6 ms·

What do you find is bad about it?

methyl 10y ago
It's VERY memory heavy. When I open 4 channels it could eat as much as 4GB, comparing to 300MB per card when it's open in Chrome. That's why I started writing Chrome App which will simulate native Slack client and be much more memory efficient.
- runn1ng 10y ago
  > writing Chrome app Note that Google will stop supporting Chrome Apps in 1 year or so. http://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html http://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.htm...
  - methyl 10y ago
    This is too bad :(
- lawnchair_larry 10y ago
  Writing a chrome app to save you from chrome's bloat seems like a dead end. Just write a native client, or at least java/c#.
  - methyl 10y ago
    It's not chrome's bloat, it's Slack that's for some reason broken. I don't have such problems with VSCode for example. Also it's reusing already opened Chrome instance which should make memory usage more optimized.
    - lawnchair_larry 10y ago
      Slack might be making it worse, but come on. Chrome is huge. Check out the memory and cpu usage of VS Code, and compare that to any other text editor. An instance of chrome just for text editing blows my mind.
tretiy3 10y ago
All those Electron apps are extremely slow on my mac (Intel Core 2 Duo mid 2010, 4Gb RAM). I am using Slack web version (in Chrome also) and can't find any difference, except it is just a tab among others.
- krisdol 10y ago
  Atom and Spotify are pretty fast for me on OS X, but slack is both CPU and memory heavy. It idles at between 10 and 30% CPU usage, which is unacceptable.
jakobegger 10y ago
Slack is pretty good for a web app. You can tell they really worked hard to make it feel native. But there are just some fundamental differences between desktop apps and web apps. Just like a website, the Slack desktop app is slow. Open Apple Messages, and you'll see all your messages instantly. Open Slack, and you'll be greeted by a loading screen, followed by a loading screen with an insightful quip. Click on a different channel, and you'll see another loading screen, followed by another loading screen with a different funny message. And then there are all these inonsistencies... Holding down the mouse on a popup menu doesn't work; you need to click to open, then click again to select. Resizing the sidebar is not possible.
- maccard 10y ago
  I can't find a source for this right now, I've been searching, but I remember reading something about the Messages app (I can't remember if it was iOS or MacOs/OSX) is actually a webview app! Would love it if someone could find a source proving/disproving it.
  - jakobegger 10y ago
    This made me curious, and I checked by attaching a debugger to Messages. The content view with the bubbles is a web view. All the other views (sidebar, input field, etc.) are native controls. I guess this is a sort of "best of both worlds" approach. You have all the flexibility of HTML & CSS for complex content layout, and you get performance and usability of native sidebars and text fields.
    - maccard 10y ago
      Interesting to know, thanks for checking!
maccard 10y ago
As another commenter mentioned, it's extremely memory hungry. Right now, it's got 6 processes running, and it's chewing through a little over a gig of ram. I frequently (roughly once a week or so?) check process explorer and find slack hung and sitting on 3+GB. Performance is sluggish on both the high end machines I use regularly (Dual xeon workstation, and an i7 6700k with 32GB/16GB ram respectively). The search functionality brings the UI to a halt, and scrolling through the message history isn't remotely close to smooth. Startup times are also quite long. I closed the app, and re-ran it. it was 5 seconds before the window appeared, and another 5 before my chat window was populated.

It's VERY memory heavy. When I open 4 channels it could eat as much as 4GB, comparing to 300MB per card when it's open in Chrome. That's why I started writing Chrome App which will simulate native Slack client and be much more memory efficient.

runn1ng 10y ago
> writing Chrome app Note that Google will stop supporting Chrome Apps in 1 year or so. http://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html http://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.htm...
- methyl 10y ago
  This is too bad :(
lawnchair_larry 10y ago
Writing a chrome app to save you from chrome's bloat seems like a dead end. Just write a native client, or at least java/c#.
- methyl 10y ago
  It's not chrome's bloat, it's Slack that's for some reason broken. I don't have such problems with VSCode for example. Also it's reusing already opened Chrome instance which should make memory usage more optimized.
  - lawnchair_larry 10y ago
    Slack might be making it worse, but come on. Chrome is huge. Check out the memory and cpu usage of VS Code, and compare that to any other text editor. An instance of chrome just for text editing blows my mind.

tretiy3 10y ago

All those Electron apps are extremely slow on my mac (Intel Core 2 Duo mid 2010, 4Gb RAM). I am using Slack web version (in Chrome also) and can't find any difference, except it is just a tab among others.

krisdol 10y ago
Atom and Spotify are pretty fast for me on OS X, but slack is both CPU and memory heavy. It idles at between 10 and 30% CPU usage, which is unacceptable.

jakobegger 10y ago

Slack is pretty good for a web app. You can tell they really worked hard to make it feel native. But there are just some fundamental differences between desktop apps and web apps. Just like a website, the Slack desktop app is slow. Open Apple Messages, and you'll see all your messages instantly. Open Slack, and you'll be greeted by a loading screen, followed by a loading screen with an insightful quip. Click on a different channel, and you'll see another loading screen, followed by another loading screen with a different funny message. And then there are all these inonsistencies... Holding down the mouse on a popup menu doesn't work; you need to click to open, then click again to select. Resizing the sidebar is not possible.

maccard 10y ago
I can't find a source for this right now, I've been searching, but I remember reading something about the Messages app (I can't remember if it was iOS or MacOs/OSX) is actually a webview app! Would love it if someone could find a source proving/disproving it.
- jakobegger 10y ago
  This made me curious, and I checked by attaching a debugger to Messages. The content view with the bubbles is a web view. All the other views (sidebar, input field, etc.) are native controls. I guess this is a sort of "best of both worlds" approach. You have all the flexibility of HTML & CSS for complex content layout, and you get performance and usability of native sidebars and text fields.
  - maccard 10y ago
    Interesting to know, thanks for checking!

maccard 10y ago

As another commenter mentioned, it's extremely memory hungry. Right now, it's got 6 processes running, and it's chewing through a little over a gig of ram. I frequently (roughly once a week or so?) check process explorer and find slack hung and sitting on 3+GB. Performance is sluggish on both the high end machines I use regularly (Dual xeon workstation, and an i7 6700k with 32GB/16GB ram respectively). The search functionality brings the UI to a halt, and scrolling through the message history isn't remotely close to smooth. Startup times are also quite long. I closed the app, and re-ran it. it was 5 seconds before the window appeared, and another 5 before my chat window was populated.