This is the most ambitious productivity app I’ve ever use…

The Hero app tries to replace at least five productivity apps with one. Does it succeed?

The idea behind Hero Assistant is very ambitious: instead of running your life from multiple productivity apps, like calendar, tasks, notes and reminders, and even Instacart, Hero will unify all of these experiences into one app while placing Perplexity AI on top (even though your local LLM might be a bit better). Founded by former Meta employees, Hero Assistant is an early attempt to save us from "app hell," where you are constantly switching apps to run your life.

Hero can do it all, and that's where it falls down, frankly. For example, Hero can let you maintain and share a shopping list with your partner (dedicated shopping apps can be really powerful though), and it integrates with grocery delivery services, but it lacks most of the features of Instacart grocery delivery (so why use Hero to manage your shopping list if it's lacking features?). Hero integrates with Google Calendar and weather at the same time, and even lets you see calendars shared by other people, but it lacks the spectacular UI I've come to enjoy on Google Calendar (even though some open source calendar apps are really powerful).

There's a reminder function that utilizes iOS's live activity and dynamic island framework, which is nice (reminders are "louder" and bolder when set up with Hero), but it's redundant with the built-in reminder apps that works perfectly with Siri or Gemini. There's even a note system within Hero, but again, it's inferior in many ways to the inbuilt Notes app of iOS and Android and is totally separate (such that notes you take in Hero don't show up in iOS Notes and vice versa, as an example).

Hero Assitant is a producitivty app that integrates multiple functions into one app for calendar, tasks, notes, shopping lists, reminders and more.  There's a lot here, and a lot of thought went into the setup and onboarding for Hero where it will customize the app based on your goals, like if you have ADHD or want to be better in sync with your partner (in the former case, it'll be more aggressive about reminding you of things to help combat your ADHD, and in the latter case, it'll help you connect with your partner's calendar).

You can see in some of the above screenshots how Hero app uses iOS' Live Activities lockscreen ongoing notification system to present you with loud notifications that you can't ignore. You can also set up an AI daily briefing that will read your schedule, update you on the weather, but also summarize any topics of interest you selected when you set up the app (I picked Investing, so my Daily Briefing, which shows up each morning on the Dynamic Island, is mostly about the stock market which is useful).

Hero will read aloud your briefing, which is a nice way to start the day (for example, "Hello Brandon, it's finally Friday. For your market update [it proceeds to talk about the stock market for several minutes]. Today you have lunch with your mom, and don't forget to take your medicine and call the vet about getting your dog's nails cut." If you're using an iPhone, Hero Assistant has an AI assistant that gives you an easy way to bridge the huge number of functions into a single interface.

Like you could say, "Add a new doctor appointment for Tuesday at 3pm, and remind me on Monday at 8pm to grab my insurance card," and Hero will perform two actions, which is cool. But Hero's AI is redundant with the main virtual assistant, whether Gemini or Siri, and unless your phone has a programmable hardware button like the iPhone's Action Button, there's no way to replace your phone's primary voice assistant with the one from Hero, so you're left with two assistants that don't work with one another.

Hero Assistant runs fine on my Pixel 10 Pro, but is lacking in numerous ways versus the iOS version. The aforementioned AI assistant is not present; there's no "partner mode" where you can send a reminder to your partners' lock screen on iOS (for example, "tell my wife: don't forget to pick up the kids!"); you cannot use OCR to translate text from a photo or handwritten note into text in the Hero app; and more.

Hero says more features are coming to Android, but for now, it's better on iOS. The idea of unifying 4–6 apps into a singular experience is not a bad idea, it's just unfocused and not realistic. Hero Assistant, in theory, is a great concept, but in execution the functions it tries to offer are inferior to the apps you're already using, leading to a frustrating lack of features, and I found it to cause numerous breaks and conflicts with how I want to use my phone.

It's as if Hero wants me to adapt to *it*, not the other way around, which doesn't work for me, but I'm sure Hero will continue to get better over time.

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