Hey everyone,

Like many of you, I’m always looking for ways to stay informed without getting overwhelmed by irrelevant notifications.

But here’s the thing:

• Google Alerts can’t tell the difference between Apple the fruit and Apple Inc.

• It sends me tons of irrelevant links

• And there’s no way to get a quick summary—you have to read everything.

I finally got fed up and built a tool that fixes this problem:

• It uses AI to understand context (so Apple means what you mean)

• It gives you summarized results—so you don’t waste time

• And it helps you focus on what really matters, without the noise

I’m not here to pitch, just hoping to find a few people who’d like to test it out and give honest feedback.

If you care about staying productive and not drowning in information overload, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

https://folki-web.vercel.app/

I have this 2 next to my google app on iPhone with no idea what the notifications are. I have opened and closed the app. Searched through everything and cannot find what I am being notified about. Any advice?

Hey r/SaaS ,

I’ve been frustrated for years with how Google Alerts works:

• It confuses Apple with Apple Inc.

• It floods my inbox with irrelevant links

• And there’s no way to get a quick summary of what’s actually important.

As a developer and SaaS builder, I decided to fix this pain point.
So I built Folki—a smarter alert system that:
- Uses AI to understand context (Apple the fruit vs. the company)
- Gives you summarized results, so you don’t have to read 10 articles
- Filters noise, so you only see what matters

I’m not here to pitch—just looking for early feedback and ideas.

If you’ve ever been frustrated by Google Alerts or felt overwhelmed by too many notifications, I’d love your thoughts.

Would anyone here be willing to try it out and share honest feedback?

(I can send you access—just reply or DM me.)

Thanks for reading—happy to discuss your own SaaS projects too!

Hey r/roastmystartup,

We’re Folki (https://folki-web.vercel.app/), and we’re trying to build a better version of Google Alerts.

Here’s our pitch:

• Google Alerts sucks: It’s slow, unreliable, and misses a lot of important mentions.

• Folki is a simple, clean, and fast web app that delivers better results:

  • Real-time alerts (or close to it)

  • Smarter filtering

  • A more intuitive UI/UX

  • Clean email digests

• We’re currently in beta, totally free, and figuring out pricing down the road.

The core idea: For people who care about tracking brand mentions, competitors, or specific topics, Folki will give them faster, more relevant alerts than Google’s ancient offering.

But here’s where I’m stuck:

• Are we actually solving a painful problem, or is Google Alerts “good enough” for most people?

• How do we differentiate in a world where it’s free to use Google Alerts and there are already a million other monitoring tools out there?

• Should we niche down hard (e.g., focus on PR professionals, indie founders, content creators) or stay broad?

• Any obvious reasons why this will fail?

Would love for you to roast us and help us see our blind spots. Be brutal — we can take it.

Thanks in advance!

I’ve been thinking of using google alerts to put my name, phone number, address as separate keywords for google to alert me if they appear on google. I also plan to do this for my business to be on top of any news or articles that I should know of about my business.

I know, some people just don’t like google and will hate on anything google. But I’m trying to be grounded here. I feel the purpose of doing this is very valid compared to what the worst could happen (hacker gets people’s alert keywords and have to sieve through all of them to find which is PII, or google using my keywords for God knows what they could do with millions of keywords).

I see a post about this somewhere else too https://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/s/Dgs9uxMdhu

Would like you guys’ thoughts on this and what are the drawbacks…

I want to setup email alerts / rss alerts to that we can be alerted for when Apple are going to release a new update to the public as much in advance up to a week if possible.

Has anyone done this or can link me where would be best please.

I was fed up with Google Alerts sending so many irrelevant results to my email every day and doing a really poor job with non-English websites. After testing some of their paid competitors without finding anyone that performed better, I built this alternative for myself. Now some colleagues have started using it as well and pushed me to release it, so I am curious: does someone here like it as well and think I should build an improved version? https://folki-web.vercel.app/

SOLVED

I’m on iOS. On a recent short trip I was driving and was receiving notifications every few miles regarding speed traps and road closures. Most of the time I was either already past the speed trap or could visibly see the lane closure. It was not helpful and more of a distraction than anything.

Is there a way to disable these alerts while still maintaining voice navigation? I have scoured the settings but haven’t seen anything that resembles this setting specifically. I find the voice navigation to be helpful in unfamiliar areas but the frequent alerts to be a nuisance.

Update 9/6/24

My search continues for a workaround or update resolving this issue. If you have found my post experiencing this issue I’m dreadfully sorry. It is such a monumental pain. May my next update shed hope into our collective existence.

Update 2/15/25

u/double_mix524 might have found an android solution to the problem below. That user states that in the app setting on android first you need to turn on “Manage Notification Categories for Each App” and then you need to turn off the “urgent” notifications. They have included screenshots below for more information.

I am still searching for an iOS solution. I will double check if there has been any sort of update to the app I didn’t notice. But until then, I’m sorry if you’ve found this post.

Update 8/28/25

u/lammattieee shared the following and I think it may be solved.

“There is now an option under settings finally!

Go to your profile icon in the top right --> Settings --> Navigation --> Alert Options (get alerts from reported incidents and other conditions that may impact your drive). Set this to off.”

If you’ve found this army this point, may this be the end of you journey.

Set up Google Alerts for your name and email. If either one pops up online, you’ll be the first to know.

We're looking for a tool that acts as a real-time radar, alerting us instantly whenever our brand is mentioned, be it positive buzz, negative feedback, or emerging trends. We've explored a few options, like Meltwater but the tool does give us notifications/alertd.

I've seen many people in different forums and on this subreddit itself talking about how horrendously iOS manages the Notification Center, but surprisingly I actually like it. Used to be a Pixel 7 Pro (Android 14) owner and switched to iPhone last September and I like how on iOS notifications stack and are separated by app or person. I also enjoy how to view all your notifications you have to swipe down into your lockscreen, because I like my wallpaper & it makes me check my lockscreen widgets more.

Any reason why it seems to be so collectively hated on? Honestly curious.

I'm pretty new to the iPhone, and I can't seem to figure out how to turn on sounds for Google Calendar events. In my settings, I have it turned on, and my Calendar event has notifications turned on.

All I get is a simple push notification which is basically useless. I need it to be loud, intrusive, and jarring. Is there any way I can enable notifications the right way with both sound and push?

And no, I refuse to use the stock iOS calendar.

I have Google Calendar set up through iOS Calendar (push working through Exchange), but the alert times in Google Calendar don’t translate to the iOS Calendar app. Some alerts in Google Calendar that are set to 5 minutes are set to ‘None’ in iOS Calendar. When I change them in iOS Calendar it doesn’t sync across to Google Calendar. Has anyone encountered this or know of a resolution? Thanks I’m advance!