Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by smoser | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

smoser

Still need an iOS app for push notifications.

View on HN

Why would you want Github push notifications? Nothing on Github is urgent enough to disrupt your life like that.

I would quite like to know when a PR is in movement that I'm involved in.

Email notifications.

I'd rather get an app notification than an email notification for pretty much everything I can think of. I'd be surprised if I wasn't in the vast majority on this.

Well, if I can consolidate all my notifications to email, then only one application on my phone needs to have a constant/reoccurring connection to a server for push notifications. Instead of fifteen of the things all acting independently.

Benefit of using an app notification always would come down to platform specific experiences. But replying to github threads over email has been something that I don't have to think twice about

Why is that so important that it needs to disrupt you? Constant notifications are terrible for productivity.

Well, you could say the same thing about most notifications including most emails, yet people presumably like notifications so much they'll get them delivered straight to their wrist watch.

I don't see how Github is much different in this regard. Besides, maybe you want the notifications while on the clock.

Email notifications should be disabled. Email is also never urgent enough to disrupt your life.

I'd think that emails can serve that purpose quite well, but now that there's a native app I'll see if it's any better.

PWAs can do push notifications though. And then it's one codebase and not one for Android, one for iOS.

Do PWA push notifications already work on iOS browsers?

Nope, and it wasn't on the list of WebKit goals that was on the front page this week.

And thank god for that. Such a bad idea imo. I only get those from annoying sites, like a dark pattern. Ugh.

Browsers ask permission first. Also I don't see how having to install an app is any better other than being better for devs to track you.

I might install one app per hundred sites that annoyingly prompt for notification permissions, though.

And I install one app per hundred sites that annoyingly prompt me to install their app so they can give me push notifications (or, worse, a working website because they didn't bother even trying to build their product as a website anymore because of the lack of push notifications; it is ridiculous). So? The site is going to prompt me either way. This argument makes no sense: of course I would rather get promoted for the one feature I don't want to give them instead of an attempt to upsell me on an entirely different experience after being served crippled content... that is a total no brainer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com