# Hister Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/hister/ 69 people recommended Hister in Hacker News comments, 8 had mixed feelings and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. People who said how long they have used it report a median of 2 months, among 14 people. It was recommended in 7 of 12 months, in 18 threads. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A self-hosted search engine that indexes pages you visit and files you keep, so you can search your own browsing history and notes privately. Critics note browser import is awkward and the license is restrictive. Summary written by Claude from 54 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 50 of those comments still count. ## Why people recommend it - Private local search of browsed pages (3 comments in the sample): "It can provide a privacy-respecting search experience for serving "recall" type searches" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48450839)) "when we have solutions like hister and yacy that is so privacy conscious" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275435)) "as my local index is growing I can avoid relying on external search engines" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48266796)) - Automatic indexing of browser tabs (3 comments in the sample): "its biggest strength is automatically indexing browser tabs as those are rendered" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781165)) "I love your idea and wondered why saving and indexing browser visited pages was not being done." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781425)) "it solves the dreaded hunting through the last month of browser history" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49745220)) - Offline previews survive page changes (2 comments in the sample): "It stores extracted content with offline result previews, so information remains searchable even when the original page changes or disappears." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49402473)) "Storing full page content allows serving offline result previews and the full page content via MCP." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48780841)) - Works around bot blocking and captchas (2 comments in the sample): "The upside is that it caches website contents via browser plugin, which is a nice workaround for bot blocking." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49963896)) "It is fully invisible for the websites, so no captcha, anti-bot protection, no authentication issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49746399)) ## What people warn about - Browser import is awkward (2 comments in the sample): "The closest thing I see is the "hister import file" command, which is great, but inconvenient." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49429651)) "the browser bookmark ingestion expects the binary to be local, instead of on a server/vm" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49160491)) - License too restrictive (2 comments in the sample): "i still think it could've benefited by Apache 2.0 which more or less gets you to your goals" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49403672)) "would've been great with a more liberal license" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49402640)) - Proxy setup breaks reverse proxy (1 comment in the sample): "Once I removed the proxy config for Hister from the service, the issue never happened again." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757339)) ## Other search engines people recommend - [Kagi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kagi/): 589 recommend, 99 mixed, 198 criticize - [DuckDuckGo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/duckduckgo/): 213 recommend, 52 mixed, 183 criticize - [Google Search](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-search/): 185 recommend, 98 mixed, 976 criticize - [SearXNG](https://hackerapproved.com/p/searxng/): 64 recommend, 8 mixed, 7 criticize ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Hister", https://hackerapproved.com/p/hister/ (69 recommend, 8 mixed, 8 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.