When you first set up Proximate, you're asked which apps you'd like to keep an eye on. There's a temptation by some to add them all, especially before you've started using Proximate. I'm here today to suggest that maybe you shouldn't do that.
The whole point of Proximate is to bring the few things that matter to where your eyes already are. Add twenty apps and you've just rebuilt a noisy notification center that follows your mouse around. The trick is choosing well — and it comes down to a single question: what does it cost me to miss this? Not how often the app pings. What it costs when you don't see it.
The three-bucket rule
Run through your installed apps and consider putting them into one of three imaginary buckets.
Bucket 1 — Always. Apps where a missed notification has a real cost: you're late, you leave someone hanging, or you miss a hand-off. For most people, that's a short list — a chat app like Slack, Teams, or Messages, your calendar, and maybe email. These are the apps where "I didn't see it" actually matters.
Worth calling out: an app that rarely notifies but matters when it does still belongs here. Low frequency is the ideal case for the cursor cluster, because it'll almost never add clutter and you'll trust it when it appears.
Bucket 2 — Maybe (but not yet). Apps you're tempted to add but aren't sure about. The honest move is to leave these out at first and monitor nothing from this bucket to start. If you find yourself genuinely missing one, promote it to Bucket 1 later — it takes seconds. The reason to park them rather than add them: most of these "maybe" apps get added out of habit or FOMO, not true need. When in doubt, it's a Bucket 2 app.
Bucket 3 — Never. These apps fall into two subgroups. The first is for those that send too many low-value notifications (…lookin' at you, Adobe Creative Cloud Updater…). Monitoring these just trains your eye to ignore the cluster by your cursor. The other subgroup is for apps that never send notifications because of what they are, like Calculator.
A good starting point: three to five apps
If you take one thing from this post: start with three to five apps, all from Bucket 1. Try it out for a few hours or days.
In our testing, most people never added too many more. What usually happens is the opposite — you realize one of your few is noisier than you thought, and you drop it. A small, trusted cluster is one you actually look at. A crowded one is one you learn to tune out. Remember, it might take some time to adjust and get it right for your needs.
What about custom hooks?
If you're an advanced user who has set up custom hooks — the feature that lets local scripts and CLI tools trigger a notification right by your cursor — those play by different rules, and that's on purpose. You don't prune hooks the way you prune apps, because you didn't get them by default. You built each one deliberately, because its signal mattered to you. A hook that tells you a deploy finished or a backup failed has already passed the "is this worth my attention?" test simply by existing.
So the same north star applies from opposite directions: with apps you're subtracting down to what matters, and with hooks you're adding only what matters. Either way, every thing by your cursor should be there because you'd want to look the moment it lights up.
You can change your mind anytime
Adding and removing monitored apps takes seconds in Proximate's settings, so there's zero reason to over-commit on day one. Treat your first selection as a draft. Tighten it as you go.
The best Proximate setup isn't the one that watches the most app, it's the one where every icon by your cursor earns its place.