Ask HN: Please give us an option to hide our username in the upper right corner

[swingandamiss]

I'm often around others (bus, work, standing in line on my phone) and I don't want people to know my HN username. Many sites display the username in the upper right corner and it seems it's a privacy issue. Can we have an option to turn it off or just remove it completely?

In general I wish it would become a trend to stop displaying usernames at the to of sites. Reddit for example does this and I wish they didn't.

[vunderba]

Assuming you can run Tampermonkey, you can use my script which I've adapted to hide both the score and the username. It’s a script I personally use because I don’t like seeing my score since it just feels like a silly number, and I’d rather focus on the content than on whether my "number" goes up or down.

If you install this script in the Tampermonkey extension for Firefox/Chrome, it will automatically hide your username and your score on all HN pages.

https://gist.github.com/scpedicini/43f95d5e00af49110c41754ea...

[swingandamiss]

Thanks. This is very useful. I'm surprised at push back I always get on this topic so it's nice to see I'm not the only one. I thought tech people were concerned about privacy, but I guess not? I know discord and a few other apps offer a "streamer mode" that hides the username so you don't broadcast it to your audience if you stream, I wish more apps and sites adopted that feature.

[szszrk]

It's a crutch, anyway. The only way to have predictable results when streaming is to have an environment with only things safe to stream. Same rule like with environment variables, home directories, ai agents or whatever...

I have shown "wrong" things, like a password, a few times too many, even before streaming was a thing.

[szszrk]

Ain't Violentmonkey or Greasemonkey a safer bet nowadays?

[vunderba]

oh good call - Violentmonkey is what I meant. That's my script from when I was previously using tampermonkey but it works identically in VM.

https://github.com/violentmonkey/violentmonkey

[blowsand]

Back of the line pal. You can have username hiding after we get dark mode.

[d3Xt3r]

Isn't it a bigger issue that they can even see your screen in the first place? Like what if you have to type a password or PIN into some app/website, or some other personal info?

So I'd recommend a different approach, like getting a privacy screen guard so the screen can only be viewed from a limited angle. Or get a pair of AR/XR glasses so only you can see the content and you can keep your device's screen off.

[swingandamiss]

I rarely type my password or PIN. And if I did, I'd make sure to hide my screen. But I frequently casually read HN, reddit, and other sites casually and in public places. It would be nice if my username wasn't so visible to others.

[al_borland]

A co-worker of mine ran into issues of people trying to read his screen while traveling, and he was doing stuff for work. He ended up getting a screen protector with a privacy filter, so people couldn’t read it off axis. It seemed pretty effective.

Nearly every website puts the username in the top corner. A screen protector seems more pragmatic than trying to petition every website to change well established conventions that millions (or billions) of users are already familiar with.

[d3Xt3r]

Regardless, a privacy screen guard or glasses would be a much better solution for overall privacy and not just hiding your username.

[enragebait]

You could simply run an alternative browser that is not logged in, and switch to the logged in browser for interaction worthy activities.

[RetroTechie]

Or an option to move username to the bottom of the page?

That way you'd have to scroll to the very bottom before it appears.

[al_borland]

A slight scroll on the page hides it as-is. The header isn’t sticky.

[jethronethro]

Good luck with this. Dark mode on this site will happen long before you get this option. And how long have HN users been waiting for dark mode?

[Peroni]

16 years and counting.

[swah]

Nobody cares mate. Use a smaller font.

[downbad_]

Then log out.

[swingandamiss]

Then I can't vote up/down, hide, or flag posts and logged out users will get cached pages.