Show HN: Swurf – Swipe through the real web
Hello HN, Swurf allows you to swipe through the real web one page after another. It learns what you like and doesn’t show you the same page twice. The idea came naturally: there’s a seemingly infinite amount of high quality blog posts, random topic rabbit holes, and trending or cool sites that exist which the average person simply will never load on their browser. Swurf solves that by allowing you to rapidly traverse a constantly growing and learning feed of sites that it thinks you’d want to view. Quickly sift through endless pages and find things you like - effortlessly. One of the core drivers for making this project was the desire for real content. The project started as a simple tool for myself to find new and interesting things to learn and read about. Hours spent scrolling on my phone - while it still has its place - is increasingly losing its sense of reward. It’s genuinely hard to put into words exactly how swurfin’ feels but it’s almost refreshing in a sense. I encourage you to try it out and provide feedback. At this time there are no accounts and you can jump in and start swurfin’ immediately. There is a three dot menu button on the bottom right which allows you to submit links, save links, control adult content, and search similar topics. One of the things that’s great about Swurf is that its almost like a group browsing session (though entirely private) where everyone else who is spending time hunting down great reads or solid sites is helping massage the feed for you and you for them - all within your own set of interests. Enjoy and please ask any questions you have as theres plenty of room to grow.
Discussion Highlights (18 comments)
porkphish
Well this is fun!
lysace
I like the idea. Maybe add a very brief explanation about how it learns? Also please make a tvOS version. It's a perfect fit. :) Bug report: Copying selected text doesn't work. Mac/Chrome. Via keyboard shortcuts or context menu.
hggh
It reminds me of StumbleUpon [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StumbleUpon
Mokhles01
amazing haha
kathan3009
made me feel like i was on tinder but instead swiping on websites..
yuppiepuppie
First site was Steve Madden shop… is that right?
memalign
I’m curious how you can show arbitrary webpages within your web app. Do you save a snapshot of each page and serve that?
Stitch4223
Feedback: doesn’t work here. Swiping barely works on an iPhone 11. Swiping with one hand with the left thumb on the left part of the screen does not work at all. Swiping in the horizontal center from right to left can take some time and sometimes does two swipes. If I swipe back I might swipe back in safari and land on hacker news again. Hope this helps, would like to try :)
dumindunuwan
This feels more satisfied.
retlehs
Very cool, this reminds me of Kagi's Small Web: https://kagi.com/smallweb/
rambambram
Reminds me of the Wander network from Susam Pal ( https://www.susam.net ). His console is at https://susam.net/wander/ and my own instantiation is on https://www.heyhomepage.com/wander/ I didn't look at it for some weeks and now that I did it seemed to have grown more! I like the swiping UI from Swurf though. Being shown just one at a time is calming. I did the same thing for my RSS feed reader... it just randomly picks one post from one feed at a time, from thousands of feed sources.
xnx
It's tough to make the swipe interface work for content that is so varied in presentation. It works for Tinder, TikTok, and even WikiTok because the content has a consistent form. With this, you have to reorient yourself after every swipe.
webtjb096
PS: If you have a blog/site you want people to see - bottom right corner the three dots -> Submit a link. An almost instant way to get eyes on your page.
aworks
There are more sites related to LLVM IR than I need to see but overall, this is a fresh browsing experience. Reminds me of reading random pages back in 1994.
satnhak
it's a good idea, but can you tweak it so that page 1 isn't a flashing naked lady?
cowlevel
Nice! I feel like sites with cookie popups deserve to be penalised. How do you know if a page is good or bad - time spent on it?
smusamashah
How are the pages loading so quickly. On every swipe I expect next page to take its time to load, but these pages are loading like images.
webtjb096
Added Swurf codes to easily transfer your Swurf to any other device or browser without an account From the (...) menu -> Your Swurf code (shows up after a few swipes) Thank you to everyone who participated in the launch so far and the great feedback/discussion