs
• Removed --link-visited as HN wasn't specifying a distinct color for it 3.7.0 Apr 22 This release makes HN themeable, and adds a dark mode, with a pure black variant for OLED screens.

Colors in the default HN stylesheet have been reapplied using CSS variables, and new rules have been added to allow colors hardcoded in HTML (and the HN SVG logo) to be reconfigured.

• Made HN themeable - when in default/light mode there will be an html[light] attribute for theming
• Added a dark mode, with a pure black variant for OLED screens - these add html[dark] and html[pure-black] attributes for theming
• Added an option to enable CSS view transitions
• Added a list → item transition
• Custom CSS is now injected earlier
• Fixed caching failed profile requests forever 3.6.1 Apr 20 • New feature: hide items matching your own custom title and site patterns (separate from the patterns for hiding "AI" items, which have defaults)
• New feature: apply your own custom CSS
• New feature: submit comments and forms by pressing Ctrl+Enter/⌘ Return in textareas (enabled by default)
• Regex inputs now treat each line as a separate pattern, and support using a leading # for line comments
• Updated app to provide install instructions for iOS
• Updated the default "AI" RegExp to handle "A.I."
• Fixed the "highlight recent" control adding duplicate time travel controls
• Fixed scroll position changes in options caused by auto-sizing textareas when other options are changed
• Fixed clearing error state for the "AI" site regex in options
• Fixed iOS Safari section group backgrounds in options when using dark mode 3.5.0 Apr 17 • Added an option to add /active to the nav bar
• Added Gas Town and Mythos to the default "AI" title regex
• Made the control for manually highlighting recent comments reusable, and renamed it to "highlight recent"
• New comments controls are now removed when manually highlighting recent comments
• Hiding "AI" items now also applies to the /active page
• Fixed the "highlight recent" button having a monospace font
• Fixed the | separator before the page title being hidden when hiding the "comments" nav item 3.4.0 Apr 15 User hovercard changes:

• Increase delay before showing, to reduce unintended opens
• Animate opacity when showing, and when hiding based on mouse movement
• Prefetch user profiles after a short hover, so you're less likely to see loading placeholders
• Fixed the same hovercard being re-shown when mousing back over the current user
• Fixed an async bug causing an empty hovercard to be shown

Item page changes:

• New comment highlighting is now only applied to submissions, last visit data is no longer stored for irrelevant items
• User notes are now displayed on the focused comment when the item is a comment
• Removed the 1px gap between comments, visible when adjacent new comments are highlighted 3.3.0 Apr 14 • Added an option to click a comment's header to toggle collapsing (default: enabled)
• Added comment thread user hovercards for more convenient noting and muting
• Added confirmation to comment header mute links, which now only display at the mobile styling breakpoint
• Replaced separate list page flagging & hiding options with a single "Prevent accidental flagging & hiding" option 3.2.2 Apr 10 • Updated AI titles regexp 3.1.1 Apr 6 • Added a new option to hide "AI" items in the main list pages
• Added sub-options to edit the regular expressions used to hide "AI" items by title and site
• Made option groups collapsible
• Updated options styling based on the latest Control Panels 3.1.0 Apr 2 • Fixed accessibility issue with toggle control
• Fixed flagging/hiding sometimes still happening when you cancel the confirm dialog 3.0.0 01/02/2025 • Added an option to disable or require confirmation for hiding on list pages
• Added an option to increase the contrast of submission text (enabled by default) 2.2.0 10/19/2023 • Don't hide comment nav links, as this also contains edit and other useful controls 2.1.2 08/04/2023 • User notes are now edited via a textarea which saves on blur - removed the Add/Edit/Save buttons
• Changes to user mutes and notes are now synced to profile pages open in any other tabs/windows
• Fixed clobbering user mute and note changes made in other open tabs/windows 2.1.1 07/17/2023 2.0.0 07/17/2023