circumflex is a command line tool for browsing Hacker News in your terminal
- 🛋 Everything in one place — read both the comment section and articles in Reader Mode
- 🌈 Syntax highlighting — syntax-aware formatting for comments and headlines
- ⚡️ Vim-style navigation — scroll through, jump between and collapse threads with familiar keybindings
You might also like:
- 🔍 Search — quickly find old submissions by searching all of HN
- 🪟 Wide view — story list and content side by side on wide terminals
- 🤹 Native terminal colors — you bring your own color scheme,
circumflexdoes the rest - 💎 Nerd Fonts — full support for Nerd Fonts as icons
- ❤️ Add to favorites — save interesting submissions for later
The binary name for circumflex is clx.
# Homebrew
brew install circumflex
# Nix
nix-shell -p circumflex
# AUR
yay -S circumflex
# Go
go install github.com/bensadeh/circumflex/cmd/clx@latest
# From source
go run ./cmd/clxPress Enter to view the comment section.
The comment section has two modes: read mode and navigate mode.
In read mode, you can scroll using the usual vim bindings. You can also jump between top-level comments (
n/N), and you can expand and collapse threads by quote level (h/l) or all at once
(Enter).
Press a to enter navigate mode, where you can individually select comments and collapse specific threads.
Press Esc to return to read mode.
circumflex is read-only and does not support logging in, voting or commenting.
Press Space to read the linked article in Reader Mode. Just like in the comment section, you can jump between headers using n/N, and you can scroll using the usual vim bindings.
In terminals with Kitty graphics support, press Enter to show the article's images.
Press Tab to select links in the comment section or in Reader Mode. Move between links with j/k and open the selected one with Enter.
Links open in place: articles in Reader Mode, links to other Hacker News discussions in the comment section. Press q to go back to where you were.
On wide terminals (180 characters), circumflex opens in dual pane mode. Toggle it for the session with z,
or turn it off entirely with:
clx --wide-view neverPress / to search all of Hacker News, powered by Algolia. Sort by popularity or date with s and narrow the date range with d.
The comment section and Reader Mode also support search in the content with /: search for the term and jump between matches with n/N.
Press f to add the highlighted submission to your favorites. Remove it with x.
You can also add a submission by ID from the command line:
clx add [id]Favorites are stored in favorites.toml in the config directory, human-readable and VCS-friendly. A
favorites.json from earlier versions is migrated automatically.
Visited submissions are marked as read, and comments added since your last visit are highlighted.
History is stored in history.json in the cache directory. Disable tracking with -d/--no-history, or clear it with:
clx clear-historySwitch between categories with Tab. The header shows top, best, ask, show and favorites by default.
Pick which ones appear (and in what order) with the --categories flag:
clx --categories top,new,bestAvailable categories are top, best, new, ask, show, jobs and favorites.
circumflex uses your terminal's color scheme by default. If you want to customize the colors or set any flags
persistently, use the following commands to write out the default config to the config directory:
clx default-config
clx default-themeMain view keybindings — press i in any view for the full list, including comment and reader mode.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Enter | View comments |
| Space | Reader Mode |
| Tab | Next category |
| / | Search Hacker News |
| r | Refresh stories |
| o | Open story in browser |
| c | Open comments in browser |
| f | Add to favorites |
| x | Remove from favorites |
| u | Toggle read |
| z | Toggle wide view |
| q | Quit |
Run clx help or man clx for a full list of available commands and flags.