Creating a Slack app that uses fewer resources

If you&#x27;re a Mac user that cares about user experience, I would like to (aggressively) recommend Shrugs.app[0]. It&#x27;s a Cocoa&#x2F;AppKit app, made with macOS native technologies that integrates most of macOS features in the Slack experience. It&#x27;s the best app in the town, surpassing Ripcord (which is developed in Qt and is ugly and foreign in macOS) or using Slack in the browser (my usual option), or using the Electron client. It&#x27;s written by Helge Heß[1], which you might have heard about - he has some fun projects like SwiftWebUI[2].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shrugs.app" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shrugs.app</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.helgehess.eu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.helgehess.eu</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;SwiftWebUI&#x2F;SwiftWebUI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;SwiftWebUI&#x2F;SwiftWebUI</a>

In this screenshot, this app is using 286MB of memory and the official Slack app is using 200MB, how is this better?<p>fwiw, this is how the original Slack Mac app worked and it sucked. We had to tell users to upgrade their OS so that their app worked, because NSWebView (and WKWebView) are tied to the OS release. If their computer was too old, telling a customer to Buy a new Mac is a pretty terrible experience.

There&#x27;s Ripcord[1], if you want something that is actually lightweight and webtech-free.<p>It can also function as a client for Discord. A shame that it is closed-source though.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cancel.fm&#x2F;ripcord&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cancel.fm&#x2F;ripcord&#x2F;</a>

&quot;I have created a slack app&quot; -- just repackaged a webview.<p>I was intrigued because slack used to have APIs and and IRC proxy, and I was wondering if the author has used some kind of weird way to connect to slack and impersonate an user.

The downside with using native web views was that if you wanted a cross platform application, you had to use IE11 web views on Windows. So that limitation alone prevented many developers ever going down that route. The solution to that was Electron and bundling a modern web browser with the application.<p>However... The latest versions of Windows 10 now use the newest Chromium based Edge as the native web view. So the need to use Electron is slowly going away.

There&#x27;s also <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;wee-slack&#x2F;wee-slack" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;wee-slack&#x2F;wee-slack</a> which is a plug-in for the weechat irc client.

I&#x27;ve toyed around with this idea before[1], and am v.excited to see Multi.app as a packaged up&#x2F;refined version, awesome stuff.<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pointlessramblings.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;why-always-electron&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pointlessramblings.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;why-always-electron&#x2F;</a>

Imagine how much fewer resources it would use if a native app were available...

I created an app similar to Multi, but for Linux. If anyone is interested, take a look at DWAS[0][1]. It allows blocking requests, injecting scripts and applying custom styles among other things.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;codecyanic&#x2F;dwas" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;codecyanic&#x2F;dwas</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;codecyanic&#x2F;dwas-manager" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;codecyanic&#x2F;dwas-manager</a>

Related, there&#x27;s also Franz which is another chat app aggregator&#x2F;wrapper.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;meetfranz.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;meetfranz.com&#x2F;</a>

Interesting.<p>I’m now curious how multi[1] compares to Fluid[2]. I haven’t used it in a while, but that app used to be present on all my installs.<p>Can’t remember what happened that I stopped using it.<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kofigumbs&#x2F;multi" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kofigumbs&#x2F;multi</a><p>[2] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fluidapp.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fluidapp.com&#x2F;</a>

&gt; I recently created a macOS app called Slack Lite, which beats Slack&#x27;s desktop app across a few performance axises.<p>Nit: the plural of axis is axes. (Due to its Greek etymology I think? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wiktionary.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;axis" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wiktionary.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;axis</a>) I&#x27;d probably use &quot;metrics&quot; though.

I believe Blazor desktop is really promising. Same premise - and let’s you use C# for the underlying native system access and reuses the native webview.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gunnarpeipman.com&#x2F;blazor-on-desktop-webwindow-experiment&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gunnarpeipman.com&#x2F;blazor-on-desktop-webwindow-experi...</a>

I wish Slack distribute their iPad app to mac as catalyst app. With the ability to run iOS apps on Apple Silicon macs this will be much easier but I&#x27;m afraid that they will block this and still distribute their resource heavy electron app.