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Slack Beta - A faster and nicer Slack built on Electron

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It's better than the previous app, but I still think Slack deserves a fully native Mac app. This Electron app is 175MB once installed and uses A LOT of memory.
Agreed, PLEASE make a real native app!
100% agreed. I understand the ease of building electron apps for cross-platform, but they're not efficient at all. And, with a ton of apps going the electron route, it really starts to bog a system down. :/
*cough* React Native
Agreed here - this is the biggest pain point for me after switching from HipChat (which is super _duper_ speedy switching between rooms/channels).
Totally agree with you. Electron is a great way to provide a "native" Mac App fast, but I by myself enjoy the fully native Apps way more! Better performance and memory management. Also it just looks nicer in the macOS ecosystem.
Great article on about Slack's Beta. Key Section: Their current macOS app is built using MacGap, which is a wrapper for web apps — so technically, it was just a port of the web version of the Slack website in a desktop window. However, the beta is rebuilt from the ground up using Electron, speeding things up significantly." It mostly still looks like the same old Slack, you’ll immediately notice these key improvements: • Insanely fast start-up and team switching • The team bar now changes according to your color scheme • A fancy new top without that ugly desktop frame • The app in general is way more speedy
✌️
Massive improvements! my Slack app is now on steroids (and no, I didn't just spend 2 minutes switching between teams)
For the record, Electron is a web app wrapper just like MacGap. MacGap is just a dead project whereas Electron has a lively community and ongoing updates.
Fun bit of trivia for people as well, MacGap was originally developed by Alex MacCaw who now does Clearbit :-)
Slack threaded messaging needs to happen, soon
i feel like the share message feature is a sort of threaded reply; very primitive but does help give context
it's definitely snappier, but I'm missing one thing: how can I remove the teams side bar? I'm only on one team, I don't need that cluttering my UI...
you can't at the moment, but submit some /feedback saying you want it. Power in numbers!
did it before my post. Just adding power to numbers by posting it on PH as well...
Maybe join more teams? I always join teams with what I use.
do like a boy who like haveing sex on the bed hotty removing your cloth and having real sex it not really hot.
Is the Mac version the only beta version available right now ? When I click on "join the beta" for Windows nothing happens...
Windows beta is live. After clicking "Join the Beta" I got a desktop notification that I'd been added to the beta group. Then clicking update via my current install of Slack on Windows prompted an update to the 2.2.0 beta build.
Thanks for the tip ! I didn't get the notification, but I after clicking "join the beta" I went to the menu : help > check for updates and it updated to the beta :)
I really love the old ui theme I hope we have the option to keep it as far as the colors etc...
Agreed! (Although it says on thenextweb: "The team bar now changes according to your color scheme," so maybe the dreary grey can be changed.
So better performance and feature set of Electron won with smaller bundle size of MacGap
This is great. The Slack startup time always kind of irked me. It's blazing fast now. I also really like how the desktop window chrome has been integrated into the UI. Nice job there. First response from our team: add a "Hide Menubar Icon" option in the preferences.
Oh yeah this is nice! So much snappier 👌
What is electron?
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