▲ ▼ On-demand Hacker News notification
Every now and then a service announcing notification for Hacker News pops up which takes in email id, username and send email for HN replies. Then there are browser add-ons which send notifications when there are new comments to subscribed HN threads.
But, as far as I have searched there is no service which allows me to subscribe to specific threads and comments for notifications without having to give in my email id.
I think there would be takers for such a service, including myself as HN crowd are generally averse to mandatory email id and many would like to follow interesting threads, comments including ones which they have replied to.
We felt this need too and built a chrome extension that can show you HN notifications in real-time - both on-page & via web-push. We don't ask for your email address - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-notifications/bbkfblhdgiddlkfkipjdhhfoephonoba?hl=en&authuser=0
Very useful, If you could add notification for upvote/downvote it can add more value.
Great to know that you find the extension useful. One challenge with upvote/downvote notifications is that there can easily be too many. Perhaps we should consider grouping them. Thanks for the feedback.
This is great, just what I wanted. Adding the ability to select individual submission, comments for notification would make this perfect. Will there be a Firefox version?
Here is the Firefox addon - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-notifications/
Great! I hope to see the ability to subscribe individual submission, comment thread soon.
I use https://www.hnreplies.com which is fine for my use case. I feel like by providing a notification service, it wouldn't be HN anymore. it will encourage emotional replies/attacks/flame wars due to people instantly reacting to any comments/replies without thinking.
I prefer not to give my email id and also browser notifications are better for me as I can organize it with other notifications. I feel notifications needs to be a choice as, I have missed several important conversations by not knowing that I had a reply.
Has this been solved yet? I'd be interested in seeing if it's possible to build. You mentioned that it shouldn't require email id. How about username?
I haven't seen anything new to solve this, you can definitely give it a shot. I think even username would not be necessary, if you look at the mockup in the other comment.
After some research in order to make this work we would need some way to know that you are subscribed to a thread, in order to send alert. Ie. some kind of address or unique identifier.
Ok, so service should notify user when ever there is a comment on a single thread they have subscribed to. For any comment right? Replies and new ones?
Ideally, where should the user be notifed? Browser?
Hey KeMonte, when there are no user accounts or email id involved browser extension, desktop or mobile app are the only way to deliver a notification. Since HN is itself a website, a browser extension should be the way to go IMO.
Oh wait, I understand what you are saying now Abishek. But then, what would be the problem with this chrome extension mentioned in OP's post?
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-comments-noti/fcdogcdfbjpnhcnflhdpcdfjmmiedebo
That doesn't work, it's not updated for years now. When added, the extension shows notification couple of times only when the HN page is refreshed and then stops. Besides it does not have comment subscription.
Thanks Abishek, what do you recommend is best course of action for implementing without requiring email or user id from users with a browser extension?
The linked add-ons doesn't seem to have that many users, I wonder whether there are other means to get notifications for Hacker News.
Hacker News users are divided when it comes to notifications, many feel it adds to the notification pollution and want to stay away from any of the social network features. Although I agree on the need to control notification pollution, I think an on-demand notification service for HN like this - https://imgur.com/sCfEUO2 (mockup) is the best option to give the control to the user as Shinzo says.
Also, on-demand notification helps to spend less time on Hacker News by avoiding the need for refreshing HN pages frantically during interesting discussions.
The mockup is great, suits minimalist design of HN.