Pushbullet

Pushbullet is an app that I've found a while ago, and have fallen in love with since then. It's based on such a simple idea of pushing notification, but has expanded from that. Downloading the Pushbullet app, on your mobile device and computer, gives you the ability to push your mobile devices’ notifications to another device, such as a computer. I find this extremely handy as I spend a lot of my time at my house on or by my computer. Often I'll leave my phone on the table or in my room. Instead of running to check what the notification was, or simply missing it, my phone’s notification will appear on my computer screen in the lower right hand. If you want, you can get more specific on what notifications you want pushed to your computer by muting the apps that you don't want to see their notifications on your computer.

Another cool features is interacting with your notifications from your computer.  If I get an email for example, once the notification from my phone appears on my computer, I'll have the option to reply, delete, and dismiss this notification on my phone all from my computer. This also works with SMS messaging. If you get a text from someone, you'll of course get the notification and option to reply, but choosing to reply brings up a chat bubble of your conversation of texts with your contact, which you can choose to leave up on your screen as you do other tasks. This is great for me as I don't have to keep my phone out and on to keep talking to someone while I'm on the computer. Even cooler to me is the ability to reply to text messages on another mobile device such as a tablet.  Many times I'll take my tablet off to a room to read or watch a video. If someone decides to text me, I have the ability to view and reply to their text all from my tablet.

To me, Pushbullet is a collection of ideas and apps created or thought of by other people all together in one package, and then improved and expanded on. The idea of notification mirroring has been around for a while and was possible, but usually required root access, and then didn't always function the greatest. Pushbullet has expanded the idea by pushing the notifications to your computer not just to other devices. The fact that it just work is also great. Using it for about a year, I haven’t really noticed any problems or concerns with it.

If you spend a lot of time working or playing on a computer, Pushbullet is a great app for you. You’ll be able to see all the notifications from all of your mobile devices, and manage them. You’ll be able to reply to texts right on your computer. Why don’t you try it out?