Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript

Posted by twalichiewicz 1 hour ago

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HN is great for the links people share, but a big part of the value I get comes from reading the discussion around them. I realized I was always opening the article in one tab and the comments in another, constantly switching back and forth.

I figured there was probably a simpler way, so I threw together this userscript to merge the two.

1. Clicking a link from Hacker News opens the article with a side panel containing the discussion. It doesn't require your credentials, is resizable, and is easy to tweak if you want to customize it.

2. If you land on an article that has previously been shared on HN, the script finds the existing discussion and adds a button in the top-right to open the panel.

Feedback welcome.

Comments

Comment by perpil 40 minutes ago

This is slick. 2 things.

1. If you name your script with the extension .user.js it is easier to click on to automatically install at least with tampermonkey. 2. When I went to this link from the main page, on mobile I had to scroll to the right to see the (-) to minimize because the sidebar was too large: https://elizabethtai.com/2026/06/10/substack-writers-you-nee... It may make some sense to start minimized so I can read the article first, but I can easily modify the script to do that.

Comment by swyx 33 minutes ago

is this better than using a chrome extension? i guess people need to have tampermonkey installed and so thats a slightly higher barrier to entry? i wonder if chrome would be interested in "sherlocking" userscripts so that we can distribute non security nightmare code easier.

Comment by twalichiewicz 12 minutes ago

Mostly transparency. Since this runs across pages you visit (with the sites controlled by the @include/@exclude rules at the top of the script), I like that the entire source is right there and easy to inspect before installing it.

A userscript also let me iterate quickly without dealing with extension packaging and permissions, but being able to see and tweak the code was a big part of the appeal.

Comment by perpil 26 minutes ago

Tampermonkey isn't better than using a Chrome extension, but it's less friction for a developer to build and distribute a cross browser script. If they build it as an extension, they need to target multiple browsers and get it deployed to the Firefox/Chrome web store.

Comment by moritzwarhier 8 minutes ago

[delayed]

Comment by grimgrin 18 minutes ago

I love userscripts. Aren't we all using https://github.com/violentmonkey/violentmonkey now though?

thought I realize "if it works it works", https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey

Comment by Barbing 7 minutes ago

Not on Safari, but I should migrate on Firefox I’ve read (some controversy).

  zip is available only if you're logged-in on GitHub site
Haven’t seen that before.

Comment by prtmnth 4 minutes ago

Haha, this is so cool and can't believe I didn't think about it. I've been opening 2 tabs per HN link on my phone since forever!

Comment by joshdavham 5 minutes ago

I think the amount of upvotes you’re getting here suggests that it might be worth building a proper browser extension for this!

Would you be interested in making one?

Comment by f3408fh 1 minute ago

Now make a user script that blocks posts titled "I was tired of X, so I...".

Comment by pluc 43 minutes ago

Firefox has a new Split View that's useful for this, but you still have to left click and select open in split view (M) then click the link. You also used to be able on some browsers to craft a link that was href="tab1.html|tab2.html", no idea if that's still a thing or if it was limited to "home page" setting.

Comment by Barbing 6 minutes ago

I accidentally closed Firefox’s last “you’ve just updated” screen which probably mentioned Split View. Couldn’t re-open it. It’s not this https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/153.0.1/releasenotes/ , know if it’s mirrored?

Comment by dagurp 36 minutes ago

Vivaldi has included split view for years (called tiles). You can also right click a link and choose open in follower tab. This lets all links clicked in one tile open in another tile. I use this regularly on HN.

Comment by djfdat 45 minutes ago

This is great and is also something that I've always had an issue with.

What I do now is open the HN comments, and then when I'm ready to look at the link + comments, right-click on the title and Open in Split View.

Comment by Topology1 35 minutes ago

Phew, thought I was the only one doing that. I thought I was missing some core site feature lol.

Comment by hugopuybareau 43 minutes ago

Nice idea ! How do you handle duplicates ?

Comment by twalichiewicz 13 minutes ago

[Assuming you mean duplicate HN submissions]

I normalize the URL and use HN's Algolia search API to find an existing story with a matching URL. I don't currently handle multiple HN submissions of the same article; I just use the matching story I find.

That being said, I could see creating a historical snapshot of all the times an article has been submitted and building a blended comments section in the future.

Comment by Barbing 4 minutes ago

Blended comments section sounds great! Good work.

Comment by blopp99 37 minutes ago

Thought I was the only one hahaha

Comment by ahachete 52 minutes ago

I feel ya. I'm always middle clicking twice, story and comments.

This shouldn't be a script (no offense, great job!). It should be built into the browsers!

Comment by kalamarico 27 minutes ago

Very cool!