Flappy Bird hasn’t graced the Apple App Store in years, not since its meteoric rise in popularity in 2014 before its creator just as quickly put it offline. Now the furiously addicting mobile game was reincarnated in a form that no one expected: an interactive macOS notification.
Using the new suite of customization tools added with Apple macOS Big Sur update, iOS engineer Neil Sardesai managed to squeeze a fully playable version of the game into a push notification. It is technically a clone from the original created by PlayCanvas creator Will Eastcott with a significantly smaller file size (28KB), making it a perfect match given the strict memory limitations of the User Notification UI framework. Apple.
Flappy Bird isn’t the first game Sardesai has managed to squeeze into Apple’s interfaces. Previously he did the classic game Pong playable as an icon on the Mac dock and adapt the iconic Google Chrome browser game Dino runner in the Mac menu bar.
“Lately I’ve been trying to find fun ways to push the boundaries of various macOS APIs,” he told Gizmodo via email Sunday.
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When you browse Apple Documentation On the framework for creating and customizing user notifications, he noticed that the latest version of macOS allows developers to add “interactive controls” to notifications. Apple suggests a few potential uses for developers, such as adding buttons or switches, but Sardesai took a step forward, deciding instead to “try to embed a game in a notification.”
He presented the final product at Twitter this week with mouse clicks replacing the screen taps the players used in the original Flappy Bird progress. Spoiler alert: It’s just as frustrating as you remember it.
It’s safe to assume that when Apple decided to add interactive features to its notifications, it didn’t really have game development in mind. You have to admire the ingenuity, and I love that the internet’s unofficial mission is to find the most amazing technology you can program to run video games.
And yes, before we say anything, we have already asked Sardesai the inevitable question: Can it work Loss?
“Loss in a push notification would be awesome, ”he said. “It’s worth a try!”
