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Show HN: A Chrome extension to see notifications for comments on your HN threads
- unamashana 6y agoHey HN! We made a chrome extension to notify you of new comments on your stories and comments. Once installed, it adds a bell to HN's header and shows new notifications in real-time. Clicking on the bell loads a notification inbox with easy access to all your notifications with a clear distinction between the read/unread ones. Unlike some other options like HN replies, here are the key differences We don't ask for your email address - we use the HN cookie to identify you. There is no setup beyond adding the extension. Apart from on-page notifications, you can also subscribe to web-push notifications. We are using HN Firebase API to get a real-time feed of notifications, and our startup, [MagicBell (YC W21)](https://magicbell.io https://magicbell.io), to power the notification inbox. We built this extension because we found it hard to keep track of our [Launch HN thread](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26037645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26037645) comments. We want to build a version for Firefox & Safari, and if you'd like to know when they go live, please follow us on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/magicbell_io https://twitter.com/magicbell_io). Dozens of early users have tested the extension, but if you run into any issues, please tweet at us, and we'd be more than happy to help you with it. We'd also love to hear your ideas on additional functionality you'd like to see.
- gruez 6y ago>We don't ask for your email address - we use the HN cookie to identify you does this extension contact any servers apart from hn itself?
- unamashana 6y agoIt contacts magicbell.io. HN does not provide an API that we can query in real-time to fetch your notifications.
- gruez 6y agoI just checked the cookies on hn and there's only one, with the format of: user=gruez&[redacted] Are you sending the entire session cookie, or just the part with the username?
- unamashana 6y agoThe entire session cookie to validate your login. Unfortunately there is no other reliable way to do.
- gruez 6y agoThat sounds dangerous. By sending the full cookie you're allowing yourself to hijack any of your user's sessions. That's a big security risk. Is there a reason why you need to "validate" someone's login? If someone wants to get notified about my comments, so what? There's nothing secret about it, they can just go to https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=gruez https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=gruez and get a live feed.
- unamashana 6y agoWhile the comments themselves are open, their state in your MagicBell inbox isn’t. If we didn’t have a way to validate identity, we won’t be able to make sure your notifications can’t be deleted/marked read by someone else.
- usmannk 6y agoWhy not drop a local cookie yourself for state?
- unamashana 6y agoThat doesn’t prevent someone from being able to impersonate you. The only alternative would be for HN to provide oauth access to your profile info.
- kevsim 6y agoWe used this extension the other day for our LaunchHN [0] where we got 175ish comments. It was super useful, both to get notifications in macOS, but also to people able to page through the comments and see the read/unread ones. Definitely keeping this extension installed! 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26540692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26540692
- loevborg 6y agoIf you reply to this comment, I'll get a reply notification via Web Push. Blows my mind that adding a realtime feature like this through a little extension is even possible. Impressive use of MagicBell too!
- richeyryan 6y agoAny chance of a Firefox addon?
- unamashana 6y agoYes, absolutely! Working on that next. How do we notify you when it's ready? You can email me hana [at] magicbell.io and I'll email you just once when it's ready.
- alex_g 6y agoHow about a Safari Extension?
- unamashana 6y agoWe’d love to but my guess is Apple hasn’t made it easy to do :) FF and chrome are pretty close in terms of their plug-in architecture.
- unamashana 6y agoHere is the Firefox addon! - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-notifications/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-n...
- j4yav 6y agoI’ve always been curious, is there a stated reason why HN doesn’t have the feature natively? Is it meant to avoid too fast back and forth comments or something?
- foodstances 6y agoIt had notifications when YC was funding Notifo, but they went out of business.
- corytheboyd 6y agoI'd be curious to hear the official reason too! I don't miss the feature, really, I don't necessarily want push notifications for HN activity, but am just curious!
- dang 6y agoYes, and generally avoiding tricks to increase engagement. I don't think it was consciously thought through—we just (going back to pg) have an instinctive aversion to that. Also, since HN isn't a startup that has to grow at all costs, we have the luxury of not needing to. It fits with trying to optimize for (intellectual) curiosity: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... If something is interesting enough, you'll be motivated to look at it. If you're not motivated, probably you're more interested in something else and should look at that instead.
- ncann 6y agoWhile I suppose it does accomplish the purpose of decreasing heat in threads, for me it's a big usability issue since what usually happens is, I would comment on something, then forget about it and only check back days later, at which point there are several relies to my comment. Then, at that point, if I do reply again, chances are the other person won't reply back because he has no knowledge of my reply.
- Zevis 6y agoI think this is one of the best features of HN. It reduces a lot of the energy around receiving replies to a comment on all sides, there's never this neon light going off "hey, you need to respond to this right now".
- asdff 6y agoFor those without chrome you can achieve similar functionality with RSS feeds: https://hnrss.github.io/ https://hnrss.github.io/
- herewulf 6y agoThanks for sharing this! Replies to my comments are interesting but I've been curious about an efficient way to see new comments on a given article _that I haven't already read_. I think this site plus a good feed reader would do the trick. Sometimes I come to a particularly interesting article in its early stages before there are many comments or I read through all the comments of a mature discussion that continues later. I'd like to be able to see what is new without rereading many comments. My ideal would probably be an interface similar to mutt that shows all the threaded comments of an article. Keyboard driven, of course. Almost a bit like HN as newsgroups!
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoCongratulations on the launch! You are addressing the need gap - 'On-demand Hacker News notification'[1] posted on my problem validation platform. You're welcomed to explain how you're solving that problem with the link to your extension. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/144-on-demand-hacker-news-notification-hackernews-notification https://needgap.com/problems/144-on-demand-hacker-news-notif...
- unamashana 6y agoThanks! Like you mention on that page, the ability to follow threads without having to comment on them would be great. It’s next on our list of features.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoThat would be very useful, you can post your product even before that to get some feedback from those who need it.
- unamashana 6y agoI am not sure I understand. Can you please elaborate?
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoSure, I meant you can post the link to your extension explaining what it does on the problem thread I shared above as those who want HN Notifications are checking it out.
- jack_riminton 6y agoThis is great hacking! Do you have a blogpost of how you built it?
- unamashana 6y agoThank you! No blog post yet but your comment has inspired me to write one :)
- lbj 6y agoThis is awesome. Im an enthusiastically lazy HN commenter and I've missed many insightful replies because I forgot to check.
- moreati 6y agoIf you're willing to share your HN username, and an email address there's http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/. I've used it for several years. Previous discussions https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=hnreplies.com&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- fishywang 6y agoApparently hnreplies supports https but does not do the http to https upgrade automatically, so here's the https link: https://www.hnreplies.com/ https://www.hnreplies.com/
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- m-p-3 6y agoAnd it's maintained by dang himself.
- errantspark 6y agoI only allow notifications from people I truly love and absolutely nothing else. If I don't remember to check something it's because it doesn't bring me joy, it's because I don't care about it. I would never want to give anyone or anything the power to interrupt me except for those who value my time nearly as much as I value it myself. It's one of the most baffling things about today's world that people will accept, or even seek such interruption. I honestly believe the underlying concept here is slightly immoral, moreso because it's an attempt to SAASify something that cleary doesn't need a server, and steal your info while they're at it. Hmmm, now that I've written it out like that I guess I'll bump it up to clearly immoral.
- senectus1 6y agoI've been using this plugin for about 4 days now and its greatly improved my HN experience.. thank you!