You're online all day. Why not use the browser to remind you of things? | Hacker News Reader

You're online all day. Why not use the browser to remind you of things?

bestreminderapp.com

51 pointssiegers40 comments

Because every OS I can think of comes with a native app that does the same, while also integrating with whichever calendar I choose to throw its way? Because I need them on my phone as well?

My worry is if I install this extension and it looks ok now, who's to say it won't be compromised later on by some nefarious person who wants to put something nasty in it?

Tangential Counterpoint: I have no connection to this thing and also question its value, but…

At least on iOS, I think calendar reminders (both native and gcal) are fundamentally broken. Their notifications easily get lost in a sea of other notifications and are easily missed.

The Outlook ones always get my attention, I think they make the phone vibrate, and they show up on my Apple Watch. But sometimes I do miss some pings, mainly if people join the call too early.

I would argue that it’s the “sea of other notifications” that’s the problem, and that can be easily fixed by going through the notifications settings and disabling them for anything less important than calendar reminders. Do you really need to be interrupted every time someone likes an Instagram post?

That takes too much effort. Defaults matter.

There is no defaults. You are always asked by the app if you want to get notifications.

Just say no to most of them

Right and when you accidentally say no to the ones that actually matter?

The whole problem with a sea of notifications is that it’s hard to identify what’s important and what’s not. Your suggested solution does nothing to solve that problem other than to relocate when the problem arises.

Then you find it and fix the issue in notification settings

Counterpoint: I found out the other day that friends and family were messaging me on Instagram, and I had no idea Instagram even had direct messaging support.

For several years people were messaging me and I was completely oblivious.

"The whole problem with a sea of notifications is that it’s hard to identify what’s important and what’s not."

a) If there's far too many notifications, the bulk of them is not important. If only because you'd easily overlook them even if they were 'important'.

b) Is it difficult to decide between those few notifications that matter (like, those you act upon), and all the rest? (like, those you ignore).

There are dark patterns in the way. I need to know when my Doordash arrives. But I can't opt in only to useful notifications and opt out of marketing offers. If I turn them on and off only when I need them, I'm gunnuh slip up. So currently I'm accepting a noisier feed. I'd like to do something about it programmatically but it's hasn't worked it's way high enough on my to-do list to actually get done.

Such a ux nightmare. It’s inexcusable that apple or google doesn’t extend their design guidelines to classify different types of notifications beyond “critical” and “non critical”.

I’m sure this is intentional. But if apple could get the “ask app not to track” button off the ground surely they could make some headway in differentiating “your package has arrived” from “this just in! 15% off stupid bullshit” and being able to opt out from the latter?

God what a stupid future we’ve created. “Oh we have to make the critical notification feed functionally useless because of pressure from marketing partners”

Don't bundle Google into this, Android does have arbitrary notification channels. You absolutely can make certain types of notifications silent or turned off completely while keeping other types of notifications turned on. It's been a thing for 5+ years now.

For example Glovo delivery app has an "order updates" category, which I keep turned on, and I turn off the rest of them.

But do you have to do within the app or on a per app basis? Not as familiar with android. That’s a step in the right direction but I mean something more like delineating them at the os level so I can go into settings and say “I don’t want to see marketing related notifications from any application ever”. If an app mislabels marketing notifications to circumvent this it gets pulled from the store or (ideally) doesn’t pass review. So I can just flick off a toggle for those intrusive notifications but keep my important ones. Then my feed is suddenly worthwhile again with stuff like package delivery, calendar, messaging apps, etc. fussing around inside each app is a pain in the butt (although better than not being able to do so at all).

But does this apply for all apps on android or is it up to the dev? Can you make the Amazon shopping app just give notifications about package delivery and make it shut the fuck up about sales and suggested items? Or doordash, instacart, etc? If the dev can just ignore it then it’s kind of pointless and why I mean it should be part of the design guidelines

Maybe if the ftc would get off it’s ass and force the issue. The USA is legally required to have unsubscribe links in commercial emails, I don’t see how this is all that different

I just delete the app if they abuse notifications permissions

> Their notifications easily get lost in a sea of other notifications and are easily missed.

Time-sensitive notifications (iOS 15+) fixed this for me. They’re always delivered immediately and stay on the Lock Screen for an hour.

I can’t recall if Apple retroactively changed the default for Calendar and Reminders, or whether that’s something I had to change.

Yeah, but (I think?) be default they make the same notification sound as everything else and don’t vibrate. I need something else to distinguish them other than appearing differently on the Lock Screen. My phone is usually in my pocket.

It would also be nice if you could snooze them.

At this point if I really want to be alerted (leave now or you miss the train, etc) I set an alarm. But you can’t really do that any sooner than the day you want to be alerted because alarms don’t have dates (technically you can sort of do it with alarms on specific days of the week).

I have found the only way I can reliably get any notifications on iOS is to set them as “persistent” (ie-they remain on the screen until manually dismissed). Otherwise, they vanish into a pull-down screen that I have never become accustomed to routinely checking and is trivially easy to ignore as there are no status bar nags like on Android.

as a recent iOS user with years of android muscle memory. it infuriates me that scrolling from the top opens the useless siri suggestions instead of the notifications screen. I can’t take it.

Calendar Alarm for Android fixed that for me.

I've Remindoro installed which is exactly same thing, open source (https://github.com/palerdot/remindoro), and supports Firefox.

Sorry there are a million apps that do this, I do not see the point of having it inside the browser and I for sure do not think tying to cache in on a "premium version" for a browser extension is appealing. Its rather appalling, so no thanks.

I never even heard of a "premium version" of a browser extension ever - well OK i have heard of commercial subscriptions that tie into extensions like Bitwarden but I do not need that, its more for organisations.

Thanks for the depressing reminder.

I honestly don't see the point of this (especially paid), when a browser based calendar with notifications enabled gets you all of this for free. I guess privacy is one consideration, but I already have a system there, I just use shortened words or prompts that only make sense to me.

If you’re a fan of Chrome-based browsers, you could also just use Vivaldi. They have a built-in email and calendar client. There you go, email and calendar integration into your web-browsing experience. If you’re going to do it, go all the way.

I really don’t understand the point of this. If you’re in a browser all day, then you’re also in your browser all day so just use a free app (or even the built in calendar that most OS’s have.

There’s absolutely no way I’m ever going to enable notifications on my browser with how many garbage websites try to send notifications.

And on top of that, there’s a subscription for one of the most basic bits of software there is. The FAQ even says none of the data leaves your device, so there’s no ongoing server costs to cover.

I don’t get it.

I wonder how well this kind of app sells. It seems so useless to me (plenty of other calendar apps are free and with more features) but I guess there's someone out there who may be interested in it.

Ugh… why not not use my browser for apps. I don’t want to install extensions for all the things. I want to keep my browser to reading and downloading content as much as possible.

Great name and domain. Someone said "branding is overrated, let's go all in on SEO."

I love the domain name. Naming your side project “best <something>” must help SEO.

This shit should be illegal. Fucking hate search results with "best" in it. They are the WORST, all just suckers who try to sell you shit. Nowadays probably AI generated "best 10 x for x" lists. Disgusting, you really need to avoid "best" and have some search term that gets content from people actually honestly reviewing and testing things.

How about the browser notice that i'm rabbit holing into off-topic* websites? Off-topic being any websites don't seem to be related to my daily to do list.

The best reminder app I have ever used is a sticky note on my bathroom mirror.

fridge door is peak

Why would I ditch my Google/Outlook calendar for this reminder app?

- Because the browser may not always be open, although my computer definitely is

- Because I want the browser to browse, not to be an "everything" app

- Because I'd use Google or Outlook Calendars if I had to

On the other hand, one of the big improvements Windows 10 offered me over Windows 7, is that I could disable all notifications, instead of just most balloon alerts.

I'm on Telegram all day and I use that to remind me of things, thank you.

I think Todoist (and others) have Chrome extensions?

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