Not all web apps spam notifications. I think we are all thinking of notifications in the context of what typical websites typically do but this is all dependent on what the web app/developer does (eg. if HN had a push notifications, wouldn't it be nice to know when you receive a reply to your comment? ... plus a "Notifications Settings" page to set what type of notifications HN can send, notifications about a certain topic or domain on the front page, etc?)

Uber Eats and Drizzly spam my notifications (I know Android has very detailed/overly complex IMO way of managing app notification channels) but because they are native apps we don't complain.

> Not all web apps spam notifications

Yes. I’ll bet there are many well-behaved web apps, with well-considered notifications and concise and simple options so that users get everything they want and little they don’t.

They are downed out by the firehose too.

firehose? as in other websites the user has allowed notifications for that are "bad" actors?

> if HN had a push notifications, wouldn't it be nice to know when you receive a reply to your comment?

Not via a push notification, no.

via what then?

Email would be my preference. That way, I can have it be autosorted and let my email client do any special processing I want, including notifications if that's desirable.

To be fair, focus mode now semi-effectively "autosorts" with preferred handling per cell in a matrix of source x modality.

I had to search for "focus mode" to learn what you were referring to, so forgive me if my understanding is incorrect. Isn't that a Win 11 thing? It looks like a kind of do-not-disturb mode?

How does that intersect with browser push notifications? Another advantage of email notifications is that the email notifications won't go away if I don't pay attention to them for a long while.

In any case, I don't use Windows except at work, where this wouldn't be an issue anyway.

There are very few websites that I love and might trust to not abuse notifications, and HN is probably one of them. Still, I only want an inbox or page showing unread messages that I can check at my own initiative rather than something that will pop-up or otherwise try to get my attention when I'm clearly choosing to look at or do something else. Only my wife and maybe my boss should be able to do that.

I love how detailed the notification management on Android can be

HNNotify.io (YC S23) anyone?

I would NOT want to get a notification if somebody replied to my comment on HN. I want a small, unoptrusive icon on HN that shows the exact number of replies that I haven't read and that I can click on when I have time.

There is far too much already that bings, bangs, jumps and try to get my attention.

They might know you probably won't want it, but they're hoping you'll click yes or accept without thinking, haha

I suspect that this is the real answer.