Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I made a app that uses NFC as a physical switch to block distractions

foqos.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 115 posts

Re: Show HN: I made a app that uses NFC as a physical switch to block distractions

#31

Post by hailruda »

amelius wrote: post #19
fuddle wrote: post #17

It would be nice to see a demo of the app working in the real world with an nfc tag, not just an app recording.

Yeah, I have no idea how these tags are actually being used, let alone why they could be useful.

NFC tags can be scanned using a phone. An app on the phone can then detect the action and act accordingly. The phone can differentiate between different tags.

I use an NFC tag to lock the house using Home Assistant.

Re: Show HN: I made a app that uses NFC as a physical switch to block distractions

#32

Post by awaseem »

dsp_person wrote: post #26

I noticed the trend of "Made with (Love emoji)", but has anyone tried Made with Hate or other emotions?

There was some hate when digging through iOS dev docs, I'm not a Swift UI dev, I've mostly done JS/TS stuff (maybe thats telling of my poor code)

Re: Show HN: I made a app that uses NFC as a physical switch to block distractions

#33

Post by riso »

tigereyeTO wrote: post #21

I'm curious why the NFC tags are required at all? Can't you switch profiles on your phone without scanning an NFC tag already? Couldn't your app allow profile switching without requiring any NFC tags? It's not clear to me what the NFC tags add to this experience.

The app does allow manually switching of profiles, without NFC tags, but it wasn't clear until I installed the app.

Re: Show HN: I made a app that uses NFC as a physical switch to block distractions

#34

Post by ajoseps »

awaseem wrote: post #30
ajoseps wrote: post #22

I use the brick app: https://getbrick.app/ , and it works pretty well, but they have this weird bug where selecting certain apps on a block list crashes the app. They have a pop-up indicating that it's some apple-related bug, which I find kind of hard to believe. Is this something that also happens in your app?

I haven't noticed this on my personal use. It does seem like they use the family picker activity built into iOS. So maybe the issue is here as well.

It doesn't happen to every search. For me personally, if I try to search for apps starting with "r", it tends to crash. Not sure if it's related to the number of applications it needs to search for that match the prefix (for this case I was trying to block reddit).

Re: Show HN: I made a app that uses NFC as a physical switch to block distractions

#35

Post by [deleted] »

hailruda wrote: post #31
amelius wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I have no idea how these tags are actually being used, let alone why they could be useful.

NFC tags can be scanned using a phone. An app on the phone can then detect the action and act accordingly. The phone can differentiate between different tags. I use an NFC tag to lock the house using Home Assistant.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I made a app that uses NFC as a physical switch to block distractions

#36

Post by awaseem »

fuddle wrote: post #17

It would be nice to see a demo of the app working in the real world with an nfc tag, not just an app recording.

I have a recording on the site here: https://youtu.be/70C7L0T1VVY.

That is my real phone with me scanning a tag, I'm just using screen studios new phone recording feature

Re: Show HN: I made a app that uses NFC as a physical switch to block distractions

#37

Post by awaseem »

amanda99 wrote: post #15

I'm finding that scanning NFC tags is pretty slow with iPhone. There's this automatic flow that's pretty cumbersome and slows me down. Then when it fails there's some annoying animation. This is with the Yubikey authenticator app. Are you finding anything similar? Is it not annoying to be scanning these all the time?

Yeah I also find Ghost scans happen, it happens where I try to scan a tag and it says something has been scanned even though I'm no where close to the tag. I think its an issue with NFCReader in iOS

Re: Show HN: I made a app that uses NFC as a physical switch to block distractions

#38

Post by awaseem »

riso wrote: post #33
tigereyeTO wrote: post #21

I'm curious why the NFC tags are required at all? Can't you switch profiles on your phone without scanning an NFC tag already? Couldn't your app allow profile switching without requiring any NFC tags? It's not clear to me what the NFC tags add to this experience.

The app does allow manually switching of profiles, without NFC tags, but it wasn't clear until I installed the app.

Yeah lot of feedback on better demos, learning moment for sure!

Re: Show HN: I made a app that uses NFC as a physical switch to block distractions

#39

Post by amelius »

hailruda wrote: post #31
amelius wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I have no idea how these tags are actually being used, let alone why they could be useful.

NFC tags can be scanned using a phone. An app on the phone can then detect the action and act accordingly. The phone can differentiate between different tags. I use an NFC tag to lock the house using Home Assistant.

OK. Why not just tap "lock the house" on your screen? Or use a voice interface (which requires zero extra hardware)?
Post reply on HN