Hooks gives you every notification you’ll ever need
Everyone loves a notification. The pang of excitement as you pull your phone out of your pocket; a like? a retweet? Oh, battery at 10%.
Hooks wants to take you back to the good old days, where a notification was big news, information you cared about. Hooks promises to not only notify you of emails or social network interaction, but pretty much everything that matters to you: the results of your sports team, the release of a new episode of your favorite show and a million other things (literally).
The popular tab is a great way to see some ingenious new uses
While all this information is readily available online, Hooks pulls it all together in one feed and without the need for you to jump around your home screen opening and closing apps. Notifications you receive can be saved and viewed through the app at a later time.
Your website could be down, but at least a new ep of GOT is out!
Hooks is minimalist in its design, almost to the point of resembling just another settings menu in iOS. It feels utilitarian and almost a bit Reddit in its approach which is no bad thing as its uncluttered, simple to navigate, and easy to read.
Suddenly Siri just seems so needy.
Popular alerts already set up include the release dates of popular TV show episodes, when an app receives a review on the app store, and when big bands are coming to your town or city (the preloaded alert for this is Coldplay, presumably to alert you when to stay away.)
The experience of using Hooks is quite a pleasure once you’re all set up. Choosing which alerts to receive from the beginning takes some time to get right. For instance, you soon realize that receiving a notification for every news article on your favorite site is a bit too much, but notifications for just one section of the site is the right balance.
Your inbox is great at bringing together all of your alerts.
Along with the simple everyday stuff such as the weather and new stories on your favorite sites, you can set more complicated notifications. Whether a website is down, whether a stock price has peaked or crashed past a certain point. Enron in your pocket. You can also add alerts for keywords that appear in Twitter which is handy if you use social media in a professional capacity.
With the Apple watch hooked in, the possibilities expand even further.
Hooks, like IFTTT, relies on an ecosystem to evolve and create other notifications that you may want to use. It’s early days, but there are already a crazy amount of uses for the app that’s only going to get better. Hooks claims that there is currently over a million notifications that you can subscribe to. If you have an idea for a Hook, you can also send your suggestion to the team through the app itself.
Send alerts to friends that you think they’d like. Or to gloat. Either way.
Mostly though, the value that Hooks adds is that you don’t have to check various sources or websites on your phone. Plus, you end up checking less knowing that the vibration in your pocket will be something that you genuinely want to know about. The Hooks developer website also shows you what the app will look like on the Apple Watch which gives the app a whole other realm of possibilities yet to be explored. Get your notifications right, and you’ll be hooked.
Price: Free
Version: 2.2
Size: 22.1 MB
Developer: Oleg Kozynenko
