Reviews & Comments of Prolific Assistant chrome extension

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Many times surveys will be full when I get notified.

Works great, have used this notifier and it has been so helpful. Sometimes can display an error but a quick restart fixes it (:

It does give me notifications but they interrupt what I'm doing and distract me; one came through while I was doing a study and I had to mute my speaker volume so I wouldn't hear any more. That means of course that I have to remember to unmute when I'm between studies if I want to hear any notifications. But there doesn't seem to be much point in that because it's finding studies I can't do, for example ones that are restricted to mobile. I have restrictions set on the main page so I won't see those but the extension is apparently not using them. If the extension had settings I could change to match the restrictions that would help but it doesn't; all I can change are the notification type and its volume. I can't even tell it how often to check (and I have no idea how often it *is* checking). This extension was suggested to me by someone at Prolific as an alternative to just keeping a tab open, because of a glitch on the main page that's showing a number on the tab when there are really no studies available. I think I'm better off putting up with that than an extension that's misleading and that I have to mute sometimes so it won't distract me. I'll be removing it as soon as I finish with this review.

Rarely actually makes the trigger noise. I find more studies by clicking on the prolific tab than I get from waiting for the notifications. And when it does notify it's always too late, usually only a handful of places left and those are shown as taken as soon as I try to join. In other words, it's useless, and very annoying.

Does not sound a notification most of the time. If it does its too late by then as one place has been taken or its already gone before you even click it. This needs to be fixed its just so so poor.

Needs a button to turn it on/off

It's far too slow with its notifications; almost all are already full.

Pretty useless extension, it notifies you far too late so by the time it tells you a study is available it's already full

EDIT: All of a sudden the voice on the extension has started pronouncing 'prolif 'ic' as 'prolif 'uc'. I thought I was hearing things at first but no - it has definitely changed. I did report this but I don't think I was being taken seriously enough and it still hasn't been changed back to how she sounded. Would love to hear from anyone else who has noticed this...just to make sure I'm going mad. Wish I'd known about this extension sooner! You got to be quick at accepting surveys though...they do get snapped up pretty fast - reviewers complaining about this, but is no fault of the extension. Surveys with a higher reward always get snapped up quick anyway. Maybe don't be so greedy and choose a lesser reward until you snatch a big one...just saying. So much easier than having a 'Prolific' tab open...and you can pick and choose as you like. Never miss a notification again.

I love this extension, however recently it has been ignoring the fact that I have the Alert set to "none" and the volume to "0" and have desktop notifications turned off. I still get the "voice" at a fairly loud level telling me about available surveys. I have reinstalled the extension and it didn't solve the problem. Since I am at work at my business when I take surveys it can be distracting when I am in the middle of work and I get the notification. (I can't turn volume down because I have other work related tasks that require audio)

I think folks aren't realizing that 70K people have installed this extension, so of course it'll appear like you might not get them "fast enough" ? I think the extension is great! However, I would like the ability to quickly toggle the extension completely on/off. I only use Prolific for an hour or two a day and it's kind of annoying to have to fiddle with the settings to turn it off

Refresh interval is rediculous

Works fine. You need to update it fairly often manually, which is fine since it saves browser resources. A tip for others: even if it fills up, there's a chance someone will drop, so you can still watch for it for a few minutes. The people saying they are too late simply did not update their available surveys and didn't care to look.

Alerts you too late

Look, it's a good thing to have, but pointless when it tells you that there are studies available and barely a second later, the study is full. I have only managed to catch 2 studies of many.

Where has the interval option gone? My assistant seems to have stopped checking for surveys and the interval option has disappeared from settings. Gave it 3 starts because it used to be good.... but the past few days it's been useless tbf :(

i dont think it works anymore. The more they update it, the worse it gets. Doesnt even notify hardly anymore, and when it does, study is always full... they took away the interval option. I wouldnt be surprised it they turned off the instant cashout option. Does nothing but show ERR all the time. They probably are gonna get rid of it soon. Like they did the prolific reserver extension.

I've been using this extension for a long time. Now, it seems to always show ERR. I keep having to turn it on/off and within 30 minutes it goes back to ERR. It's always worked great so I don't know what has happened. Must be an update or something? I hope they fix it soon.

Showing ''ERR'' for no reason lately.

I find this extension very frustrating. It *could* be extremely helpful, BUT every time it brings up a study, I click on it immediately and the study is full meaning it shows me the notification far too late

Does not work as intended. Shows me studies when there is one or zero spaces remaining, needs the user to continuously update it. Awful.

It needs to scan more frequently. 90% of the time the studies are full by the time the extension makes its notification sound. I think it only scans every couple of minutes and the surveys fill up in seconds in most cases. It helps to catch a survey here and there when the survey is accepting a massive number of people but otherwise its just way too slow.

Used to work really well, but now it just... doesn't work. It stops checking. I went over to the studies page and noticed a study there, but no notification... because it had stopped checking at 8 AM, over 12 hours ago. Wish it would get fixed or a better alternative would come up.

Doesn't work for me at all. I am logged in, but it either doesn't notify me of the study AT ALL, or it notifies me of studies when there's only 1 spot left and it's already gone immediately. I just have to refresh the page myself throughout the day like I usually do.

It's a bit aggressive in the amount of times it "dings." I appreciate the notifications but I would like the ability to silence the audible notifications. A simple drop down at the top right of my screen (I use a macbook) would more than suffice.

Worked the first day I downloaded it but not since.

barely ever actually notifies me of studies, i have to go to the page and refresh it myself.

The extension definitely works, I get more reviews through the extension than I do through waiting for the website to refresh and show new survey. Generally all the surveys shown have are those that are full or near max capacity that by the time you try to reserve a place for yourself it will be already full. I have also observed that the assistant is slower at detecting new surveys or sometimes doesn't detect at all. It detected a survey that had one place left, I tried to open it by it was full by that time, a few minutes later, I decided to manually refresh prolific.co and the same survey popped up again with one spot left and I managed to get it, all that time prolific assistant did not manage to detect a thing.

Notify me when there is only one place left...and that happens almost everytime...

It sometimes works great, other times it does not notify, desktop notify or refresh regularly enough. in the screen shot i see a interval setting but on my extension there is no interval setting, it would help alot more to have regular refreshing in this global reservation race

I keep getting notified about a study when there's only one place left and I seem to be missing it most of the time even if I apply immediately, I keep seeing other reviews about changing the interval on the extension? However my extension seems to only have the notification sound and alert volume in my settings, can anyone help me figure out how to add the interval option?

It's cool when it works, but most of the time it alerts late or not at all. In addition, it often alerts when there isn't a study and then the notification stays like its unread (right now it says there are two studies- there are not.) And finally, around half of the time i try to open the extension window, it malfunctions. In these cases it's a white box with two overlapping blue boxes on the left- and part of the settings button is visible but only up to the first T.

The UI is very broken. Every time it notifies the study is already full :)

Broken, doesn't refresh often enough and when you get a pop up and want to join a survey as fast as possible it will obviously get a huge visual glitch which you have to fix by reopening the extension pop up and the chanes it will fix itself are slim so by the time you're done the survey is gone, pretty darn grabage.....

Nearly every time i get a notification from this extension, it's already too late to take the study because there are no more places remaining

This extension has been proper winding me up! Every survey invite seems to only ever have 1 place remaining and obviously this is snapped up in no time. Sometimes it doesn't alert me to surveys that are active, yet they're sitting there on the website when I log in. Frustrating extension. Useless.

The extension has a huge problem with how often it checks for studies. Apart from the times when it just stops checking for hours until you manually press it, practically any time I get a notification it's too late. I immediately open the study and I see that it's full.

I never get notified before a study is full rendering this useless and more of a nuisance.

It only works about 1/4 of the time. Everything is gone before it makes the sound.

At the current state the extension is useless. It always notifies you too late . By the time you click the button the survey is already full

It barely works in 2021. There are frequent visual and connection errors with the assistant. Just barely helps me. I'm better off waiting for studies in a tab.

It's not really working for me. It only ever notifies me about studies when there's only 1 places left and usually it takes one second for that place to be taken and I can never participate. So I always need to manually check for studies if I want to get them as soon as they appear. Sometimes it notifies me for studies that are not meant for me, studies I can't take part in because I'm not eligible.

Not working right now!

It worked at first - but now it never alerts me. sometimes I'll check manually and there are some studies, but I haven't gotten a notifcation from the extension in a few days. It also won't check regularly. When I clicked on it in chrome it listed studies I already took this morning 8 hours ago and had the last checked time as several hours ago.

Totally useless. The app notifies that there is a new study when there are no more places left.

Changed the voice audio alert from a tolerable robotic male voice to an ear shredding female voice. Whoever thought that was an upgrade probably should never work on audio again.

Worked great for a few days, but now getting the ERROR message constantly, even after reinstalling it.

Only useful when there are a large number of participants required. By the time I receive the majority of alerts the studies are already full.

It used to work but now it only warns me about a study when it's already full.

This used to work really well, but recent changes seem to have been designed to destroy all functionality that it had. The only surveys it sends alerts for now are those that are already full (but incorrectly show 1 space remaining) or those that have hundreds of available spaces. In its current form it's more annoyance than asset, which is a real shame.

I like the idea of it, however it only ever shows me studies that apparently only require 1 person. The alerts always lead to "The study is full". Needs improvement.

I would have given this a 5 star rating BUT I used to receive a verbal notification which was very helpful when I was doing something else, but now it has stopped. I am missing surveys because of the fact that I am not receiving these. I do keep the regular Prolific site open all of the time but by the time I notice the notification in the app the studies are generally full.

Used to work most of the time, but I would have to go in and disable it, then enable it occasionally to get it to work. Now, it never alerts me when there is a new study. If I don't check it manually, I don't see the new studies. So, this basically makes it useless. Please roll it back to whatever version it actually worked.

this thing only has 1 job and it doesn't do it at all!

Used to work, but updated and is now pretty much useless. Will update my review when they fix it.

Stopped working without the manual refresh button.

Doesn't work.

no idea why they took out the manual refresh for when it gets stuck. hasnt refreshed for an hour now and no way to make it work once you get it working, stop messing with it. please

This new update have made this sort of useless. I cannot check availability of study even after clicking on "Last checked time" text. Which was working flawlessly before!

It keeps saying i need to update my About You page and when i click on it there is nothing to update about it , Anyone know how to fix this?

It's just not checking for studies? It worked on the night I installed it but not sice, I just did studies in prolific but the assistant didn't detect them but it shows it last checked two days ago?

It was working great, however now the app is not updating at all. It's saying it's still Monday on my system. Please fix this as I keep missing out on potential surverys. Thanks

Like other reviewers have said, removing the ability for users to refresh the list themselves has rendered this useless. My app has not refreshed in days and there is no easy way I've found to reset it (aside from disabling the extension and then enabling it again). Please consider putting a manual refresh feature back.

Does not work any longer. Totally useless.

The latest update has ruined it

It worked up until recently, judging by recent reviews I guess there was an update that removed the manual refresh option which I really depended on. As a result my extension hasn't been checking prolific, and I can't manually tell it to check, so I haven't been getting any study notifications. Today the extension kept saying I was logged out, no matter how many times I opened prolific and logged in. I had to uninstall and re-install it to recognize that I was logged in. Don't know what good this extension will be anymore, because even before the update I had to manually refresh it half the time for it to work, and now I can't even do that anymore.

New update sucks, I can't manually refresh the study queue anymore so I'll have to wait for the app to refresh for me however long it takes (which I also can't control anymore)

Oh my god! This extension done the job only twice for me! It says studies available, clicking on it at the second it says 0 places are available. Please sort it out !

Removing the refresh interval and not being able to refresh the last checked was the biggest mistake. This doesn't work anymore

It's no longer possible to click on the "Last checked" button... This is a major downgrade, compared to the previous version. Still, I would like to thank you for developing this tool.

I've been using the assistant and has been working great until the latest update, before i could clic on the last checked date to update or refresh now is not possible and is not updating the last checked date so no new notifications since 3.7.

new update sucks

Stopped working, last checked does not update - its frozen. please fix!!!!

Please allow us to refresh the page again as it doesn't work after laptop wakes from sleep

unfortunately the new update has stopped you being able to manually refresh the extension, getting far fewer studies now Also when pc goes into standby, the extension errors. Why update the extension to make it function worse than before?

The new update has made the extension useless. You can't manually update, which means if you put your computer to sleep and come back to it, you will no longer get updates. You have to restart your computer, or leave it on all day.

there is a bug that the plugin stops working after resume from standby. this could be resolved by manually checking for studies (click on the date). sadly this function was removed with the last update. now i have to disable and enable the whole plugin which is a great hassle. otherwise the plugin is fine.

Was good before, new update sucks

The new update makes the extension unusable. If your computer goes to sleep the extensions gets stuck no way to manually refresh it. Also since the new update, Its been saying "Please check your About You page periodically to ensure everything is up to date." But all my about you page is up to date. Its at a 100% complete I have not seen a study since the new update.

The new update makes the extension unusable. If your computer goes to sleep the extensions gets stuck no way to manually refresh it.

Useless update

If my computer goes to sleep/hibernates it completely stops refreshing, previously it allowed you to click the time to manually restart it again but it no longer allows this. I now only checks every 2 minutes and there is no way to set it back to 1 minute. What a shame because this extension was actually pretty good before.

Worst update yet.. I can't even set the interval time for how quickly I receive notifications anymore??!! The time button can also no longer be pressed in order to check for studies manually.. I'm barely going to be able to complete any studies now. Why have you done this Prolific? Please change it back.

This latest update is absolutely terrible. The extension is now basically useless. Don't bother installing.

They changed it so that you can't check it manually, nor see the interval time. It is practically useless now and I hope they change it back.

The update made the check interval about 130 seconds instead of 60 seconds. The interval rate option is removed and I can't click the time to manually check for surveys. The most recent update ruined this extension.

Why on earth is the loud annoying voice announcement the default setting??

Almost useless, it alerts you when the study has 0 places left. I don't understand why the check interval can't be lower than 60 seconds

Great when it catches studies before they have no places left, but rarely is this the case unfortunately!

I keep getting notified of a study too late. There's not an option to check every minute it only checks for studies every hour therefore I'm always too late to participate! Wish this was fixed

I loved this at first, but now it stops in the middle of the night because of a recurring error. Every day, I have to go into the plugin settings and reset it. Plus, I'm only getting alerts for surveys when there's only 1 or 0 spots left. So, it's kinda useful, kinda not.

It notifies me about once a day about an eligible study but when I click on it within 5 seconds max, it says all the places have been taken. Even studies with 100 people. I'm not sure whether the check interval is for 60 seconds or 60 minutes. Hasn't worked for me so far. I also get the ERR message whenever I try to click on a study.

This extension drives me crazy!. It alerts me with: " New studies available on Prolific"...'excellent, let's click on it immediately and make some money'...but no, the study is always full, and has '0' places left - this always happens, in my case, when the payment is over £1.00, any amount below this, then there are always about 721 places remaining!....Aargh!. Does anyone here know what is really going on?.....I'll Paypal you a reward myself if any of you can solve this.

Though occasionally it pings only for the study to be full already, often I am alerted of a new survey and as soon as I arrive, I can get started on the survey!!! Not even kidding, I started doing these Prolific surveys since August of 2020 and now, January 2021, when I am next able to cash out again, I will have gone over £100 of earning on Prolific! Have to give thanks to this extension, it's a must have.

Works well. I have gotten studies because of this app which I would've never got otherwise. Thanks!

Seems very buggy. All it did so far was disturb me to move to the computer to find there were no studies - maybe because of the 'alert everyone at 1 place left thing' mentioned above

I needs to have the checkrate lowered from 60 to 10 seconds. quite often surveys have already been filled before receiving an alert.

This is great, sometimes a little bit buggy, but overall I really recommend using this extension .

When I get the alert the study is already full.

Not getting any surveys these days...I use to get a 4 or 5 a day via the extension top right, nothing for a few weeks now just get them through Jim via email but by then they have gone.....any help most appreciated...PJ

from the start on logging in, I did not like the set up. There was very little information to even let me know what i was getting into

I do like it when it works! But there are loads of times I'm not alerted until 0 or 1 place is left and its set at the minimum time of 60 seconds.

awesome. made so much cash thanks to this handy little notifier. cheers

Unfortunately, because you can't lower the 'check interval' time, I have missed out on lots of surveys. Should the developer wish to address the issue, I'm sure the extension would have far better reviews.

Great extension app which is design. d to monitor new studies