Install on your phone
Put HailConnect on your home screen
HailConnect installs straight from the browser — no app store, no download waiting. Once it's on your home screen it opens full-screen with its own hail-storm icon, just like a regular app. Takes about a minute.
- 1
Open HailConnect in Safari
Use Safari for this — the Add to Home Screen option lives in Safari's Share menu. If you opened this link from Mail or Messages, tap it so it opens in Safari first.
- 2
Tap the Share button
It's the square with an arrow pointing up, in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen (top on iPad).
- 3
Scroll down and tap "Add to Home Screen"
Scroll the share sheet until you see the row with a plus-in-square icon labelled Add to Home Screen, then tap it.
- 4
Tap "Add" in the top corner
You can rename it here if you like — HailConnect is already filled in. Tap Add and the hail-storm icon lands on your home screen.
After you install it
- Tap the HailConnect icon and it opens full-screen — no browser bars, and your spot in the app is remembered.
- New features appear the next time you open it — there's nothing to update, it always shows the latest version.
- On iPhone, storm alerts buzz your phone only after you've added HailConnect to your home screen (Apple's rule) — see the phone-alert steps below. Android works either way.
- To remove it, press and hold the icon, then choose Delete / Remove.
Turn on storm alerts on your phone
Push notifications make your phone buzz the moment a hail report or forecast alert lands — even when HailConnect is closed. One-time setup, under a minute.
iPhone
- 1.Add HailConnect to your home screen first — use the 4 steps above. This is Apple's rule: iPhones only let a website send notifications through its home-screen app, not the regular browser.
- 2.From now on, open HailConnect by tapping the home-screen icon — not the Safari address bar.
- 3.In HailConnect, open Dashboard → Alerts and find the Phone notifications card. Tap Turn on for this device.
- 4.When your phone asks "Allow notifications", tap Allow. You'll get a pop-up to confirm — that's it.
Android
- 1.Best experience: install the home-screen app first with the 4 steps above — but Android also allows alerts straight from the Chrome browser.
- 2.Open Dashboard → Alerts and find the Phone notifications card. Tap Turn on for this device.
- 3.Tap Allow when Chrome asks for notification permission — done.
Turn alerts off any time with "Turn off on all devices" on that same card. Alerts respect your topic settings in the Alerts section of the Notifications tab — if you've muted daily summaries, your phone stays quiet about them too.
Why HailConnect isn't in the app stores
Skipping the App Store and Play Store is a choice, and it works in your favour:
- Updates land instantly. The moment we improve the storm map or fix a bug, every member has it the next time they open HailConnect — no update to download, no waiting days for Apple or Google to approve a release.
- No app-store middleman. There's no review gate between a fix and your phone — the home-screen app is free for everyone and always current.
- No big downloads. There's nothing to install from a store — the app takes no storage beyond your photos and settings, and it works on any phone, tablet or computer with a browser.
- You're never forced to update. Everyone is always on the newest version, so there's no 'this member is on an old build' problem when storm season gets busy.
- Nothing breaks during a storm. App stores occasionally pull apps or delay releases at the worst time — a web app can't be taken down by a review process.
- One app, every device. The same HailConnect works on an iPhone, an Android phone and a desktop — no separate iPhone and Android versions to keep in sync.
If we ever need a full App Store / Play Store listing down the road, everything built here carries over — but for storm tracking and crew dispatch, the home-screen app does the job today.