Original Summary

The itch. For years I kept running into the same problem in exactly three ways. I'd mute WeChat to survive a workday, then miss something important because Android hid the silent notification and I never pulled down the notification shade. I'd turn the notification icon back on, only to have it get squeezed out by a crowded status bar — or disappear completely when I was using a full-screen app. Or I'd turn the sound back on instead, and wince as it rang through a meeting. I barely knew Android programming, so the idea just sat there. Then Muse launched last week, and my first thought was: could I get it to build this for me? "Can this even be built?" I didn't know. So I asked Muse. I described the problem and asked if Android would let an app know that, say, WeChat had posted a notification without reading the contents of the message — and whether I could put a small dot on top of whatever app I was using. We went back and forth about what Android actually allows, what permissions would be needed, and which approaches wouldn't work. The obvious ideas — touching System UI or re-posting notifications as a proxy — were dead ends. But the combination of notification access and a small overlay window looked feasible. That was the moment I thought: OK, let's actually build it. And the privacy part came naturally from that design: NotifyDot never sees the contents of your messages. It doesn't need to. "I'll send you the code, you compile it." That was Muse's original plan. I told it I couldn't — I don't have an Android development environment, and I wasn't going to set one up just for this. So it changed course, set up the whole build environment on its side, and started handing me signed, install-ready APKs directly. Thirty-five versions so far. I've never opened Android Studio. I've never run a single build command. My entire "dev environment" is basically a Pixel phone and a chat window. The UI was iterated, not designed There was no mockup phase. I installed each build on my Pixel and reacted to what I saw. The app picker learned smart defaults: pre-select WeChat if installed, otherwise WhatsApp, with a three-app cap. The dots became draggable and recolorable, with positions saved per app. A "Test dots" button appeared for trying different layouts — and later a hidden long-press gesture on it to reset everything, because I kept messing up my own layout. Real-world behavior kept forcing changes. Swiping a notification away shouldn't clear the dot — you haven't necessarily read it. Tapping the notification should. A WeChat call's floating window also happened to sit exactly on top of my dot. Each of these became another version. The best bug came from my first stranger user Someone installed the app and told me that tapping a Gmail notification opened Gmail, but the dot stayed. (You can find more details in my other post here .) I initially tol

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  • 信息来源：Reddit · SideProject
  • 发布时间：2026/9/17 00:13:53