Material Hack

A refreshed Hacker News client for Android — a fork of Materialistic by Ha Duy Trung.

Source: https://github.com/mxmilkiib/material-hack

Screenshots

What's different

• Modernised toolchain — Gradle 8.7, AGP 8.5.2, Kotlin 1.9.24, compileSdk/targetSdk 34, minSdk 24
• New themes — Violet, Ocean, Rose, Monokai, Nord, Crimson, Forest, Midnight, Sand, Dracula, Dark Orange (alongside the originals)
• App icon customization — 8 selectable app icons via Display settings (Orange, Purple, Green, Blue, Red, Teal, Pink, Indigo)
• Compact list mode — tighter spacing, smaller fonts, smaller rank/score column
• Extra fonts — Hack Nerd Font, Inter, JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, Terminus, Fixedsys
• Flattened drawer — all section links in the root, no "More sections" submenu
• UI polish — transparent overscroll glow, tighter header/comment spacing, better score column layout
• Side-by-side debug install — debug build uses applicationIdSuffix ".debug" so it installs alongside any release build
• Deprecated API modernization — updated for Android 34, replaced deprecated APIs (LocalBroadcastManager → LiveData, setLayoutFrozen → suppressLayout, etc.)
• Crash fixes — fixed RxJava 3.x null crashes, DI ordering issues, ScrollView crash, tab listener leaks, Parcelable duplicates
• Test coverage — unit tests for HackerNewsClient, StoryListViewModel, UserServicesClient
• GitHub Actions CI — automated debug/release APK builds and tagged releases

Languages

The app supports 29 languages with full translations:

• English
• Spanish (Español)
• Chinese (Simplified) (简体中文)
• Portuguese (Português)
• French (Français)
• Swedish (Svenska)
• German (Deutsch)
• Hindi (हिन्दी)
• Arabic (العربية)
• Bengali (বাংলা)
• Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia)
• Urdu (اردو)
• Polish (Polski)
• Russian (Русский)
• Japanese (日本語)
• Turkish (Türkçe)
• Nigerian Pidgin
• Egyptian Arabic (العربية المصرية)
• Western Punjabi (پنجابی)
• Tagalog (Tagalog)
• Tamil (தமிழ்)
• Yue Chinese (粵語)
• Wu Chinese (吳語)
• Korean (한국어)
• Amharic (አማርኛ)
• Jamaican
• Latin (Latina)
• Gaelic (Gàidhlig)
• Scots (Scots)

Build

Requirements

• JDK 17 (JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-17-openjdk)
• Android SDK at /opt/android-sdk (or set sdk.dir in local.properties)
• Android platform 34, build-tools 34

Debug APK

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-17-openjdk
export ANDROID_HOME=/opt/android-sdk
./gradlew assembleDebug
adb install -r app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk

Dependencies

• Official Hacker News API
• Algolia Hacker News Search API
• Mercury Web Parser API
• Android Jetpack: appcompat / recyclerview / material / cardview / preference / browser / room / lifecycle
• Square Retrofit / OkHttp / Dagger
• RxJava & RxAndroid
• PDF.js

License

Copyright 2015 Ha Duy Trung
Copyright 2026 mxmilkiib

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.