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An app in the U.K. rose in extreme popularity this week, going viral with over 750,000 downloads since it launched on Tuesday. The app, called the C-19 COVID Symptom Tracker, asks people to self-report coronavirus symptoms, logging the date, time and location. In turn, this helps medical professionals identify potential outbreak hotspots. As of yesterday, over 1 million people had actively reported their status.

The app, which was developed by a startup called Zoe and researchers at Kings College Hospital in London, is now the third most popular app overall in the UK on the Apple App Store. The team behind the app also plans to bring the project to the U.S., working with researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford to do so.

Overall, the hope is that crowdsourced information from the app could be useful to medical professionals as they plan their responses to outbreak clusters. Apple, Google and Amazon also built a website (in six days) to do the same thing. 👈

Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen over 60 products launch in efforts to spread awareness and relief around COVID-19, along with many more products related to remote working, at-home entertainment, and self-care.

Today alone, we saw a portal of online classes from chefs, a community hub from Facebook that offers authoritative information on the outbreak, a Slack app to send signed birthday cards remotely, a care package service for WFH employees, an app to help save local bookstores, and a digital coach to cope with anxiety. 🙌

Over the past several years, we’ve put on Makers Festivals in order to encourage makers to build, tinker and launch products in a short period of time. It’s like a hackathon, but always online and open to people from all backgrounds (not just software developers), all around the world.

With the proliferation of work from home mandates over the past few weeks, we thought it would be a great time to host a global, WFH Makers Festival that focuses on relief efforts (in any form) for the COVID-19 pandemic. At Product Hunt, we’ve already seen a ton of products launch that focus on helping people during this time, including things like a rational shopping list generator, a mask matching tool, a self-quarantine book club, a resource  for supporting local businesses and database of projects looking for volunteers. We even launched our own Product Hunt Merch shop last week focused on WHO's COVID-19 response fund.

We encourage you to think outside the box, whether than means building products around self-care, at-home entertainment, ways to combat the spread of misinformation or products for healthcare workers on the frontlines of the crisis. You can work as a solo maker or in (remote) teams, and you can work on any platform. We’d like to see both no-code and code-based projects!

The Festival will go on for three weeks, and submissions will close on April 16th. Then we’ll open up voting to the community, and winners will be announced at the end of April. We’ll be featuring all winners in our newsletter and on our social channels, and of course, a silver kitty trophy will be given to the overall winner.

We can’t wait to see what you build! 🎉

In recent weeks, we’ve seen a ton of people searching for co-watching apps like Netflix Party and Showgoers on Product Hunt as more and more people are isolated at home. So it’s timely that Instagram launched “Co-Watching,” a new feature that turns Instagram away from a solo experience into a multi-person party.

Co-Watching lets friends who are hanging out on a video chat browse through Instagram content together, with the goal of making Instagram a more social and active place to hang out in online. 👋

“We've been FaceTiming everyone we know the past few weeks. I love a new way to help make it feel like we're actually hanging out with people during this isolation.” - Jacqueline

The sentiment behind Co-Watching reminds us a lot of Squad, an app that lets groups of friends screen share while they video chat. Just like Squad, up to six people can “Co-Watch” at once on Instagram, where they can consume all feed content except for IGTV videos and private posts.

In addition to Co-Watching, Instagram has rolled out a number of efforts to help spread awareness around COVID-19, specifically enforcing the importance of isolating at this time. If you’ve spent any time on Instagram lately (haven’t we all?), you’ve likely seen the shared Instagram Story from any accounts that you follow that have posted the “Stay Home” sticker to their Stories. Instagram has also removed COVID-19 accounts from recommendations (unless posted by a credible health organization) and rolled out the donation sticker in more countries to help people find relevant nonprofits to support.

Will you try out Co-Watching? If you do, let us know how it goes. 👀

In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, huge efforts have been made by big tech companies to combat the spread of misinformation, mobilize communities and speed up research.

Yesterday, Facebook announced an initiative where the company is giving government and UN health organizations free services to help them use Messenger to scale their response to COVID-19. Several days ago, Google launched a COVID-19 information portal that highlights safety and prevention tips, as well as official stats and insights (it’s only in the U.S. for now). Twitter is also prioritizing authoritative information by verifying experts (with a blue check mark) to provide credible updates around coronavirus. 🙌

For those stuck at home due to quarantine, closures and lockdowns, big tech also has solutions. Apple Music released an AI-generated upbeat playlist (it’s called the Get Up! Mix) that will be updated every week. It’s sort of like Spotify’s Discovery Weekly, but happier. Apple is also giving away free e-books and audiobooks (to people in the U.S.) when you launch Apple Books.

Meanwhile, Amazon wants to help parents out. The company is offering free access to over 40 titles of kid-friendly Prime Video content to anyone with a standard Amazon account, and the initiative is in effect worldwide.

Have you seen more smart initiatives like these from other tech companies? Tell us about them. 👈

In the sudden age of all Zoom everything, Around wants to make video meetings “less.”

From a UI perspective, Around looks different than traditional video conferencing software, prioritizing AI-based camera framing that finds your face as you move, cropping out the background behind you. There’s also optional filters to set a “vibe” for the call, meaning nobody has to feel “vampire-awkward” when tuning in at night due to different time zones. Around also has an auto-mute feature that uses AI to eliminate common background noises like sirens, dog barks, washing machines, smoothie blenders and laptop fans to prioritize the human voice (sort of like Krisp). On top of that, Around’s signal processing technology lets multiple laptop microphones and speakers stay enabled in the same room without echo or feedback.

“Around respects your time and privacy, and that's why we've built all the technology behind it — to make it even less distracting than any other video calling products on the market. Around is primarily a hard tech company — great audio and video is a real science, and off-the-shelf services and libraries are far from great. So we went heads down for two years and wrote all the audio and video greatness ourselves,” Around CEO Dominik Zane wrote on Product Hunt.

Similar to video conferencing apps like Zoom, users can simply share a link (or fire it up from Slack) to start an Around call. 👋

Here’s what early adopters think:

“This is an amazing antidote to being stuck inside a rectangle and unable to collaborate. Zoom is good but Around is essential for actually doing work like you are sitting next to someone.” - Garry

“Cool UI and AI features. How do I convince people to use this over from Zoom?” - Al

“One of the worst things about video conferencing is the failure to create a persistent or ambient connection. Sometimes you just need to have someone feel like they're with you for a while without really saying anything or disturbing you. This looks like it might really help with that.” - Dean

Would you use this? Let us know. 🗣

Our community has been asking us where they can get Product Hunt merch for a while. Historically, we’ve shipped swag to school hackathons around the world and surprised our community with lots of stickers, but we decided to finally shake things up.

We recently spoke with our friends at fourth wall and they helped us whip together a shop. Starting today, you can buy Product Hunt t-shirts, sweatshirts and stickers here (thanks to our team members for modeling).

All profits from merch sold will go to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Response Fund. 😸

Get your merch! 🎉

P.S. Product Hunt sweats are very comfortable while working from home.

Well, this was well-timed. Slack released its biggest redesign yesterday, making improvements that specifically target those new to Slack given the recent change to mass remote work.

For Slack veterans, you’ll find new navigation, a new compose button, custom sidebar sections, a new shortcut button for apps and new themes are coming soon. Overall, the stripped down redesign aims to be more customized and simplified, addressing the less intuitive ways the messaging app works for Slack neophytes. 💬

“These changes address a basic challenge that has grown naturally with Slack: with size comes complexity. As different product teams added new capabilities piecemeal, Slack started to feel not intuitive for people trying it out for the first time,” the Slack team wrote in a blog post.

We’ll see if the new Slack design appeals to a wider range of business users, given that more and more industries have made the recent shift to a distributed workforce.

Speaking of new releases, Apple unveiled its new iPad Pro yesterday. The iPad resembles a laptop more than a tablet; it comes with a new “magic keyboard” Check it out here. 💻

At this point, a lot of us are reading this from the comfort of our couches/beds/bathrooms, since many folks are working from home right now. If you’ve never worked remotely before or fall in the camp of people who prefer to work in an office, good news — we have some adjustment tips for you. 🏠

Product Hunt has had a remote team from its beginnings (aka for six-plus years), and now operates as a fully distributed team across 7 times zones. We’ve learned a lot as a distributed workforce. We polled our team on their favorite WFH hacks as we all adjust to this temporary change to everyday life.

Some of our favorite tips and tricks:

“Kickstart your day by doing something that makes you feel accomplished (i.e. make your bed or clean something). Listen to music or podcasts — staying in silence at home while you’re working (or not) can make you feel depressed. After your work day, you’ll need a routine to replace your commute. For example, you could clean your desk or your mug. Also, during these strange times, clean your phone, keyboard and other devices with wipes when you wash your hands.“ - Julie, Design

“Get up an hour before you start working and normalize your day by doing tasks as you would before work in an office. Eat breakfast, have coffee, relax or clean.” - Aaron, Community

“Keep your work zone clean as an office.“ - Rado, Engineering

“Schedule a break where you go outside for a walk or sit in another room reading a book. It’s essential to schedule time away from the screen doing something nice for yourself.” - Abadesi, Maker Outreach

“If you have the space, move around your home throughout the day. I rotate between my desk, my couch and the kitchen table to mix it up. If you’re near a window in your designated ‘spots,’ even better.” - Taylor, Editorial

“Know when to log off. WFH can be hard to detach from work because you're always connected and you don't have any travel time between home and work, and this is amplified further if you work with teammates across multiple time zones. Set yourself breaks during the day and a time you plan to finish work and stick to it. Having a normal routine helps you not feeling like your home is your workplace 24 hours a day.” - Dan, Design

“Get dressed for WFH. It creates some psychological thing where you're in the mood to be productive. If you work in your pajamas you're going to work like your in your pajamas.“ - David, Engineering

“I find it helpful to set a specific area to work and when I'm not in that area, I'm not working” - Lanre, Sales

“Use music to reset your mood. If you are musically inclined, working remotely can provide an excellent opportunity to play some music at random points of the day. For instance if I need to clear my mind in between different types of activities to reset my mood - singing (for me) can be a great way to hit reset. For someone else this might be playing a musical instrument or even just listening to a favourite song. A five minute outlet can stimulate creative thinking and relieve stress by taking your mind away from the immediate task before moving on to another. This is much easier to do at home than in an office environment.” - Emily, Operations

We also polled the community for their *unconventional* tips on remote working. What do you think of stretching routines, barista lessons, and one song on repeat? All the WFH tips here. 👈

Good news for makers all over the world: we’re hosting our first ever online makers summit this July! 🎉

It’s going to be a chance for you to hear from some of the greatest people in the Product Hunt network, from founders to investors to side hustlers. It’s also going to be a great way for makers to make connections within our global community. Bonus: It’s all free! 💸

What to expect: We’ll be serving up presentations, panels and Q&As covering all the big topics of the year, including D2C, privacy and big data, remote working, no-code making, AI and automation, AR /VR, audio tech and so much more. You’ll hear from industry experts as well as makers on the rise who are making moves in new spaces.

We’re excited to work with Hopin on this, as their platform allows us to create the same level of interaction you’d enjoy if we were meeting IRL. We’ll have networking sessions where we can chat with each other and virtual booths that let you enjoy demos and live chats with some of the amazing tech brands we’ll be partnering with.

Reserve your spot now. Register here. 👈

We’re also looking for great brands to partner with for the summit. If you’d like to get involved as a sponsor, register your interest here. If you're interested in speaking at the summit, we would also love to hear from you! Email hello@producthunt.com with your proposed topic.

While you might be staying home amid the coronavirus outbreak right now, it's possible you have some newfound free time. We’re already seeing a trend on Product Hunt where makers are launching products to help those stuck at home find new hobbies, focus on productivity and stay connected to others virtually.

A sampling of new things to try (these all launched within the past week):

👀 No Code Challenges are weekly challenges to test your no code skills. Each week, you’ll learn to develop a tool or product without using code

“Awesome growing community! Glad to be a part of it.” - Greg

🎨 Noshi Food Paint is paint...for your food. One set comes with three tubes of different-colored organic fruit puree (strawberry, peach and blueberry) that kids (or adults!) can paint on their food.

“My kids were picky eaters so I invented something to get them interested in — and engaged with — their food. And it worked.” - Noshi

📕 Read This Twice is a verified book recommendations site from entrepreneurs, authors, investors, scientists and politicians. Every single recommendation on the website has been verified by someone influential and a source link to the recommendation.

“Browsing your website made my reading list grow uncontrollably” - Arshak

🙏 Atom lets you easily add meditation as a habit to your routine. The app uses principles of behavioral psychology and research on habit building to make mindful meditation productive.

“Being a person with a very restless mind, trying to meditate in the first place and then committing to it to form a habit is something I was never able to do. Atom has actually made it easier for me to do that.” - Atishay

🙌 Quarantivity is a collection of positive projects launching from around the world right now. What can you create in the face of adversity and the unknown?

“They say necessity is the mother of invention.” - Adam