Refetch — Mobile & Desktop App

Open-source alternative to YC-controlled HN, featuring curated tech news, discussions, and community-driven content.

The official Flutter client for Refetch, bringing the feed, threads, voting, and notifications to Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux on top of the same Appwrite backend as the web app.

• 🌐 Web app: https://refetch.io
• 🧩 Web project & backend: https://github.com/refetch-io/refetch

Features

• 📰 Curated feed — Top, New, Show, and Mines tabs
• 💬 Threaded comments with replies
• ⬆️ Voting on posts and comments
• ✍️ Submit links or "Show" posts
• 🔐 Email/password accounts
• 🔔 Push notifications — replies and an opt-in weekly digest
• 🌗 Material 3 light/dark theming

Architecture

A hybrid client that reuses the existing Refetch backend: auth goes through the Appwrite Dart SDK (sessions + JWT), while reads and mutations go through the refetch.io REST API authenticated with that JWT. Push uses FCM on Android and APNS directly on iOS (no Firebase on iOS) via the push plugin.

Built with Flutter, Riverpod, go_router, http, and the appwrite Dart SDK.

Getting started

flutter pub get
flutter run            # pick a device, or e.g. flutter run -d windows

The feed works out of the box against the Refetch backend. Push notifications are optional and disabled until configured — see backend/ and the topic/provider ids in lib/core/config/app_config.dart.

Release signing is read from android/key.properties (gitignored); see android/key.properties.example.

Launcher icons are generated from assets/icon/ (sources also kept as SVG):

dart run flutter_launcher_icons

Releasing

Both stores are driven by fastlane, configured per platform under android/fastlane/ and ios/fastlane/. Store listing text lives in fastlane/metadata/ alongside the app.

cd android && bundle install     # or: cd ios && bundle install
bundle exec fastlane lanes

Shared lane names: build (no upload), beta (Play open testing / TestFlight), release (Play production / App Store review), plus upload_metadata, upload_screenshots, upload_listing, download_metadata and screenshots. Android also has internal for the Play internal track.

Everything project-specific is read from environment variables, so no secrets are committed — set them in your CI provider or a local, gitignored .env:

• Android — APP_IDENTIFIER, plus PLAY_STORE_JSON_KEY_PATH or PLAY_STORE_JSON_KEY_DATA. Release signing still comes from android/key.properties. The build/upload logic lives in fastlane-plugin-play_publisher, which documents the optional vars (SUPPLY_RELEASE_STATUS=draft for a first-ever release, SKIP_FLUTTER_BUILD=1, …).
• iOS — APP_IDENTIFIER, APPLE_ID, TEAM_ID, ITC_TEAM_ID, APP_STORE_CONNECT_KEY_ID, APP_STORE_CONNECT_ISSUER_ID, APP_STORE_CONNECT_KEY_CONTENT (base64 .p8), and MATCH_GIT_URL / MATCH_PASSWORD for the private match certificates repo. fastlane fetch_apple_info prints your ITC_TEAM_ID.

In CI the same lanes run from Actions → Android Release / iOS Release, both manual (workflow_dispatch) — pick a track and go. The secrets each one needs are listed at the top of .github/workflows/*.yml. After changing either Gemfile, run Refresh Gemfile.lock so the committed locks stay in sync; Bundler runs frozen in CI and a stale lock fails the release.

License

MIT — consistent with the Refetch project.