{"slug": "hister", "name": "Hister", "category": "search", "category_name": "Search", "description": "Self-hosted tool that indexes the web pages you visit for later full-text search.", "recommenders": 18, "commenters": 22, "warners": 1, "score": 17.198, "rising": 14.02, "first": "2026-05-25", "latest": "2026-10-26", "why": "Liked for keeping a searchable index of pages you've already visited, so things you've read stop getting lost and bookmarks feel unnecessary.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 18, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 6, 7, 2], "listed": true, "loved": ["Recovering lost pages", "Concept appeal"], "caveat": "Resource usage", "short_quote": "I have been using your app for two months now. I have only had to rely on it a few times, but each time I did it worked beautifully.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/asciimoo/hister", "official_url": "https://github.com/asciimoo/hister", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Hister", "hister"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked for keeping a searchable index of pages you've already visited", "cites": [{"id": 803907200, "item_id": 50244200, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50244200", "by": "elashri", "date": "2026-10-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hister does save all of my history for desktop", "excerpt": "They are actually similar in the goal but I use them both for different reasons. Hister does save all of my history for desktop (not available on iOS yet) so I use it as backup to get something I wanted to see but lost. But Karakeep is everywhere and I save things there that I want to keep (it can save the actual page) and can use it on mobile ....etc (and share it too). This is at least my workflow which can be diff", "context": "", "use_case": "backup of browsing history", "switched_from": "", "story": "Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs"}, {"id": 795919680, "item_id": 49744980, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744980", "by": "Anonymous106", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using your app for two months now. I have only had to rely on it a few times, but each time I did it worked beautifully.", "excerpt": "Histerekishi / Histereki - \u308c\u304d\u3057/\u6b74\u53f2 means history in Japanese. reki \u308c\u304d/\u6b74 is a suffix which means (history of) Histeri MyHister(i) Hyster(y) Also, I have been using your app for two months now. I have only had to rely on it a few times, but each time I did it worked beautifully. Thank you.", "context": "", "use_case": "searching browsing history", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 780518752, "item_id": 48782422, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48782422", "by": "ydj", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hister sounds like something I wanted for a while, but never got around to building.", "excerpt": "Hister sounds like something I wanted for a while, but never got around to building. Searching stuff I\u2019ve seen before is most of what I do with a search engine, so having it local and fast would be amazing. Eager to give it a try.", "context": "", "use_case": "local search of visited pages", "switched_from": "", "story": "SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine"}]}, {"text": ", so things you've read stop getting lost and bookmarks feel unnecessary.", "cites": [{"id": 803861120, "item_id": 50241320, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50241320", "by": "elashri", "date": "2026-10-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would suggest for those to explore Hister [1] and Karakeep [2]. It is much useful that I don't worry about losing stuff now.", "excerpt": "I'm probably in the minority but I can't stand having more than 10 tabs and I start have the urge to finish the task that I'm focused on to just close as many tabs as possible. So I really read the people talking about 100s of tabs and when I see a colleague having them, I feel that my cognitive ability to deal with that is not there. I understand that people would like to keep things and that bookmarks sucks, but I ", "context": "dislikes having many tabs", "use_case": "keeping history instead of tabs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs"}, {"id": 790495808, "item_id": 49405988, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49405988", "by": "human_llm", "date": "2026-08-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using it since May and find it immensely useful.", "excerpt": "Thanks you for making Hister. I have been using it since May and find it immensely useful. It's a piece of mind to know that I always will be able to easily find what I looked at. So I don't feel the need to bookmark things, which I used to do, but then never looked at anyways ;).", "context": "", "use_case": "personal search index", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister \u2013 private, self hosted search engine"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaints are heavy CPU and server load", "cites": [{"id": 796034304, "item_id": 49752144, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49752144", "by": "elestor", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to use it, but it would use a lot of CPU and hurt battery life", "excerpt": "I used to use it, but it would use a lot of CPU and hurt battery life, is the idea that you self host on a different machine?", "context": "", "use_case": "private search of visited pages", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 795989888, "item_id": 49749368, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49749368", "by": "g_host", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Hister so much.", "excerpt": "I love Hister so much. I ran it for most of this year but encountered some problems with it I couldn't fix and thus have not had it hooked up to anything since June when I finally couldn't take it anymore. In short, I serve a good number of apps from an Nginx reverse proxy. Maybe 25% of them are exposed to the WWW while everything else is limited to the LAN but I still get valid TLS for all of it. Hister, though, kep", "context": "Self-hosts apps behind an Nginx reverse proxy", "use_case": "searching browsing history", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}]}, {"text": " and no mobile support yet.", "cites": [{"id": 803907200, "item_id": 50244200, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50244200", "by": "elashri", "date": "2026-10-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hister does save all of my history for desktop", "excerpt": "They are actually similar in the goal but I use them both for different reasons. Hister does save all of my history for desktop (not available on iOS yet) so I use it as backup to get something I wanted to see but lost. But Karakeep is everywhere and I save things there that I want to keep (it can save the actual page) and can use it on mobile ....etc (and share it too). This is at least my workflow which can be diff", "context": "", "use_case": "backup of browsing history", "switched_from": "", "story": "Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs"}, {"id": 790550513, "item_id": 49409407, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49409407", "by": "evanjrowley", "date": "2026-08-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would seriously consider giving Hister a try because it seems like a better fit.", "excerpt": "While I love Karakeep, the truth is that I'm using it to solve this exact same problem, even though its project goals are not as well aligned. I would seriously consider giving Hister a try because it seems like a better fit. Bonus points for being written in Go. I suppose the one thing I need would be an easy way to share links into Hister. Hopefully we will see both Android/iOS mobile apps to send links into Hister", "context": "", "use_case": "personal search engine", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister \u2013 private, self hosted search engine"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Recovering lost pages", "summary": "Users rely on it to find pages they saw before and would otherwise have lost.", "quotes": [{"id": 803907200, "item_id": 50244200, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50244200", "by": "elashri", "date": "2026-10-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hister does save all of my history for desktop", "excerpt": "They are actually similar in the goal but I use them both for different reasons. Hister does save all of my history for desktop (not available on iOS yet) so I use it as backup to get something I wanted to see but lost. But Karakeep is everywhere and I save things there that I want to keep (it can save the actual page) and can use it on mobile ....etc (and share it too). This is at least my workflow which can be diff", "context": "", "use_case": "backup of browsing history", "switched_from": "", "story": "Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs"}, {"id": 795919680, "item_id": 49744980, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744980", "by": "Anonymous106", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using your app for two months now. I have only had to rely on it a few times, but each time I did it worked beautifully.", "excerpt": "Histerekishi / Histereki - \u308c\u304d\u3057/\u6b74\u53f2 means history in Japanese. reki \u308c\u304d/\u6b74 is a suffix which means (history of) Histeri MyHister(i) Hyster(y) Also, I have been using your app for two months now. I have only had to rely on it a few times, but each time I did it worked beautifully. Thank you.", "context": "", "use_case": "searching browsing history", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 803861120, "item_id": 50241320, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50241320", "by": "elashri", "date": "2026-10-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would suggest for those to explore Hister [1] and Karakeep [2]. It is much useful that I don't worry about losing stuff now.", "excerpt": "I'm probably in the minority but I can't stand having more than 10 tabs and I start have the urge to finish the task that I'm focused on to just close as many tabs as possible. So I really read the people talking about 100s of tabs and when I see a colleague having them, I feel that my cognitive ability to deal with that is not there. I understand that people would like to keep things and that bookmarks sucks, but I ", "context": "dislikes having many tabs", "use_case": "keeping history instead of tabs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs"}]}, {"label": "Concept appeal", "summary": "Many commenters say it is a tool they had long wanted.", "quotes": [{"id": 780518752, "item_id": 48782422, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48782422", "by": "ydj", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hister sounds like something I wanted for a while, but never got around to building.", "excerpt": "Hister sounds like something I wanted for a while, but never got around to building. Searching stuff I\u2019ve seen before is most of what I do with a search engine, so having it local and fast would be amazing. Eager to give it a try.", "context": "", "use_case": "local search of visited pages", "switched_from": "", "story": "SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine"}, {"id": 780507360, "item_id": 48781710, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781710", "by": "derrida", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "that looks like a bit of software I have been dreaming about for awhile - will definately check out!", "excerpt": "Wow! that looks like a bit of software I have been dreaming about for awhile - will definately check out! You're at least doing something right in communicating the reasons why and appeal for starters! All the best!", "context": "", "use_case": "local search of visited pages", "switched_from": "", "story": "SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine"}, {"id": 780502800, "item_id": 48781425, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781425", "by": "chrisss395", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love your idea and wondered why saving and indexing browser visited pages was not being done.", "excerpt": "I love your idea and wondered why saving and indexing browser visited pages was not being done. Does this handle large amounts of local files, for example 10-20TB across file types like Powerpoint, Excel, Word, and PDF?", "context": "", "use_case": "indexing visited pages and local files", "switched_from": "", "story": "SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine"}]}, {"label": "Replaces bookmarking", "summary": "Knowing everything is findable removes the urge to bookmark or hoard tabs.", "quotes": [{"id": 790495808, "item_id": 49405988, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49405988", "by": "human_llm", "date": "2026-08-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using it since May and find it immensely useful.", "excerpt": "Thanks you for making Hister. I have been using it since May and find it immensely useful. It's a piece of mind to know that I always will be able to easily find what I looked at. So I don't feel the need to bookmark things, which I used to do, but then never looked at anyways ;).", "context": "", "use_case": "personal search index", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister \u2013 private, self hosted search engine"}, {"id": 803861120, "item_id": 50241320, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50241320", "by": "elashri", "date": "2026-10-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would suggest for those to explore Hister [1] and Karakeep [2]. It is much useful that I don't worry about losing stuff now.", "excerpt": "I'm probably in the minority but I can't stand having more than 10 tabs and I start have the urge to finish the task that I'm focused on to just close as many tabs as possible. So I really read the people talking about 100s of tabs and when I see a colleague having them, I feel that my cognitive ability to deal with that is not there. I understand that people would like to keep things and that bookmarks sucks, but I ", "context": "dislikes having many tabs", "use_case": "keeping history instead of tabs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs"}]}, {"label": "Search experience", "summary": "Commenters like the search UI, and one uses it as their default search engine.", "quotes": [{"id": 796015248, "item_id": 49750953, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750953", "by": "Yehoshaphat", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Hister as my default search engine. I\u2019m quite happy with it.", "excerpt": "I use Hister as my default search engine. I\u2019m quite happy with it. If I know I need to branch out, I use the double-bang before my query \u201c!! Hacker News Fujitsu\u201d and it kicks straight to the configured search engine (Kagi in my case).", "context": "", "use_case": "default search engine", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 795910000, "item_id": 49744375, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744375", "by": "sbeckeriv", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like the search ui.", "excerpt": "I am happy to see the idea of history search more. I am on my 3rd version of my own. the use of local LLMs has made it easier to support features like weekly summarized and recipe extraction. I like the search ui. my projects become functional but never polished. https://github.com/sbeckeriv/memoir", "context": "", "use_case": "browsing history search", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 795906592, "item_id": 49744162, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744162", "by": "bradrn", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This one looks a lot nicer.", "excerpt": "Ooh, very nice! I have my own tool I\u2019ve been using for this [https://github.com/bradrn/full-history-search/], and it\u2019s incredibly useful, but it\u2019s also pretty primitive. This one looks a lot nicer.", "context": "", "use_case": "browsing history search", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}]}, {"label": "Browser plugin", "summary": "The browser plugin caches page contents and lets you choose which pages to index.", "quotes": [{"id": 799422336, "item_id": 49963896, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49963896", "by": "qznc", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The upside is that it caches website contents via browser plugin, which is a nice workaround for bot blocking.", "excerpt": "My coding agent uses the hister cli, i.e. a local index. That often requires me to seed it manually as a downside. The upside is that it caches website contents via browser plugin, which is a nice workaround for bot blocking. Thanks asciimoo for https://github.com/asciimoo/hister", "context": "", "use_case": "local search index for coding agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Web Search API"}, {"id": 795908160, "item_id": 49744260, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744260", "by": "RobGR", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It is useful for sure, but I think it will really shine once I've been using it long enough", "excerpt": "I've been using this since the last time it came up on here. I don't have it index every page I visit, I use the browser plugin to tell it to index specific ones. It is useful for sure, but I think it will really shine once I've been using it long enough for it to build up a bigger index of things that are old enough that I've actually forgotten about them.", "context": "", "use_case": "indexing specific pages", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Resource usage", "summary": "Users report high CPU and battery drain, and one says it hogged their server and broke their reverse proxy.", "quotes": [{"id": 796034304, "item_id": 49752144, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49752144", "by": "elestor", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to use it, but it would use a lot of CPU and hurt battery life", "excerpt": "I used to use it, but it would use a lot of CPU and hurt battery life, is the idea that you self host on a different machine?", "context": "", "use_case": "private search of visited pages", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 795989888, "item_id": 49749368, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49749368", "by": "g_host", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Hister so much.", "excerpt": "I love Hister so much. I ran it for most of this year but encountered some problems with it I couldn't fix and thus have not had it hooked up to anything since June when I finally couldn't take it anymore. In short, I serve a good number of apps from an Nginx reverse proxy. Maybe 25% of them are exposed to the WWW while everything else is limited to the LAN but I still get valid TLS for all of it. Hister, though, kep", "context": "Self-hosts apps behind an Nginx reverse proxy", "use_case": "searching browsing history", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}]}, {"label": "No mobile support", "summary": "It is not available on iOS yet, and users want mobile apps and better Safari support.", "quotes": [{"id": 803907200, "item_id": 50244200, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50244200", "by": "elashri", "date": "2026-10-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hister does save all of my history for desktop", "excerpt": "They are actually similar in the goal but I use them both for different reasons. Hister does save all of my history for desktop (not available on iOS yet) so I use it as backup to get something I wanted to see but lost. But Karakeep is everywhere and I save things there that I want to keep (it can save the actual page) and can use it on mobile ....etc (and share it too). This is at least my workflow which can be diff", "context": "", "use_case": "backup of browsing history", "switched_from": "", "story": "Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs"}, {"id": 790550513, "item_id": 49409407, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49409407", "by": "evanjrowley", "date": "2026-08-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would seriously consider giving Hister a try because it seems like a better fit.", "excerpt": "While I love Karakeep, the truth is that I'm using it to solve this exact same problem, even though its project goals are not as well aligned. I would seriously consider giving Hister a try because it seems like a better fit. Bonus points for being written in Go. I suppose the one thing I need would be an easy way to share links into Hister. Hopefully we will see both Android/iOS mobile apps to send links into Hister", "context": "", "use_case": "personal search engine", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister \u2013 private, self hosted search engine"}]}, {"label": "Manual seeding", "summary": "The local index often has to be seeded by hand.", "quotes": [{"id": 799422336, "item_id": 49963896, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49963896", "by": "qznc", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The upside is that it caches website contents via browser plugin, which is a nice workaround for bot blocking.", "excerpt": "My coding agent uses the hister cli, i.e. a local index. That often requires me to seed it manually as a downside. The upside is that it caches website contents via browser plugin, which is a nice workaround for bot blocking. Thanks asciimoo for https://github.com/asciimoo/hister", "context": "", "use_case": "local search index for coding agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Web Search API"}]}, {"label": "Slow payoff", "summary": "One user expects it to be most useful only after a large index has built up over time.", "quotes": [{"id": 795908160, "item_id": 49744260, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744260", "by": "RobGR", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It is useful for sure, but I think it will really shine once I've been using it long enough", "excerpt": "I've been using this since the last time it came up on here. I don't have it index every page I visit, I use the browser plugin to tell it to index specific ones. It is useful for sure, but I think it will really shine once I've been using it long enough for it to build up a bigger index of things that are old enough that I've actually forgotten about them.", "context": "", "use_case": "indexing specific pages", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}]}], "who": [{"by": "elashri", "context": "dislikes having many tabs", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50241320", "date": "2026-10-26"}, {"by": "g_host", "context": "Self-hosts apps behind an Nginx reverse proxy", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49749368", "date": "2026-09-18"}], "tags": ["self-hostable", "for desktop browsing", "for coding agents", "bookmark replacement"], "use_cases": ["searching browsing history", "browsing history search", "personal search index", "local search of visited pages", "backup of browsing history", "keeping history instead of tabs"], "compared": [{"slug": "karakeep", "name": "Karakeep", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kagi", "name": "Kagi", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "duckduckgo", "name": "DuckDuckGo", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "tailscale", "name": "Tailscale", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 790439568, "item_id": 49402473, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49402473", "by": "asciimoo", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hister builds a personal search index from pages you visit, bookmarks, browser history, local files, and crawled websites.", "excerpt": "Ohi, author here! Thanks for posting Hister. Feel free to A.M.A. My first free software search project was Searx, a privacy respecting metasearch engine, but because of the limitations of the metasearch concept, I've decided to take a different approach. Hister builds a personal search index from pages you visit, bookmarks, browser history, local files, and crawled websites. It stores extracted content with offline r", "context": "author", "use_case": "private personal search index", "switched_from": "Searx", "story": "Hister \u2013 private, self hosted search engine"}, {"id": 781406384, "item_id": 48837899, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48837899", "by": "asciimoo", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I'm working on a similar application called Hister", "excerpt": "We need projects like this. Automatically classifying the files is smart. I'm working on a similar application called Hister (https://github.com/asciimoo/hister). I should borrow some of your ideas. =]", "context": "", "use_case": "searchable knowledge base", "switched_from": "", "story": "Turning a pile of documents into a searchable useable knowledge base"}, {"id": 780504640, "item_id": 48781540, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781540", "by": "asciimoo", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I started Hister as a proxy as well, but quickly switched to the current extension based approach", "excerpt": "Absolutely, this is a great example where Hister can shine. I started Hister as a proxy as well, but quickly switched to the current extension based approach, because intercepting HTTPS traffic requires a MiTM proxy which is much more painful to setup than installing a browser extension.", "context": "creator of Hister", "use_case": "long-term browsing memory", "switched_from": "", "story": "SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine"}, {"id": 780498640, "item_id": 48781165, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781165", "by": "asciimoo", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "its biggest strength is automatically indexing browser tabs as those are rendered", "excerpt": "Both are search engines, but that's all the similarity. Hister has a traditional crawler, but its biggest strength is automatically indexing browser tabs as those are rendered. This way it bypasses authentication, CloudFlare, captchas and most of the annoying limitations of traditional crawlers. Hister also provides full offline result previews. Check out the small read-only demo: https://demo.hister.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "indexing browser tabs for search", "switched_from": "", "story": "SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine"}, {"id": 780493456, "item_id": 48780841, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48780841", "by": "asciimoo", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My new search project is https://github.com/asciimoo/hister (https://hister.org/).", "excerpt": "Ohi, I'm the original creator of Searx, but due to the limitations of the metasearch concept I'm not involved in the development anymore. My new search project is https://github.com/asciimoo/hister (https://hister.org/). Hister is a full text indexer for websites and local files which automatically saves all the visited pages rendered by your browser. Storing full page content allows serving offline result previews a", "context": "original creator of Searx", "use_case": "full text indexing of visited pages", "switched_from": "Searx", "story": "SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine"}, {"id": 776487424, "item_id": 48530464, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48530464", "by": "asciimoo", "date": "2026-06-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using it for a few months and as my local index is growing I can avoid opening google/duckduckgo/kagi", "excerpt": "I'm still working on a self-hosted search service called Hister with the goal to reduce dependence on online search engines. Hister is a full text indexer for websites and local files which automatically saves all the visited pages rendered by your browser. It provides offline result previews, a flexible web (and terminal) search interface & query language to explore saved content with ease or quickly fall back to tr", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted full text search", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49743097", "title": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep", "mentions": 8}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48779454", "title": "SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49351802", "title": "Hister \u2013 private, self hosted search engine", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50197108", "title": "Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49985548", "title": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49963171", "title": "Web Search API", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 3}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 6}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 7, "neutral": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803907200, "item_id": 50244200, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50244200", "by": "elashri", "date": "2026-10-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hister does save all of my history for desktop", "excerpt": "They are actually similar in the goal but I use them both for different reasons. Hister does save all of my history for desktop (not available on iOS yet) so I use it as backup to get something I wanted to see but lost. But Karakeep is everywhere and I save things there that I want to keep (it can save the actual page) and can use it on mobile ....etc (and share it too). This is at least my workflow which can be diff", "context": "", "use_case": "backup of browsing history", "switched_from": "", "story": "Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs"}, {"id": 803861120, "item_id": 50241320, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50241320", "by": "elashri", "date": "2026-10-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would suggest for those to explore Hister [1] and Karakeep [2]. It is much useful that I don't worry about losing stuff now.", "excerpt": "I'm probably in the minority but I can't stand having more than 10 tabs and I start have the urge to finish the task that I'm focused on to just close as many tabs as possible. So I really read the people talking about 100s of tabs and when I see a colleague having them, I feel that my cognitive ability to deal with that is not there. I understand that people would like to keep things and that bookmarks sucks, but I ", "context": "dislikes having many tabs", "use_case": "keeping history instead of tabs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs"}, {"id": 800282676, "item_id": 50017667, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50017667", "by": "wraptile", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "languagetool, nextcloud, hister, syncthing, restic backups, vaultwarden, windmill", "excerpt": "These VPS no longer make much sense for self-hosting imo. I have two refurbished 32gb ram Lenovo k14 laptops (250$ each) that I use for self-hosting over tailscale and cloudflare tunnels. This is a lot of compute and very little power use. One for personal self-hosted projects: languagetool, nextcloud, hister, syncthing, restic backups, vaultwarden, windmill. Another for public facing web apps I host through cloudfla", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 799422336, "item_id": 49963896, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49963896", "by": "qznc", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The upside is that it caches website contents via browser plugin, which is a nice workaround for bot blocking.", "excerpt": "My coding agent uses the hister cli, i.e. a local index. That often requires me to seed it manually as a downside. The upside is that it caches website contents via browser plugin, which is a nice workaround for bot blocking. Thanks asciimoo for https://github.com/asciimoo/hister", "context": "", "use_case": "local search index for coding agent", "switched_from": "", "story": "Web Search API"}, {"id": 797989349, "item_id": 49874334, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49874334", "by": "delis-thumbs-7e", "date": "2026-09-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think Hister seems promising, but have not tried it myself yet.", "excerpt": "Kagi is brilliant. I find the whole Yandex -thing silly (EU spending on liquefied gas etc. from Russia is more than Yandex\u2019s whole annual revenue) and only wish same scrutiny would be put on corporations funding Israel genocides. I use DDG at work on Firefox with all AI blocked. If I would apart from Kagi, I would use SearXNG locally accessing it elsewhere with Tailscale. I think Hister seems promising, but have not ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "When did Google get so weird?"}, {"id": 796034304, "item_id": 49752144, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49752144", "by": "elestor", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to use it, but it would use a lot of CPU and hurt battery life", "excerpt": "I used to use it, but it would use a lot of CPU and hurt battery life, is the idea that you self host on a different machine?", "context": "", "use_case": "private search of visited pages", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 796015248, "item_id": 49750953, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750953", "by": "Yehoshaphat", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Hister as my default search engine. I\u2019m quite happy with it.", "excerpt": "I use Hister as my default search engine. I\u2019m quite happy with it. If I know I need to branch out, I use the double-bang before my query \u201c!! Hacker News Fujitsu\u201d and it kicks straight to the configured search engine (Kagi in my case).", "context": "", "use_case": "default search engine", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 795989888, "item_id": 49749368, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49749368", "by": "g_host", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Hister so much.", "excerpt": "I love Hister so much. I ran it for most of this year but encountered some problems with it I couldn't fix and thus have not had it hooked up to anything since June when I finally couldn't take it anymore. In short, I serve a good number of apps from an Nginx reverse proxy. Maybe 25% of them are exposed to the WWW while everything else is limited to the LAN but I still get valid TLS for all of it. Hister, though, kep", "context": "Self-hosts apps behind an Nginx reverse proxy", "use_case": "searching browsing history", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 795920385, "item_id": 49745024, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49745024", "by": "Vaslo", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "now I am going to try this since I have so much of it already setup.", "excerpt": "It's really great you've done all that work for importing from other apps - I use Karakeep and at first didnt know how much redundancy I have between the two, but now I am going to try this since I have so much of it already setup.", "context": "", "use_case": "private search", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 795919680, "item_id": 49744980, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744980", "by": "Anonymous106", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using your app for two months now. I have only had to rely on it a few times, but each time I did it worked beautifully.", "excerpt": "Histerekishi / Histereki - \u308c\u304d\u3057/\u6b74\u53f2 means history in Japanese. reki \u308c\u304d/\u6b74 is a suffix which means (history of) Histeri MyHister(i) Hyster(y) Also, I have been using your app for two months now. I have only had to rely on it a few times, but each time I did it worked beautifully. Thank you.", "context": "", "use_case": "searching browsing history", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 795910000, "item_id": 49744375, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744375", "by": "sbeckeriv", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like the search ui.", "excerpt": "I am happy to see the idea of history search more. I am on my 3rd version of my own. the use of local LLMs has made it easier to support features like weekly summarized and recipe extraction. I like the search ui. my projects become functional but never polished. https://github.com/sbeckeriv/memoir", "context": "", "use_case": "browsing history search", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 795908160, "item_id": 49744260, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744260", "by": "RobGR", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It is useful for sure, but I think it will really shine once I've been using it long enough", "excerpt": "I've been using this since the last time it came up on here. I don't have it index every page I visit, I use the browser plugin to tell it to index specific ones. It is useful for sure, but I think it will really shine once I've been using it long enough for it to build up a bigger index of things that are old enough that I've actually forgotten about them.", "context": "", "use_case": "indexing specific pages", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 795906592, "item_id": 49744162, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49744162", "by": "bradrn", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This one looks a lot nicer.", "excerpt": "Ooh, very nice! I have my own tool I\u2019ve been using for this [https://github.com/bradrn/full-history-search/], and it\u2019s incredibly useful, but it\u2019s also pretty primitive. This one looks a lot nicer.", "context": "", "use_case": "browsing history search", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep"}, {"id": 791953856, "item_id": 49497116, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49497116", "by": "atmosx", "date": "2026-08-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You could pass it all to hister (searchable) and then just export to any format", "excerpt": "You could pass it all to hister (searchable) and then just export to any format or keep the mbox format and simply lzma & encrypt the archive file.", "context": "", "use_case": "searchable email archive", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Best way to archive 25 years of emails"}, {"id": 790550513, "item_id": 49409407, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49409407", "by": "evanjrowley", "date": "2026-08-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would seriously consider giving Hister a try because it seems like a better fit.", "excerpt": "While I love Karakeep, the truth is that I'm using it to solve this exact same problem, even though its project goals are not as well aligned. I would seriously consider giving Hister a try because it seems like a better fit. Bonus points for being written in Go. I suppose the one thing I need would be an easy way to share links into Hister. Hopefully we will see both Android/iOS mobile apps to send links into Hister", "context": "", "use_case": "personal search engine", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister \u2013 private, self hosted search engine"}, {"id": 790495808, "item_id": 49405988, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49405988", "by": "human_llm", "date": "2026-08-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using it since May and find it immensely useful.", "excerpt": "Thanks you for making Hister. I have been using it since May and find it immensely useful. It's a piece of mind to know that I always will be able to easily find what I looked at. So I don't feel the need to bookmark things, which I used to do, but then never looked at anyways ;).", "context": "", "use_case": "personal search index", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister \u2013 private, self hosted search engine"}, {"id": 790493392, "item_id": 49405837, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49405837", "by": "mmargenot", "date": "2026-08-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This is so cool!", "excerpt": "This is so cool! For the time being I\u2019m still locked into notion for my handwritten knowledge base, but I love this for incorporating external information. For the semantic search is there any chunking/processing that happens with the content or do you need to be diligent about having a large embedding context (and/or small content)?", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister \u2013 private, self hosted search engine"}, {"id": 790450800, "item_id": 49403175, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49403175", "by": "lnenad", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "if it works as described this is a great product", "excerpt": "I LOVE the concept. I will play around with the execution, if it works as described this is a great product.", "context": "", "use_case": "private search engine", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hister \u2013 private, self hosted search engine"}, {"id": 786502740, "item_id": 49156421, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156421", "by": "SyneRyder", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "There are projects like Hister that will help make your own search index", "excerpt": "If you don't mind paying and someone else having control over your search experience, Kagi is an option. Urkey (sp?) is another new alternative. If you just want a free search engine, Brave is probably the best index. Bonus points to Marginalia for finding the obscure things Brave doesn't surface. But if you want to go down the rabbit hole, it's easy to build your own metasearch engine and search several engines at o", "context": "", "use_case": "personal search index", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are the viable alternatives to DuckDuckGo?"}, {"id": 780518752, "item_id": 48782422, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48782422", "by": "ydj", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hister sounds like something I wanted for a while, but never got around to building.", "excerpt": "Hister sounds like something I wanted for a while, but never got around to building. Searching stuff I\u2019ve seen before is most of what I do with a search engine, so having it local and fast would be amazing. Eager to give it a try.", "context": "", "use_case": "local search of visited pages", "switched_from": "", "story": "SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine"}, {"id": 780507360, "item_id": 48781710, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781710", "by": "derrida", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "that looks like a bit of software I have been dreaming about for awhile - will definately check out!", "excerpt": "Wow! that looks like a bit of software I have been dreaming about for awhile - will definately check out! You're at least doing something right in communicating the reasons why and appeal for starters! All the best!", "context": "", "use_case": "local search of visited pages", "switched_from": "", "story": "SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine"}, {"id": 780502800, "item_id": 48781425, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781425", "by": "chrisss395", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love your idea and wondered why saving and indexing browser visited pages was not being done.", "excerpt": "I love your idea and wondered why saving and indexing browser visited pages was not being done. Does this handle large amounts of local files, for example 10-20TB across file types like Powerpoint, Excel, Word, and PDF?", "context": "", "use_case": "indexing visited pages and local files", "switched_from": "", "story": "SearXNG: A free internet metasearch engine"}, {"id": 772276849, "item_id": 48267303, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48267303", "by": "renegat0x0", "date": "2026-05-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "If I wanted to use use my domain list to start hister", "excerpt": "I use my own domain index to navigate the web. - If I wanted to use use my domain list to start hister, to download my preconfigured / like domains? - Can I make some pages to rank higher in it? - Can I assign tags to pages (by which I could later on filter?) My domain index - https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted search", "switched_from": "", "story": "Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore"}]}