I think CogSci Apps needs to try to satisfy both preferences. Many don’t want notifications, some do.
It might be that for users of a small monitor, a menu bar icon animation can act as a notification which might satisfy both (or some of both). In this case, I would think it would need to be a double preference. menu bar icon
hooked item status indication [ √ ]
with animation [ ]
On a big monitor, that might not satisfy those who want a bigger notification.
in any event, CogSci Apps is listening (and we have related ideas in mind).
[Speaking of which, I’m really looking forward to releasing Hook 2.3. Still a bit of dev and some QA to go.]
Menu Bar is problematic. For many years now - on a 15" MacBook Pro - my menu bar has been full to the extent of using Bar Tender to manage it. And some apps wipe out whole swathes of the menu bar real estate.
This seems to me to be a more general MacOS UI problem than just Hook. Maybe Notifications is there answer. I couldn’t say.
I would be satisfied with a small floating indicator – like a small stoplight button – that is always on top, and which I could move around the screen to suit me, and that lights up when the context I am looking at – browser, a document in an app, etc. – is involved in a hook linkage. Maybe then click the floater to open Hook to show the available links.
I don’t know of any app that does this – buy why not ?
Meanwhile, if visibility is key and one is dealing with Finder files, one can also create a subfolder t the current project folder for .hook files. (Or just let the .hook files accumulate in the given folder). I’ve added a section about that in Make Hook File – Hook.
That’s also quite useful when collaborating. We use them a lot here in our version control systems and locally synced shared cloud folders.
Also, as useful as the HOOKED section of the Hook window is, some people don’t like browsing popup windows. Locally stored .hook files are an alternative to that. .hook files can contain any URL or Markdown link.
My writing project template folder includes an empty Hook files folders. (Before Hook, i used aliases but of course aliases only deal with files, and they are limited in many other ways.) I think I mentioned in that in my TaskPaper blog post. (Speaking of folders, we’re finally looking at adding Hook to New > Folder, which was requested and I’ve also wanted from day 1.)
This is a great suggestion and I hope the developer can find some method of doing this. As a new user I find I waste time looking for links to files or notes by invoking Hook. I understand it is just a keystroke but it one more thing and one more distraction. Some method of letting you know on the fly that a link is present would be a great time saver.
For files, I’d like to see an icon change (like a tiny badge) indicating a link exists. The inability to easily know when items are hooked made me stop using Hook when it was first released. I’m trying again because I see so many benefits to Hook, but we’ll see if this issue is still a deal breaker.
I have had a licence for Hook for a while (in fact, I have just renewed for another year) but in practice I never seem to use Hook (or only very rarely). In part this is probably due to the fact that I keep a lot of material in DEVONthink, which has its own links, but I think a large part of the problem is that with Hook I have no recollection of what I have linked and what I have not, and checking to find if there is a link on an item slows me down a lot more than one might think. Being of “a certain age” my short-term working memory has declined quite badly and if I do not complete certain operations quite promptly, I can actually forget what I was trying to do. (The effects of ageing came as quite a shock to me – I can think that I ought to do something, stand up, and realise when I am on my feet that I have forgotten what it was that I had intended to do. It can take minutes to recover the memory of the intention.)
Anyway, that is a long-winded way of saying that some sort of visual indicator that an item has a link would probably make the difference between me using Hook and not using it.
It is an immense shortcoming of Hook and always has been
At present Hook is great for Bookmarks, which I use in the context of outlines or notes that I write - in other words, in content where the existence of Hook links is implicitly documented.
It is indeed an extremely helpful app in that context - but not in the more general situations proposed by the developers.
The concept that one would routinely click on filenames in the hope that a link exists is nonsensical.
The app would be tremendously improved with an indicator as you suggest - this has been feedback to the developers going back to the earliest days of the app.
Hook’s sheer… invisibility… keeps it out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
It’s super-useful, but I mainly use it to paste links into OmniFocus notes fields, DEVONthink notes, Keyboard Maestro macros, and Numbers sheets. Where I can see them.
This is how my brain works. Propinquity is key. Hook is really well suited for this, but I feel like I’m only scratching the surface of what it could be doing for me.
As a new user, I was just thinking “I need to know if something has an existing hook”. It’s an obvious progression. Apple Notes with Quick Notes is moving that way, at least with webpages. When I go to a page, the corresponding quick notes pops up.
Blockquote On a big monitor, that might not satisfy those who want a bigger notification.
This is spot-on. In fact, even on a smaller monitor, I notice the status bar icon far too infrequently for this to be a sufficient solution to take full advantage of Hook. After using the software for 2+ years, the objective of having Hook become something more than a helpful little link-copying utility is still unrealized.
There are commenters here who wanted the status bar used so it wouldn’t clog up their notification center, and others who want notifications used so it is more visible and/or doesn’t clog up their already-clogged menu bar.
Since the former has already been implemented, my hope is that it will be a relatively trivial task for Hook to add notifications as an opt-in, in the event the menu bar does not offer sufficient visibility.
It has been far from gratifying hacking together an Obj-C script, which still needs notarization, just so I can try and access the AXStatusMenu ‘help’ field and retrieve data which the app, itself, can access directly. So, since my data is already in this app, and it is is already configured to request notification center privileges – and doesn’t need accessibility permissions to get the necessary info – I hope this small-but-consequential update gets priority billing in an upcoming update.
The greatness of this app does not exclude the possibility that it could become much, much better. Even with a small tweak.
Apologies if I wasn’t clear. I’m requesting that users be given an option to receive proactive notifications when Hooks exist in the current context. The current functionality is to show a badge on the status bar, and this is not configurable as an actual notification.
Thank you, now I understand. I will submit a feature request for this.
I just changed the menu bar icon size from default to large by going to System Preferences, Accessibility, Display, Display.Then look for Menu Bar Size and switch to Large. log out and log in. It helps a little bit.
Thank you for additional info, much appreciated. We are on the same page ; our product road map has a feature to address the underlying need, and it is expected to finally be available in a software Update in Q2 or Q3.
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