> Apollo-like swipe left->right anywhere to go back (and reverse to drill back into the story you were on, which Octal doesn't support).

The feature is also present in HACK! It's called "Full screen swipe to go back" (you really need to search for it, the settings list is kind of messy). Also the reverse you mentioned is implemented.

There is an option that changes the behavior for the swipe at the root level. Agreed this would be really nice to also work within a story to go back by using left -> right. Leaving the options to reply with a long press.

Other than that I do appreciate the reader settings and this is one of the better ones. Most are just readers — this allows logging in.

Another thing, editing of comments is a bit odd. It said a comment was updated but wasn’t? Logged into the site and didn’t see the change.

What does Octal has over Hack?

I just find that Octal not as "tight" UI-wise. Hack feels a little too dense and I'm completely unable to hit the upvote/downvote/reply buttons reliably, I just have to long-press to bring up all the options.

I like Hack's notification replies and showing karma for comments you wrote. The UI just feels too tight to me and I can't quite explain it, it's just harder for me determine where one comment starts/stops/indention/etc. Maybe I could fiddle with the settings enough to get it to where I want but Octal had almost everything I wanted out of the box and I didn't need to fiddle with settings as much.

Ha, configurable tightness is precisely what I love about Hack (though using side swipe to upvote as it's the most frequent action, so better be convenient), and the colored vertical lines are as good as indents to delimit comments.