The excess level of hypochlorite may pose a significant problem for living organisms and environment. Therefore, the development of sensitive, reliable and facile-to-apply sensing molecules for hypochlorite detection is essential. The present work reports a novel antharacene-modified isophorone (IMA) fluorescent sensor as a detecting material for toxic and corrosive hypochlorite. IMA demonstrates excellent selectivity toward hypochlorite over other competing analytes through a distinct fluorescence signal change from red to purple. Detection mechanism proceeds via oxidation reaction of the probe by hypochlorite releasing the fluorescent 9-aminomethlyanthracene unit as verified by TOF-MS, 1H NMR and IR spectra. The experimental results demonstrate that IMA has excellent sensitivity, low detection limit (0.29 μM), fast response time and high pH stability for hypochlorite. By employing IMA on a TLC test kit and in real samples, the hypochlorite level is successfully determined. Moreover, IMA allowed the fluorescence bioimaging of hypochlorite ions in yeast cells.