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Matt Elliott/CNET
Never miss a show, a score, a storm, a shipment or a software vulnerability again. With free iPhone app Hooks, you can sign up to receive an alert on almost anything you can think of.
Hooks boasts a clean, simple interface that makes configuring alerts quick and easy. When you first launch the app, it provide a big button to set up your first alert.
You can create your own alerts using a template such as TV Show New Episode, Rain Alert, Tweet by Keyword, or YouTube Channel New Video. If you run a website, you can create a Website Down alert should you can take immediate action should your site go down. You can get alerted when a particularly interesting Instagram user posts (though Instagram now lets you do that on its own), when a new movie or album is released, or even when an Amber alert is issued. Hooks features dozens upon dozens of templates.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
Even easier is using an alert someone has already created. You can browse nine categories to find alerts that might be of interest to you, and there is also a Popular feed that shows you the most popular alerts of all time or from the past week or month. Judging by the most popular alerts, it would appear most Hooks users are concerned about staying on top of their favorite TV shows.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
When you create an alert, you can sign up to receive a push notification, have a sound played, or both. And when you receive an alert, you can share the news via Facebook, Twitter, email or text. You can also favorite alerts as a way to remember important notifications. You can then view a list of your favorite alerts by tapping the hamburger button in the upper-left corner and tapping Favorites. You can then return to the regular view by tapping Inbox.
To see the your alerts, tap the “+” button in the upper-right corner. To delete an alert, swipe to the left on an alert on the list and tap the Delete button.
