Two days a week I work remotely, usually unplugged from a power source for most of the day. I have to run Skype and Slack to keep connected to the office. I find both clients are bloated and hog battery.<p>I was thinking about coding a command line based client that would use the Slack API's to replicate Slack text chat functionality in a very minimal program.<p>I would use a cloud based server to poll Slack for new messages and then push them down to the client. This keeps the client from continually having to check for new messages -- and improves battery life for my laptop.<p>If it worked, I could add other chat channels.<p>One limitation: it would probably support text and image only -- not audio/video<p>Is anyone else facing the same problems? Would you be interested in such a solution?<p>What would you want to see in it?<p>Thanks!
At work I use wee-slack ( <a href="https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack</a> ) a plugin for weechat that uses the slack API (<i>not</i> the IRC gateway.) Images / code snippets / etc. were rendered as an HTTP link. It works pretty well, CPU and memory usage are low, unlike the web interface.
If you turn off auto expanding gifs and images it saves a lot of your battery. I also wonder if the browser based client is any less of a hog?<p>To answer your question, if I'm on the CLI, I'm doing work. Slack helps with team cohesion but is a focus killer. I wouldn't be interested.