There’s an easy-to-use new app for killing time and browsing memes on the block, and its name is Hot Sauce. The app has only one core function; it shows you GIFs, videos, interesting pictures and memes from a wide range of categories. Whether you’re looking for extremely satisfying pictures and videos like a tool that grabs, lines up and tapes up cords on the floor, or a perfectly divided two-tone cherry, or you’d rather see the corniest dad jokes the internet has to offer, this app has you covered. You can star items to save them to your personal collection, and subscribe to pages that consistently post things that you like.
Background: The layout of the app is about as simple as it gets. You start out in the Featured section, looking at a single image or video in expanded view. Swipe left or right to navigate this section, where new content will be placed each day. Ads are interspersed here to keep things free, and they’re treated the same as memes; you can view them in their entirety, or simply swipe right past them. From there, you can tap the hamburger menu icon in the top left to pull up a menu where you can find Explore, Subscriptions, and My Collections. In the Explore heading, you’ll see rows for each category, where you can scroll the memes that are there, represented by preview tiles, or tap the arrow to go into that category. Tapping on a tile will expand that meme. You can subscribe to individual categories, of which more will likely be added over time. Once you’ve subscribed to a page, you’ll see its content featured in your Subscriptions view. It will be expanded and intermingled with your other subscriptions, like a more curated Featured view. Finally, the My Collections view shows things that you’ve starred as individual preview tiles. As a bonus, if you login with your email or via Facebook, you can save memes to your device, or leave comments on them. There’s currently no way for users to add content.
Impact: This app’s impact is sure to be rather minimal. You won’t find it displacing many of the usual fare like Reddit and 9Gag that are used for time wasting and browsing memes and other relevant content. Even so, the app already has some categories with follower counts in the millions. There aren’t many apps out there with this exact formula, being to spoonfeed users interesting content without them having to put in any work. Ads are served right in the main feeds, so if you’re scrolling through the memes in a given category or the featured view, an ad will pop up instead of a meme on occasion, making it one of the less intrusive ad experiences out there. Overall, the app is extremely easy to use and pretty lightweight on device storage and resource usage. If you’re bored and looking for something even more mindlessly entertaining than the many meme apps and sites on the market, there’s no harm in giving Hot Sauce a try.
