Hijack Your Feed

Jason and I had been chatting about different ideas and looking for a project to work on together. We were interested in productivity, and in how much easier it could be to keep scrolling than to start something on a to-do list.

Hijack was a way of turning that problem on its head. The feed already had your attention. Your own tasks could show up among the posts and prompt you to do something you'd been putting off.

Hijack picked up tasks from Reminders and gave them the oversized type and animated emoji of an ad. A reminder to buy cat food could turn into a bright blue post in the middle of your timeline.

We wanted those posts to catch your eye. The ad space was already there, and we could use it to remind you of something you'd decided to do.

I built the part that chose emojis from the reminder text. It used Apple's Natural Language framework to match words with emojis, then looked for related words when there wasn't a direct match. A plain reminder could turn into something visually relevant without you having to design the post yourself.

The connection worked both ways. Once you'd done something, clicking Mark as done in the post completed it in Reminders and removed it from the feed. You could check it off without going back to your list.

We built Hijack as a Safari extension, with a small Mac app to set it up. You gave it access to Reminders, enabled the extension, and went back to browsing.

The toolbar menu let you turn it off or choose between Ads Only and Random. Your tasks stayed in Reminders.

We announced Hijack on January 1, 2021. A few days later, Rachel Cantor included it in Morning Brew's Sidekick.

Jason's essay about Hijack tells the longer story, including some ideas we hadn't built. Reminders were one place to start. We were curious about what else you could put inside a feed, and what it might let you do while you were already there.