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Shrugs.app – A native Slack client for macOS
- dubswithus 4y agoI remember people on HN complaining about responsiveness. Never found it to be a problem personally.
- Waterluvian 4y agoI have 300-500ms response when clicking a channel. It’s infuriating. This happens on any browser including Electron.
- andrekandre 4y agothat and the keyboard lag is quite noticeable (even in an m1 machine) what is going on in software where you cant even compose text in realtime...
- maccard 4y agoFor a very long time (ive not checked recently) slack used more memory that my IDE on a multimillion line c++ project. I used to have to shut down slack to compile on a machine with 128GB ram.
- random42_ 4y agoI think it improved quite a lot. I’ve just checked and it’s using 58mb on my Windows 11 workstation.
- _jal 4y ago> I think it improved quite a lot. Maybe on Windows. My work machine (running Big Sur) currently shows: Slack: 251.6MB Slack Helper: 10.2MB Slack Helper: 48.3MB (Yes, there are two of them) Slack Helper (GPU): 316.2MB Slack Helper (Renderer): 350.4MB So just shy of a gig of RAM for chat.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoIt definitely has improved. It was clear from the memory usage vs community size that they were doing something that scaled with community size. This is a guess, but something like loading every single user and their profile icon into memory.
- dubswithus 4y agoHow many gigs was it using?
- kevingadd 4y agoAt least in my case, I once caught Slack.exe on windows using 40GB of RAM. (My machine had 32GB, so you can imagine how well things were running.) The allocated space seemed to have mostly been zeroes since the Windows Kernel was able to compress a bunch of the pages to avoid running out, but it was putting so much strain on things that audio playback was dropping out.
- maccard 4y agoI've changed jobs since so I don't have access to the tickets but I remember it being close to 20GB.
- dijit 4y agoWell, it's a problem for me, though definitely less than it was, so I'm personally very happy that this exists. "voting with our wallets" might make Slack put it on the prio board. Right now I'm using wee_slack.py which integrates weechat with slack; though with the obvious trade-offs.
- walrus01 4y agoit's an obscenity that somebody pasting one high frame rate GIF into a slack channel can cause a quad-core, tenth generation core i7 laptop CPU to peg itself at 85% usage and begin wasting battery, heating up, spinning fans, etc. if somebody told me twenty years ago how powerful this CPU was, relative to what I was using at the time for a desktop PC, and that a chat application could pretty much max out the CPU and use multi gigs of RAM, I would have laughed...
- paxys 4y agoWhat does that have to do with Slack? If your computer has trouble playing high frame rate video it'll be the same on every application.
- lloeki 4y agoIt's not just high framerate stuff, it's pervasive. Folks used to post walls of dancing bananas in phpBB and my Pentium III could handle that without breaking a sweat. The exact same wall of dancing bananas makes any modern CPU jump to ridiculous two-digit usage relative to the task at hand. I was also chatting over IRC from a Palm Pilot which had something on the order of 1MB of RAM, connected over RS232 to a GPRS phone, and the current experience of chat performance is basically on par with that, which boggles the mind given that I now have ten thousand times the RAM, an internet connection that can't be saturated in practice, and latency largely bound by the speed of light. Slack's requirements are completely ludicrous in regard of what it's set to achieve. > it'll be the same on every application. Except, it's not. Counterexamples of chat apps with reasonable to stellar performance abound over the last two decades.
- walrus01 4y agoExcept that I can play a 4k 60fps 100Mbps bitrate HEVC video in vlc with 1/6th of the cpu usage slack needs to display a damned gif
- beiller 4y agoI think you'll notice the CPU cannot play 4K 60fps in GIF format. Maybe the problem is literally the format itself, which is terrible. It's too bad something like MPEG or some of the animated PNG / JPEG / WEBM formats never took off for meme-y animated images.
- wakeupcall 4y agoAfter trying microsoft teams, slack feels like a thing from the future. But try using weechat+weeslack (+ url_hint, so that you can download urls and see images with a single shortcut) as one example of how I consider a chap app should feel. I remember pidgin being in a similar ballpark, but I haven't used it in years. It's a shame most other modern chat clients (ripcord, and most matrix clients) do not come even remotely close.
- vzaliva 4y agoIt looks nice, but if you plan to try it as you default Slack client be aware it is lacking many features: - Edit posted messages (big one, TBA) - Authentication w/ XOXC tokens - Loading older messages - Typing indicators - Starring & Pinning things - Search - Sharing messages - Screensharing and Calls (aka Screenhero) - Joining and creating channels
- iLoveOncall 4y agoOof, I feel like just one of those would be a deal breaker for most, but all those missing together makes it feel more like a proof of concept than anything else. A $20 proof of concept.
- azinman2 4y agoGotta start somewhere.
- iLoveOncall 4y agoThe problem is that according to the FAQ it's more in maintenance mode than in active development.
- st3fan 4y agoYeah, but multiple windows! OMG! I find managing multiple conversations with Slack so incredibly challenging. Having multiple windows open for active conversations is sooo good.
- Groxx 4y agoI frequently just use slack in the browser because it has tabs and windows. And generally performs much better.
- pxc 4y agoThat's interesting. I find managing Teams' multiple windows cumbersome and confusing, but find Slack very natural and efficient. Do you end up sending messages in the wrong chat often? Or missing messages or both? What do the main frustrations of a single window setup look like?
- woodruffw 4y agoSee also: Ripcord[1], which has both Slack and Discord support. [1]: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ https://cancel.fm/ripcord/
- vdfs 4y agoWon't using a 3rd party app for Discord get your account banned?
- woodruffw 4y agoIt's probably against their terms of service, so maybe. It probably depends on a combination of (over)zealous automation and whether they feel it's in their expedient interest to crack down on.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoTheir client exists almost entirely to collect data about you (chiefly what games you're playing and with whom.) That's one reason they are so quick to ban non-official-client users.
- toastercat 4y agoIt's actually not https://discord.com/terms https://discord.com/terms Although like with all things, proceed with caution.
- j1elo 4y agoFrom today's conversation about Thunderbird 102: yes, it seems running a 3rd-party client has a high chance of receiving a ban. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31914288#31915716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31914288#31915716
- toastercat 4y agoNot necessarily, although this gets routinely brought up in the Ripcord Discord server. Ripcord essentially just uses the browser APIs, so it's not really different from opening Discord in Firefox. That being said, Discord can ban people at random for whatever reason they choose, and this has happened before. For the record, I've been using Ripcord with the same Discord account for 3 years, daily.
- JacobHenner 4y agoHow long until this gets banned?
- Klonoar 4y agoIt's been around for quite some time now, so... ;P
- amelius 4y agoPerhaps when it becomes popular ...
- LtWorf 4y agoI don't think slack bans clients. They even document their API… I maintain an IRC gateway and have never been harassed (except by users using whatever strange distribution and being unable to figure out how to run the thing… they could just get debian but noooo)
- paxys 4y agoThe first thing I looked for was a comparison with the official Slack client in terms of performance, since that's the only reason why I'd consider using this. Numbers for CPU load, memory use, time to perform certain actions, crashes. Doesn't seem to be anything available on the site regarding this, which is a shame.
- greenthrow 4y agoAn even better reason would potentially be security. Exploits in electron are pretty common, which may be a result of its ubiquity making it a big target. But also it's just a complicated platform to secure.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- xmprt 4y agoIf I was worried about security then I think I'd probably move to using the web client (or a web wrapper) instead of switching to a third party native application.
- bobblywobbles 4y agoThat's a common refrain I hear that Electron apps aren't secure. It was more true in the past and less-so now. I've been maintaining a secure Electron template for 2 years that's got traction in the community, if you are interested - https://github.com/reZach/secure-electron-template https://github.com/reZach/secure-electron-template.
- Griffinsauce 4y agoHow is installing rando native apps any more secure?
- anaisbetts 4y ago.
- 4y ago
- ulkesh 4y agoIt’s an interesting start, but it’s missing some pretty vital features the official Slack client has. I get how development works and I understand needing funding to support development, but I’ll be holding off on this until there is at least a much closer feature parity. I suppose I’m getting too old to beta test daily driver software.
- mwint 4y agoIt’d be cool if there was a kind of “feature escrow”. You might pay $20 today, but $5 of that is held and paid to the developer once a specific feature you want is implemented. There’s probably too much overhead to be useful, but it’d be an interesting way of prioritizing features.
- DrewADesign 4y agoI get the value of using native clients but the interface design would be a hurdle for me. For example, the message window has no visual hierarchy. The spacing between each message and the space between the username and message content are nearly the same with the font size being the same— just with a heavier weight. Without being able to easily visually separate each message into a block, it just looks like a bunch of lines of text when you first look at it. It's tough to see without looking for it, but the Slack client is fantastically visually parsable. It fits a whole lot of functionality in there with very little interface clutter.
- MarcelOlsz 4y agoWhy on earth would I want to look up flights in a slack client?
- Mandatum 4y agoRipcord survived C&D letters because it didn't charge. I feel bad for OP for putting all this work in, because it's really cool - but you're going to get sued.
- beardbound 4y agoI was trying to remember the name of ripcord while reading this. Thanks. I used it for a while for both slack and discord and it wasn’t bad. However they did sell licenses. I just don’t think they required them. I just double checked and I bought a $20 license for it. Good software and definitely worth it as far as I was concerned.
- chii 4y agoit sucks that you could be sued if you are using a "public" api like this to write a client. I would like to think that as long as you do not brand yourself as slack or violate any trademarks, you should be able to write an app like this. Things like email clients would fall into this category.
- gtirloni 4y agoIt's not public as in an utility. It has its own Terms of Service.
- josephcsible 4y agoThe point is it's not fair that Terms of Service can impose that restriction. Just like it wasn't fair when you were only allowed to use phones that you rented from your phone company.
- tptacek 4y agoWhy isn't it fair? They run the service. What gives other people the right to tell them how to run it? If you don't like their terms, there are about 100 alternative projects you can use. There are pretty clear, practical reasons you might want to control the client of a commercial network service.
- lzli2 4y agoInteresting
- jeanlucas 4y agoAwkward, but the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ on the title isn't working.
- dmix 4y agoThis is a great start but two things: 1) the Github integration doesn't seem to be rendering the URLs properly which is a dealbreaker, my development channel is way less readable 2) Changing the default fonts would be a nice-to-have
- baby 4y agoThis is one of the least attracting landing page for one of the most attracting tool I've seen.
- xanaxagoras 4y agoI just want a slack CLI client
- fivre 4y agoit exists! https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack
- pushcx 4y agoIt has been unable to log in for the last year: https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack/issues/844 https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack/issues/844
- tra3 4y agoAn emacs slack client maybe: https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack?
- LtWorf 4y agoJust use localslackirc and whatever textual irc client you want perhaps.
- ruraljuror 4y agoOne awesome UI feature of slack is that if you paste a url onto selected test it will automatically create a hyperlink. GitHub markdown does this too. Once you use, it is frustrating when clients don’t implement it. Looking at you, Jira.
- wink 4y agoAlso one of the worst features if you paste hostnames that are now webpages. Always needs ``` - horrible for ops.
- blairbeckwith 4y agoVery important line from the FAQ: Q: Is this still developed? Yes, it is used and developed. Just not very actively. Most importantly Shrugs does not yet support “XOXC” tokens, which are often required by company Slack installations. We are interested in adding this feature, but there is no timeline yet.
- toxik 4y agoIn the year or so I used it, it was never updated.
- cmiles74 4y agoIMHO, XOXC tokens are a critical feature. If I still need the regular Slack client for work chat, now I have two Slack clients. :-(
- LtWorf 4y agolocalslackirc supports them, but it's a gateway to an IRC client, not a full client by itself.
- tekknolagi 4y agoI misread and thought this was a native version of a shrug copier for Slack, like https://shru.gg/ https://shru.gg/
- vopi 4y agoMaybe I'm just jaded but as someone that used to be gungho about alternative, native clients like these. I've just given in and used the official clients. I'm tired of being the person who doesn't have specific feature or w/e. Anyone else in a similar boat?
- mjoin 4y agoYeah, same boat here!
- elpescado 4y agoYeah, same here!
- that_guy_iain 4y agoI just really want the offical clients to become native. I understand why they're not native but it really sucks.
- ARandomerDude 4y agoNo way I would use this for internal company stuff. Is it safe? Probably. But it's not worth the risk to me personally unless the IT/management people agree to it first. At the company I work for (and I suspect many others) Slack is a treasure trove.
- flakyfilibuster 4y agomy first thought - I was surprised, that I had to scroll down this far to find this post...
- black_13 4y ago
- anaisbetts 4y ago.
- santiagobasulto 4y agoFrom a UX perspective, it could be useful to have different windows with different recurrent/common conversations. I always interact with the same people and channels, and I find myself constantly Cmd-K to those convos. If I could have several chat windows, I'd just arrange them on my second monitor and have the top-3 laying out there, so I just rotate my head, focus on the right convo, type and submit. Same as for reading, sometimes I just receive a quick message (like: "changes deployed"). I have to Cmd-K, losing focus of my current conversation just to switch to the other window and see that. Just an idea tho. EDIT: this is what I'd do: https://i.imgur.com/kI0Ti9u.png https://i.imgur.com/kI0Ti9u.png
- saagarjha 4y ago> There is nothing about Electron that constrains it to a single window, what a weird idea. "Native" means both using the right UI toolkit and being a good citizen by supporting features that are table stakes for apps on the platform. Slack happens to do neither. Look, I understand that UI design is hard, but there's a lot of options that are better than "let's not do it at all". Shrugs has picked one and I think it's all the better for it.
- vasco 4y agoThe UI would be the same except the tab would be fixed a specific conversation. Perhaps worth an experiment. I know the purist UX view would want to adapt it to then make the new tabs seamless and so on but I would expect most users just really want to have tabs per conversation or chat or thread and be able to cycle tabs instead of cycling conversations using shortcuts. You are discounting how much comfort the brain gets from a mental model you are used to, and the most common app for people to use is the web browser, which works with tabs for conceptual separation of topics, which is a great analog to different conversations or threads.
- mdmglr 4y agoiChat, AIM, Messenger, and Adium all had the concept of multiple windows for different chats.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- that_guy_iain 4y ago> We do not offer refunds. Please make sure that you can login into your Slacks and that the app works for you by using the free test version. From my experience when someone says they don't offer refunds it's generally a sign that lots of people ask for their money back. I've not once dealt with a company that had a no refunds policy that was a good company to deal with.
- gnufied 4y agoIt has a free version you can use. I am not sure if refunds for software purchases is the norm. Does Microsoft offers Windows or office purchase refunds?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- that_guy_iain 4y agoIt has a free version that is limited to the #general room which would mean for my random communities I wouldn't be able to test this out on the generic happenings. Nevermind a full blown work slack. > I am not sure if refunds for software purchases is the norm. Does Microsoft offers Windows or office purchase refunds? It is indeed the norm in the indie hacker world which this developer and product is part of. I don't think I've saw a software product that didn't come with a X-days money back promise. And yes, you can get a refund for Windows. You can go here https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/return-purchase-of-windows-10/41d9011e-8009-49d3-91dd-14ab611a522a https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/return... and see a Microsoft employee explain how to get one.
- helge5 4y agoThe demo version now actually supports multiple rooms (I think the 4 or 5 last you clicked). The bigger issue usually is the lack of XOXC support (as the general API gateway lacks a lot of API features). BTW: You can also get a refund. This is more to make sure that people actually try the thing before blindly buying something. Shrugs _does_ have limitations, so it's important to first test whether it fits the needs.
- toxik 4y agoShrugs paying customer here - I emailed the devs about several significant bugs that were pretty much ignored. The client doesn’t support some important features, making it basically not useful as a daily driver. It also has weird unread flagging behaviors that just drive you nuts. Would not recommend.
- melbourne_au 4y agoNo, I'm not paying for unfinished product!
- darkstar_16 4y agoAs much as I hate the slack electron app, I'm not completely sure I have a need for a native Mac app also if its not the official client with full feature parity. Also, I don't want more windows please.