12 ms·

Claude for Desktop

330 points by meetpateltech 2y ago

kennethwolters 2y ago
can someone tell me what the difference is to the webclient? Seems like a webview to me. No local caching/store.
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  Kids these days insist that they need the "app" of something, even when it's literally the exact same thing as the webpage. Between this phenomenon and the refusal of many to close tabs in their browsers, I can't help but wonder if a huge percentage of the populace have never heard of or used Bookmarks on their web browsers before.
  - gigatree 2y ago
    I think it’s less about not knowing what a bookmark is and more about just having a more direct way to access it, where it’s more high-level than just in a tab. There’s just something mentally different about opening a program from your dock as opposed to from a tab, even if they’re both basically a website.
    - xd1936 2y ago
      This line of reasoning was why I was hopeful that PWAs on the desktop would become first-class citizens, as far back as Mozilla Prism[1] in the late 2000s. They never really did seem to take off. 1. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism https://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      It used to be fairly common to have web-page shortcuts back in the mid-00's. Lots of apps would add spam shortcuts to your desktop that would just open your web browser to a web page where you were encouraged to buy something/donate/start a free trial. Anyways I think that capability still exists on all modern OSes.
  - jerpint 2y ago
    Having a hotkey to access the app removes a lot of friction
  - xster 2y ago
    I have ChatGPT app and Claude and Gemini PWAs on my dock. I gravitate towards using ChatGPT much more. It's just faster vs launching Chromium for each small query.
  - HelloMcFly 2y ago
    I like to ALT-TAB instead of CTRL-TAB because I always have fewer applications open than I do sites. I don't have dozens and dozens of tabs always open either, but always more than my programs.
  - lancesells 2y ago
    I'm not a kid and I know about bookmarks, but I prefer using apps to apps in my browser. Electron apps I have less interest in, but I really don't like working in something like Figma (which is in the top of it's class) in the browser. In-browser apps do all sorts of clunky things like going back a page because I'm trying to scroll right or left or hotkeys not working. Native apps feel so much better to use and I can close my browser and stay focused on the task.
  - exe34 2y ago
    > the refusal of many to close tabs in their browsers I have too many bookmarks, I'd never find anything in there. Keeping it open is the only way.
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      I was thinking more about people who use Tree Style Tabs and have nested Tab folders and such when I wrote that part. It's simple enough to save an entire session as a bookmark folder, to open an entire folder of bookmarks as new tabs (rather than needing to hibernate tabs to save ram while still keeping them "open"), and to search through bookmarks ad-hoc. Bookmark folders can be infinitely nested, categorized, ordered by when you were looking (though searching through your browser history also works for that), combined, copied, pasted, moved, put into or removed from the bookmark toolbar. It's an incredibly flexible system that allows for a massive variety of workflows and it feels like people just keep finding ways to recreate it, but worse: less platform-independent, eating more system resources, dependent on third-party plugins, or (in the case of using an app for everything) eating up orders of magnitude more storage space at rest.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        It's simple. Tabs keep state[0], bookmarks don't. The web went to shit a long time ago; you can't rely on being able to bookmark a site and then go back to where you were. Half the sites are infinite scroll, or dynamically generated pages, or SPAs[1], or some other ephemeral invention du jour. Keeping a tab open gives you some chance to return to where you were for some time; bookmarks are just giving up. -- [0] - At least until the browser decides to screw with you and unloads the tabs you needed. Firefox on Android is particularly aggressive at that, which incidentally makes PWAs unusable, too. [1] - You're lucky when those let you make a bookmark that won't drop you back to index page when loaded.
        entropicdrifter 2y ago
        Now that's an interesting perspective I hadn't considered. I suppose I actively avoid most infinite scroll webpages because to me they feel like they're meant for "consumption" and visual appeal rather than actual usefulness and I tend to think of webpages as tools, either for information or socializing. As a dev I'm certainly biased towards sites like Github or news sites, which are both meticulous at sending you to the page you were linked to specifically rather than redirecting you elsewhere. I do tend to keep a few tabs open at any given time, but only when I'm in the middle of reading something like an article or blog post. I try to close down my tabs to something like 5-8 max weekly, if not daily. Something about closing out the mental context and making a conscious decision about whether I really want to finish reading something or if it was boring me feels very freeing once I've decided to close the tab is deeply satisfying to me.
  - zarmin 2y ago
    Dinosaurs these days insist that there's only one way to do things, even when most apps are literally designed to accommodate different workflows.
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      Please, tell me where I said there's only one way to do things. My question was not meant as a critique of people who know what they're doing. I'm not talking about engineers or sys-admins like the typical HN crowd, I'm talking about the population at large. The average person understands their devices just enough to get them to work the way they want. It stands to reason that a fairly large percentage of the modern population, used to using apps for every individual service, may never have had a use for browser bookmarks and may therefore never have even attempted to use them. I have a few friends who work as professors and tell me stories about how their students don't know how to navigate a filesystem in Windows. Why would a person like that, for instance, have bothered to learn what a bookmark is vs just keeping a tab open?
  - result2vino 2y ago
    You aren’t as wise and smart as you think you are. Perhaps people just have different preferences to you?
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      I have no issue with others having differing preferences, just making an observation about the continual reinvention of this particular wheel
  - gdhkgdhkvff 2y ago
    I swear if all the ai chat apps started as fat apps and then Claude just released the first port to the web, I would be reading this exact same comment on hacker news except complaining that there was nothing wrong with the fat app.
- metalliqaz 2y ago
  but this can start with Windows and sit in your system tray, sending you popup reminders!
  - szundi 2y ago
    Pssst, they are probably here reading
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    You can do exactly the same with a PWA without Electron garbage.
  - pc86 2y ago
    We're 2-3 sprints away from a claude popup saying "It looks like you're writing a resume, would you like help with that?"
    - bitwize 2y ago
      A Copilot version is probably slated for 2025H1.
- wifipunk 2y ago
  From what I can tell you're right, it's essentially a web front end made to compete with ChatGPT's desktop app. The only real benefit is the hotkey (ctrl + alt + space) for starting a new prompt when the window is closed, but still running in the background.
  - ksd482 2y ago
    chatgpt has that shortcut too. option + space for mac, and alt + space for windows.
- whywhywhywhy 2y ago
  There isn't one, it's just an Electron app that opens slower than the webpage and flashes white before it appears. You'd think, a company that has such powerful AI and no restrictions on requests to it would be able to bash out truly native apps no rather than something that looks quite shoddily made, like making your electron app not flash white when in dark mode is amateur level stuff.
pjmlp 2y ago
An Electron app is anything but fast.
- yesco 2y ago
  It can be faster than a normal web page depending on how they configure it though.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Indeed not everyone is able to write Web sites with good performance across multiple browsers, that is 3l1t3 skill, better ship Chrome alongside the application.
- yboris 2y ago
  What a simplistic (and I think erroneous) view of Electron! You can't spare 40mb of RAM?
  - hulitupulii 2y ago
    Probably a mac user. Those devices are low in ram.
    - result2vino 2y ago
      I use macOS and don’t really have complaints about the few Electron apps that I use daily. “Electron bad!” is as much of a cargo culted snobby HN myth as “Macs have no RAM!”
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Electron bad ===> Couldn't be bothered to learn how to do proper Web development and Google is my overlord.
        mrtesthah 2y ago
sv123 2y ago
Perhaps a gateway to run computer use locally? https://www.anthropic.com/news/3-5-models-and-computer-use https://www.anthropic.com/news/3-5-models-and-computer-use
- numbers 2y ago
  yeah, that's what it seems like. As of today, there's no additional features I notice compared to having a Safari-based desktop version of this (which I uninstalled to install this one).
- YetAnotherNick 2y ago
  I don't think they could release computer use for $20/month plan. It seems super expensive and you could easily involve Claude for hours of work for manual tasks like data entry or data cleaning.
  - gregorymichael 2y ago
    My experiments with computer use clocked in at $15/hour
- snug 2y ago
  I was hoping that's what this was, sadly it's not, but defn opening the door for it in the future
blixt 2y ago
They add the same Option+Space (on macOS) shortcut that ChatGPT has, but the app feels a bit like a quick build overall, as it's just a web container. Hopefully they'll add some nice features that wouldn't work in a browser such as asking about what's on your screen or a shortcut to be able to speak questions and get a voice response.
latentcall 2y ago
No Linux, I should have expected that. Web works fine, but damn no Linux.
- politelemon 2y ago
  It's disappointing that these companies are perfectly happy to use it for their own wealth creation strategy, but have no interest in giving back and furthering the ecosystem.
  - result2vino 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - Shawnecy 2y ago
      That's an awfully cynical take to call Linux desktop a dumpster fire.
      - edm0nd 2y ago
        99% of the time its always someone who has never actually used a proper Linux desktop OS lol and/or someone who couldnt even figure out how to list files on a Linux terminal.
    - suby 2y ago
      Linux Desktop isn't perfect, but it's in no way a dumpster fire. I'm much happier using Linux than any other viable alternative. Your experience clearly differs, but I personally have very few complaints at this point. Calling it a dumpster fire is extreme hyperbole. I'm hoping they're incentivized to support Linux just based on the developer market share of Linux. The StackOverflow developer survey looks like it unfortunately allows people to choose multiple options which devalues the results and obscures the actual numbers, but at the top level 27% of developers are using Ubuntu desktop.
      - elashri 2y ago
internet101010 2y ago
Other than ease of set up, why would anybody use this over LibreChat, which allows you to plug in api keys for all services?
- result2vino 2y ago
  Other than ease of set up, why would any one use this over training their own large language model from scratch using magnets?
- zarmin 2y ago
  LibreChat is still a webapp, not a native app (ie, the topic of this post).
- vunderba 2y ago
  I like LibreChat a great deal, but its pretty heavy-weight (over a more bundled solution like Jan) in terms of spinning up a bunch of docker containers (meilisearch, mongo, vector db, etc.)
lambdaba 2y ago
I only use the chatgpt desktop app for quick throwaway interactions. For anything more involved, I want a tab and an URL. Perfect use case for a webapp, native is pointless for this, especially if it's just a webview.
- stephencoyner 2y ago
  Native desktop apps give these companies access to more system-level functions which will be super useful for... - Voice dictation / interactions - Agents accessing other applications and controlling your desktop - Agents performing background tasks like continuous monitoring, periodic data processing, or ongoing analysis I would expect to see these kind of features start to take off next year
  - lambdaba 2y ago
    Oh I agree, but this is definitely not it, I don't understand why Anthropic released this, other than squatting the same keyboard shortcut the ChatGPT app uses, with no ability to change it :P.
    - stephencoyner 2y ago
      By not it, do you mean those features aren’t available yet, or you don’t see the value in them?
      - lambdaba 2y ago
        I do see value, but the Claude app is just a webview with a keyboard shortcut, I don't even think it has voice dictation, I uninstalled it immediately.
    - kristjansson 2y ago
      The shortcut can be changed. Open the app settings from the menu bar, or the usual Command-, shortcut, and it's the only setting they expose.
    - 2y ago
lousken 2y ago
Don't see linux, also no screenshots?
- stiltzkin 2y ago
  [dead]
Nesco 2y ago
On macOS, why have an electron app when you can add the webpage to the dock as a PWA?
- Nesco 2y ago
  Here is the comparison: Claude Electron app vs Claude Safari PWA Pros: * Can be opened with a customizable shortcut * Takes less RAM (400 MiB < 600 MiB) Cons: * Needs to be downloaded * Weight 150 MiB * Slower to start * Loose language localisation * Loose Safari's capabilities: - Printing the content of the current page - Speech2Text - Accessibility - ...
  - __jonas 2y ago
    The whole electron app uses less RAM than the page opened as a PWA? That’s surprising to me, how come? I somehow thought Safari was more memory efficient than Chromium
    - tiltowait 2y ago
      I was surprised, too, so I just checked. Sure enough, https://claude.ai https://claude.ai takes 663MB. I wonder if there’s an architectural difference that allows the Electron app to be more lean? (Note I didn’t download the new app, just installed the PWA, so I didn’t verify those numbers.)
      - orf 2y ago
        The browser takes 663MB, or specifically the tab?
        tiltowait 2y ago
        The Claude tab, itself. From Activity Monitor: 640.6 MB https://claude.ai https://claude.ai 51.5 MB Claude 28.8 MB Claude Web Content 20.9 MB Open and Save Panel Service (Claude) 17.5 MB Claude Graphics and Media 15.5 MB Claude Networking 5.6 MB com.apple.Safari.SandboxBroker (Claude) 5.1 MB QuickLookUIService (Open and Save Panel Service (Claude)) --- If I open Claude in Safari, Safari itself is 204MB, and the Claude tab is 640MB.
tinyhouse 2y ago
The main questions: Can this be used with no limit on file "uploads"?
emmanueloga_ 2y ago
I was surprised that simple things like sharing a chat in Claude doesn't seem to be there. I read somewhere that it was a feature that was disabled later.
- becquerel 2y ago
  It's annoying, I'd really love to export my chats. Any Anthropic PMs reading this, as a paying subscriber I command you to prioritise this feature, on pain of failed training runs
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
haizhung 2y ago
I’ve been trying to sign up for Claude for a couple of weeks now (I was even planning to pay), but alas, signups remain closed for now.
vunderba 2y ago
Lots of people are correctly suggesting this could function just as equally well as a PWA, but I will point out that (all things being equal) there are some valid use-cases when strictly choosing between Electron vs PWA that a LOT OF PEOPLE seem to be oblivious of: - Electron apps don’t rely on a web server to function, so as long as you archive the app’s installer, you can install it on future computers even if the original website goes down. This assumes that the PWA/Electron App in question doesn't need server features, for example Photopea, Obsidian, etc. - A bit easier to block network traffic to/from a dedicated application from a privacy perspective. Still can be done on a PWA, but it's trickier to set up.
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  I mean, re: point 1, we're talking about an app that calls an API for every interaction already, so that doesn't seem super relevant. If Claude is down, you can't use it whether it's through a PWA or an Electron app.
  - vunderba 2y ago
    > "Lots of people are correctly suggesting this could function just as equally well as a PWA, but I will point out that (all things being equal) there are SOME VALID USE-CASES" YES - I am speaking GENERALLY. That's why I literally called that out in my comment that this particular use-case (Claude Desktop) could easily be done with a PWA.
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      Gotcha. Sorry, I guess that was unclear to me based on your phrasing. When you said "some valid use-cases", I thought perhaps you meant (for this app) and not (for Electron apps in general) as the implied next clause.
      - vunderba 2y ago
        No worries, yeah I just meant that if a dev has no intention of building a native app and is only deciding between either a PWA or an Electron/Tauri App, then there are some advantages to the latter.
Alifatisk 2y ago
I hope this will be available from Homebrew soon.
drpossum 2y ago
I would consider using this if I could just shove my API key in and have it run.
TikTikFook 2y ago
[dead]
bihan 2y ago
i've lost my faith to claude because of gpt4o and the advanced voice features.
- 404mm 2y ago
  It’s a rat race. They keep pacing each other, and it feels like each of them takes over the other one for a few months.
joshdavham 2y ago
Somewhat unrelated question for developers: when is an app generally better suited for the desktop vs a web app? Asking for myself.
notatoad 2y ago
if your "desktop app" gives me a cookie consent banner, i'm going to assume it's a pretty lazy effort to have a desktop app. i can click the "install page as app" button in chrome myself, thanks.
- pants2 2y ago
  On the flip side, the ChatGPT desktop app is native on Mac and it's buggy and feature-incomplete compared to the web version.
  - dzhiurgis 2y ago
    100% - amazing this crap get released when "Add to Dock" is far better - zoom, copy/paste, search, font size - all works just like in normal browser. Amazingly both implementations burn 100% CPU when rendering text, which is just bonkers. Claude's web app crashes after few days and uses 30% on idle.
    - ec109685 2y ago
      When rendering text, what would you expect CPU to be? For however long it takes to render, you’d expect it to max out.
  - timrichard 2y ago
    And doesn't work on Intel Macs. :-/
  - caseyy 2y ago
    What are some of the bugs? I’ve not noticed any. The feature lag is real, still no canvas.
    - cromka 2y ago
      Also search is unavailable, regarding missing features.
frogperson 2y ago
Claude requires a phone nu.ber to sign up and the won't accept a Google number so they are completely un-usable. I would love to try their services, but they refuse to take my money.
- SiVal 2y ago
  Is this for the paid version? I'm using the free version, and it hasn't asked me for a phone number, but if the paid version requires a phone number, my reaction would be the same as yours: sorry, no.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    I was unable to use the free version without a phone number.
- zippergz 2y ago
  This caused me a problem because I signed up with my personal email address, and then wanted a separate account for work but I only have one phone number and they won't let me use the same one on two accounts. I don't really care about giving them my phone number (it's out there everywhere anyway) but this has really reduced my ability to use their product.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    Same. my work even provides a SIP number, but Claude won't do voicemail codes... So no help there either.
- illiac786 2y ago
  In the age of eSIM, just order a free eSIM with zero credit, never charge it, never have any cost, and only enable it on your phone when a service like Anthropocene wants to send you some (completely unsecured) SMS code.
stpedgwdgfhgdd 2y ago
I do not want to give my phone number to a company.
- 404mm 2y ago
  Phone number is the new cookie. Just about every company now requires users to provide phone number. It’s insane.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sub7 2y ago
This LLM hype is out of control, they literally bullshit on any novel input (admittedly there's not a lot of this) and are wrong 15-20% of the time for all inputs This isn't a "we'll just add more context", "we'll just add more instructions and params", "our multi-head transformers will auto-attention the tits off your query" etc - this is search based on probability maps. It is structurally unable to be intelligent, no matter how many models you chain together and how much compute you throw at it. But it can sure mimic that shit, which is why LPs are going to lose their shirts and GPs are going to struggle to raise follow on funds. Let's move on.
yawnxyz 2y ago
I'm still waiting for the ability to change my email address :/
- thomassmith65 2y ago
  I'm still waiting for the ability to change my email address... ...and also to log on without visiting an AlphaGoogle domain. It speaks poorly of Anthropic that their 1FA login requires a third party. Then again, Google isn't exactly a 3PP in relation to Anthropic, more of a 2½PP.
zaptheimpaler 2y ago
Tangentially, what are people using to have a unified interface to query multiple LLMs? Juggling multiple apps or websites for each provider gets annoying. I was using openrouter but the chat history is only stored in browser, so I'm looking for something else now. I tried open-webui[1] and that looks pretty good but I wonder if there are better alternatives. [1] https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui
- iansinnott 2y ago
  There are a ton of alternatives if you search around. I created my own because I wanted something keyboard centric, and use OpenRouter with it: https://github.com/iansinnott/prompta https://github.com/iansinnott/prompta. They all accomplish roughly the same thing though.
- submeta 2y ago
  Try MultiGPT which is a Chrome extension that consolidates several AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Bard, Claude, and more, into a single interfacee
- lurking_swe 2y ago
  this is the best app i’ve found so far, better than anything else. Unfortunately it’s not open source and is only free for personal use. It has web search and RAG that actually works properly out of the box. No fiddling with 100 settings. https://msty.app/ https://msty.app/
  - punkspider 2y ago
    I agree, I'm also firmly convinced it's the best. Until a month ago it has some bugs I disagreed with some design choices, but since 1-2 weeks ago it's the absolute best I've ever used and have easily convinced others to use it.
- iamjackg 2y ago
  I'm a very, very happy user of TypingMind. It's not free, but it's worth the (one-time) license cost in my opinion. It has support for multiple providers, plugins, "agents" (pre-set templates), chat grouping, import/export, automatic syncing across devices, etc. https://github.com/TypingMind/typingmind https://github.com/TypingMind/typingmind https://www.typingmind.com/ https://www.typingmind.com/
Yeroc 2y ago
For those that use LLMs in a similar manner to a search engine the Anthropic team (unlike Meta AI and Google Gemini) have made it easy to use Claude from right within your browser. In Firefox add a bookmark with the following values: - Name: Claude AI - URL: https://claude.ai/new?q=%s https://claude.ai/new?q=%s - Keyword: ai (or whatever you'd like to use as a shortcut) Now from the URL bar you can type: ai <my question> For ChatGPT use https://chatgpt.com/?q=%s https://chatgpt.com/?q=%s as the URL and for Microsoft Copilot use https://www.bing.com/search?showconv=1&sendquery=1&q=%s https://www.bing.com/search?showconv=1&sendquery=1&q=%s.
- reustle 2y ago
  This doesn't seem to work for me. I'm getting "%s" as the initial prompt, even though the text is properly displaying in the URL. Almost seems like an issue on the Claude side.
  - outside415 2y ago
    worked fine for me on google chrome by setting it up as a search engine/site search.
- frankacter 2y ago
  This is not unique to FireFox. This is also possible in Chrome (Settings -> Search Engine) and looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/qxap6iI https://imgur.com/a/qxap6iI Setup the way I have in the image you can simply type @claude and your search Worth noting that Gemini also offers a URL shortcut for searching Gemini via @gemini within the Chrome browser.
  - Yeroc 2y ago
    Yes, I'm aware of @gemini on Chrome. If you look at how it's implemented they are purposely stashing the query into a HTTP header so it's not possible to use a simple bookmark to launch it.
    - 2y ago
grantcarthew 2y ago
I'm using AnythingLLM for this now. https://anythingllm.com/ https://anythingllm.com/ MIT License on GitHub This week it got the X.ai API added which is what I'm using. Grok is not as good as Claude or ChatGPT yet, but don't bet against Elon. https://x.com/ServeTheHome/status/1850917031421399543 https://x.com/ServeTheHome/status/1850917031421399543 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1830650370336473253 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1830650370336473253 It's the desktop solution I've been looking for. If you have a heap of prompts, you can create a Workspace for each. Super easy. Here's my prompts if anyone is interested: https://github.com/grantcarthew/notes/tree/main/Prompts https://github.com/grantcarthew/notes/tree/main/Prompts I only have two minor complaints with AnythingLLM: 1. No light mode (why does everyone want dark mode, it sucks for anyone older than 30) 2. It's electron Edit: replaced cluster link with source (I think)
- ekabod 2y ago
  The subject of the thread is "Claude for Desktop".
  - downrightmike 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - behnamoh 2y ago
    but it doesn't say "only Claude for desktop", which makes GP's comment relevant.
  - grantcarthew 2y ago
    AnythingLLM supports Claude out of the box.
- LeoPanthera 2y ago
  Is there something like AnythingLLM that is a Mac native application?
  - Terretta 2y ago
downrightmike 2y ago
No demo?
ngram 2y ago
Thanks guys for the linux release !!!
bumbledraven 2y ago
I wish I knew of a good way to voice chat with Claude, and unfortunately, the new mobile app isn’t it. The voice recognition is terrible. Does it just use iOS’s built-in text-to-speech? It needs to be as good as Whisper to be useful.
- SlyShy 2y ago
  I use superwhisper for this.
  - bumbledraven 2y ago
    +1, that fixes the voice recognition part, but it doesn't automatically read Claude's response aloud.
steveoscaro 2y ago
Is there an actual good use case for these desktop apps vs the web?
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  (I hope this thread doesn't go anywhere. I just feel like complaining.) There's been some inflection point where the desktop version is now often worse than the web app. And you can't blame web tech because the web app in the browser is usually quite good. WhatsApp on macOS has catastrophic bugs for years. I regularly can't focus the input field and have to relaunch it. Until recently, its image modal would regularly bug out and leave behind a global dimmed window that eats all input so you can't even close it. Poe's desktop app is less polished than poe.com. Off the top of my head, its desktop app scrollbar becomes so tiny that you can't even click and drag it. ChatGPT's desktop app is simply worse than its web app or was when I stopped using it months ago for that reason. Youtube Music is another pointless desktop app since it's just the web app inside a web view, though at least it embraces that. It's like the only thing going for these desktop apps is that you can alt-tab to them individually. It's time to come up with a trivial one-click first-class OS-level way to turn websites into apps and put all these sad desktop apps out of their misery. Oh well, it's come at a good time because I've mostly soured to the idea of having to install software at all. 90% can be run in a sandboxed browser away from my file system.
  - steveoscaro 2y ago
    Yeah agreed on all of this. Most desktop apps that come after their web-based versions feel like an afterthought.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
WhereIsTheTruth 2y ago
Electron slop, a literal insult to the people who worked hard on what powers all of that bloated crap
rubymamis 2y ago
Yet another Electron app... In comparison, ChatGPT's awesome client is native.
Jemm 2y ago
Any site that hijacks the back button has lost my trust.
T3RMINATED 2y ago
[dead]
nextcaller 2y ago
I'll keep using mine https://github.com/Merkoba/Meltdown https://github.com/Merkoba/Meltdown
abenga 2y ago
Software engineering tools without Linux versions are baffling to me.
- wilsonnb3 2y ago
  Why? Linux users are a minority even among developers. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-operating-system https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-operating-...
  - redpandadolphin 2y ago
    You sure about that? To my eyes those stats say Linux is more popular than MacOS.

Claude for Desktop

330 points by meetpateltech 2y ago

kennethwolters 2y ago

can someone tell me what the difference is to the webclient? Seems like a webview to me. No local caching/store.

entropicdrifter 2y ago
Kids these days insist that they need the "app" of something, even when it's literally the exact same thing as the webpage. Between this phenomenon and the refusal of many to close tabs in their browsers, I can't help but wonder if a huge percentage of the populace have never heard of or used Bookmarks on their web browsers before.
- gigatree 2y ago
  I think it’s less about not knowing what a bookmark is and more about just having a more direct way to access it, where it’s more high-level than just in a tab. There’s just something mentally different about opening a program from your dock as opposed to from a tab, even if they’re both basically a website.
  - xd1936 2y ago
    This line of reasoning was why I was hopeful that PWAs on the desktop would become first-class citizens, as far back as Mozilla Prism[1] in the late 2000s. They never really did seem to take off. 1. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism https://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    It used to be fairly common to have web-page shortcuts back in the mid-00's. Lots of apps would add spam shortcuts to your desktop that would just open your web browser to a web page where you were encouraged to buy something/donate/start a free trial. Anyways I think that capability still exists on all modern OSes.
- jerpint 2y ago
  Having a hotkey to access the app removes a lot of friction
- xster 2y ago
  I have ChatGPT app and Claude and Gemini PWAs on my dock. I gravitate towards using ChatGPT much more. It's just faster vs launching Chromium for each small query.
- HelloMcFly 2y ago
  I like to ALT-TAB instead of CTRL-TAB because I always have fewer applications open than I do sites. I don't have dozens and dozens of tabs always open either, but always more than my programs.
- lancesells 2y ago
  I'm not a kid and I know about bookmarks, but I prefer using apps to apps in my browser. Electron apps I have less interest in, but I really don't like working in something like Figma (which is in the top of it's class) in the browser. In-browser apps do all sorts of clunky things like going back a page because I'm trying to scroll right or left or hotkeys not working. Native apps feel so much better to use and I can close my browser and stay focused on the task.
- exe34 2y ago
  > the refusal of many to close tabs in their browsers I have too many bookmarks, I'd never find anything in there. Keeping it open is the only way.
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    I was thinking more about people who use Tree Style Tabs and have nested Tab folders and such when I wrote that part. It's simple enough to save an entire session as a bookmark folder, to open an entire folder of bookmarks as new tabs (rather than needing to hibernate tabs to save ram while still keeping them "open"), and to search through bookmarks ad-hoc. Bookmark folders can be infinitely nested, categorized, ordered by when you were looking (though searching through your browser history also works for that), combined, copied, pasted, moved, put into or removed from the bookmark toolbar. It's an incredibly flexible system that allows for a massive variety of workflows and it feels like people just keep finding ways to recreate it, but worse: less platform-independent, eating more system resources, dependent on third-party plugins, or (in the case of using an app for everything) eating up orders of magnitude more storage space at rest.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      It's simple. Tabs keep state[0], bookmarks don't. The web went to shit a long time ago; you can't rely on being able to bookmark a site and then go back to where you were. Half the sites are infinite scroll, or dynamically generated pages, or SPAs[1], or some other ephemeral invention du jour. Keeping a tab open gives you some chance to return to where you were for some time; bookmarks are just giving up. -- [0] - At least until the browser decides to screw with you and unloads the tabs you needed. Firefox on Android is particularly aggressive at that, which incidentally makes PWAs unusable, too. [1] - You're lucky when those let you make a bookmark that won't drop you back to index page when loaded.
      - entropicdrifter 2y ago
        Now that's an interesting perspective I hadn't considered. I suppose I actively avoid most infinite scroll webpages because to me they feel like they're meant for "consumption" and visual appeal rather than actual usefulness and I tend to think of webpages as tools, either for information or socializing. As a dev I'm certainly biased towards sites like Github or news sites, which are both meticulous at sending you to the page you were linked to specifically rather than redirecting you elsewhere. I do tend to keep a few tabs open at any given time, but only when I'm in the middle of reading something like an article or blog post. I try to close down my tabs to something like 5-8 max weekly, if not daily. Something about closing out the mental context and making a conscious decision about whether I really want to finish reading something or if it was boring me feels very freeing once I've decided to close the tab is deeply satisfying to me.
- zarmin 2y ago
  Dinosaurs these days insist that there's only one way to do things, even when most apps are literally designed to accommodate different workflows.
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    Please, tell me where I said there's only one way to do things. My question was not meant as a critique of people who know what they're doing. I'm not talking about engineers or sys-admins like the typical HN crowd, I'm talking about the population at large. The average person understands their devices just enough to get them to work the way they want. It stands to reason that a fairly large percentage of the modern population, used to using apps for every individual service, may never have had a use for browser bookmarks and may therefore never have even attempted to use them. I have a few friends who work as professors and tell me stories about how their students don't know how to navigate a filesystem in Windows. Why would a person like that, for instance, have bothered to learn what a bookmark is vs just keeping a tab open?
- result2vino 2y ago
  You aren’t as wise and smart as you think you are. Perhaps people just have different preferences to you?
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    I have no issue with others having differing preferences, just making an observation about the continual reinvention of this particular wheel
- gdhkgdhkvff 2y ago
  I swear if all the ai chat apps started as fat apps and then Claude just released the first port to the web, I would be reading this exact same comment on hacker news except complaining that there was nothing wrong with the fat app.
metalliqaz 2y ago
but this can start with Windows and sit in your system tray, sending you popup reminders!
- szundi 2y ago
  Pssst, they are probably here reading
- pjmlp 2y ago
  You can do exactly the same with a PWA without Electron garbage.
- pc86 2y ago
  We're 2-3 sprints away from a claude popup saying "It looks like you're writing a resume, would you like help with that?"
  - bitwize 2y ago
    A Copilot version is probably slated for 2025H1.
wifipunk 2y ago
From what I can tell you're right, it's essentially a web front end made to compete with ChatGPT's desktop app. The only real benefit is the hotkey (ctrl + alt + space) for starting a new prompt when the window is closed, but still running in the background.
- ksd482 2y ago
  chatgpt has that shortcut too. option + space for mac, and alt + space for windows.
whywhywhywhy 2y ago
There isn't one, it's just an Electron app that opens slower than the webpage and flashes white before it appears. You'd think, a company that has such powerful AI and no restrictions on requests to it would be able to bash out truly native apps no rather than something that looks quite shoddily made, like making your electron app not flash white when in dark mode is amateur level stuff.

pjmlp 2y ago

An Electron app is anything but fast.

yesco 2y ago
It can be faster than a normal web page depending on how they configure it though.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Indeed not everyone is able to write Web sites with good performance across multiple browsers, that is 3l1t3 skill, better ship Chrome alongside the application.
yboris 2y ago
What a simplistic (and I think erroneous) view of Electron! You can't spare 40mb of RAM?
- hulitupulii 2y ago
  Probably a mac user. Those devices are low in ram.
  - result2vino 2y ago
    I use macOS and don’t really have complaints about the few Electron apps that I use daily. “Electron bad!” is as much of a cargo culted snobby HN myth as “Macs have no RAM!”
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Electron bad ===> Couldn't be bothered to learn how to do proper Web development and Google is my overlord.
      - mrtesthah 2y ago

sv123 2y ago

Perhaps a gateway to run computer use locally? https://www.anthropic.com/news/3-5-models-and-computer-use https://www.anthropic.com/news/3-5-models-and-computer-use

numbers 2y ago
yeah, that's what it seems like. As of today, there's no additional features I notice compared to having a Safari-based desktop version of this (which I uninstalled to install this one).
YetAnotherNick 2y ago
I don't think they could release computer use for $20/month plan. It seems super expensive and you could easily involve Claude for hours of work for manual tasks like data entry or data cleaning.
- gregorymichael 2y ago
  My experiments with computer use clocked in at $15/hour
snug 2y ago
I was hoping that's what this was, sadly it's not, but defn opening the door for it in the future

blixt 2y ago

They add the same Option+Space (on macOS) shortcut that ChatGPT has, but the app feels a bit like a quick build overall, as it's just a web container. Hopefully they'll add some nice features that wouldn't work in a browser such as asking about what's on your screen or a shortcut to be able to speak questions and get a voice response.

latentcall 2y ago

No Linux, I should have expected that. Web works fine, but damn no Linux.

politelemon 2y ago
It's disappointing that these companies are perfectly happy to use it for their own wealth creation strategy, but have no interest in giving back and furthering the ecosystem.
- result2vino 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - Shawnecy 2y ago
    That's an awfully cynical take to call Linux desktop a dumpster fire.
    - edm0nd 2y ago
      99% of the time its always someone who has never actually used a proper Linux desktop OS lol and/or someone who couldnt even figure out how to list files on a Linux terminal.
  - suby 2y ago
    Linux Desktop isn't perfect, but it's in no way a dumpster fire. I'm much happier using Linux than any other viable alternative. Your experience clearly differs, but I personally have very few complaints at this point. Calling it a dumpster fire is extreme hyperbole. I'm hoping they're incentivized to support Linux just based on the developer market share of Linux. The StackOverflow developer survey looks like it unfortunately allows people to choose multiple options which devalues the results and obscures the actual numbers, but at the top level 27% of developers are using Ubuntu desktop.
    - elashri 2y ago

internet101010 2y ago

Other than ease of set up, why would anybody use this over LibreChat, which allows you to plug in api keys for all services?

result2vino 2y ago
Other than ease of set up, why would any one use this over training their own large language model from scratch using magnets?
zarmin 2y ago
LibreChat is still a webapp, not a native app (ie, the topic of this post).
vunderba 2y ago
I like LibreChat a great deal, but its pretty heavy-weight (over a more bundled solution like Jan) in terms of spinning up a bunch of docker containers (meilisearch, mongo, vector db, etc.)

lambdaba 2y ago

I only use the chatgpt desktop app for quick throwaway interactions. For anything more involved, I want a tab and an URL. Perfect use case for a webapp, native is pointless for this, especially if it's just a webview.

stephencoyner 2y ago
Native desktop apps give these companies access to more system-level functions which will be super useful for... - Voice dictation / interactions - Agents accessing other applications and controlling your desktop - Agents performing background tasks like continuous monitoring, periodic data processing, or ongoing analysis I would expect to see these kind of features start to take off next year
- lambdaba 2y ago
  Oh I agree, but this is definitely not it, I don't understand why Anthropic released this, other than squatting the same keyboard shortcut the ChatGPT app uses, with no ability to change it :P.
  - stephencoyner 2y ago
    By not it, do you mean those features aren’t available yet, or you don’t see the value in them?
    - lambdaba 2y ago
      I do see value, but the Claude app is just a webview with a keyboard shortcut, I don't even think it has voice dictation, I uninstalled it immediately.
  - kristjansson 2y ago
    The shortcut can be changed. Open the app settings from the menu bar, or the usual Command-, shortcut, and it's the only setting they expose.
  - 2y ago

lousken 2y ago

Don't see linux, also no screenshots?

stiltzkin 2y ago
[dead]

Nesco 2y ago

On macOS, why have an electron app when you can add the webpage to the dock as a PWA?

Nesco 2y ago
Here is the comparison: Claude Electron app vs Claude Safari PWA Pros: * Can be opened with a customizable shortcut * Takes less RAM (400 MiB < 600 MiB) Cons: * Needs to be downloaded * Weight 150 MiB * Slower to start * Loose language localisation * Loose Safari's capabilities: - Printing the content of the current page - Speech2Text - Accessibility - ...
- __jonas 2y ago
  The whole electron app uses less RAM than the page opened as a PWA? That’s surprising to me, how come? I somehow thought Safari was more memory efficient than Chromium
  - tiltowait 2y ago
    I was surprised, too, so I just checked. Sure enough, https://claude.ai https://claude.ai takes 663MB. I wonder if there’s an architectural difference that allows the Electron app to be more lean? (Note I didn’t download the new app, just installed the PWA, so I didn’t verify those numbers.)
    - orf 2y ago
      The browser takes 663MB, or specifically the tab?
      - tiltowait 2y ago
        The Claude tab, itself. From Activity Monitor: 640.6 MB https://claude.ai https://claude.ai 51.5 MB Claude 28.8 MB Claude Web Content 20.9 MB Open and Save Panel Service (Claude) 17.5 MB Claude Graphics and Media 15.5 MB Claude Networking 5.6 MB com.apple.Safari.SandboxBroker (Claude) 5.1 MB QuickLookUIService (Open and Save Panel Service (Claude)) --- If I open Claude in Safari, Safari itself is 204MB, and the Claude tab is 640MB.

tinyhouse 2y ago

The main questions: Can this be used with no limit on file "uploads"?

emmanueloga_ 2y ago

I was surprised that simple things like sharing a chat in Claude doesn't seem to be there. I read somewhere that it was a feature that was disabled later.

becquerel 2y ago
It's annoying, I'd really love to export my chats. Any Anthropic PMs reading this, as a paying subscriber I command you to prioritise this feature, on pain of failed training runs

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

haizhung 2y ago

I’ve been trying to sign up for Claude for a couple of weeks now (I was even planning to pay), but alas, signups remain closed for now.

vunderba 2y ago

Lots of people are correctly suggesting this could function just as equally well as a PWA, but I will point out that (all things being equal) there are some valid use-cases when strictly choosing between Electron vs PWA that a LOT OF PEOPLE seem to be oblivious of: - Electron apps don’t rely on a web server to function, so as long as you archive the app’s installer, you can install it on future computers even if the original website goes down. This assumes that the PWA/Electron App in question doesn't need server features, for example Photopea, Obsidian, etc. - A bit easier to block network traffic to/from a dedicated application from a privacy perspective. Still can be done on a PWA, but it's trickier to set up.

entropicdrifter 2y ago
I mean, re: point 1, we're talking about an app that calls an API for every interaction already, so that doesn't seem super relevant. If Claude is down, you can't use it whether it's through a PWA or an Electron app.
- vunderba 2y ago
  > "Lots of people are correctly suggesting this could function just as equally well as a PWA, but I will point out that (all things being equal) there are SOME VALID USE-CASES" YES - I am speaking GENERALLY. That's why I literally called that out in my comment that this particular use-case (Claude Desktop) could easily be done with a PWA.
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    Gotcha. Sorry, I guess that was unclear to me based on your phrasing. When you said "some valid use-cases", I thought perhaps you meant (for this app) and not (for Electron apps in general) as the implied next clause.
    - vunderba 2y ago
      No worries, yeah I just meant that if a dev has no intention of building a native app and is only deciding between either a PWA or an Electron/Tauri App, then there are some advantages to the latter.

Alifatisk 2y ago

I hope this will be available from Homebrew soon.

drpossum 2y ago

I would consider using this if I could just shove my API key in and have it run.

TikTikFook 2y ago

[dead]

bihan 2y ago

i've lost my faith to claude because of gpt4o and the advanced voice features.

404mm 2y ago
It’s a rat race. They keep pacing each other, and it feels like each of them takes over the other one for a few months.

joshdavham 2y ago

Somewhat unrelated question for developers: when is an app generally better suited for the desktop vs a web app? Asking for myself.

notatoad 2y ago

if your "desktop app" gives me a cookie consent banner, i'm going to assume it's a pretty lazy effort to have a desktop app. i can click the "install page as app" button in chrome myself, thanks.

pants2 2y ago
On the flip side, the ChatGPT desktop app is native on Mac and it's buggy and feature-incomplete compared to the web version.
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  100% - amazing this crap get released when "Add to Dock" is far better - zoom, copy/paste, search, font size - all works just like in normal browser. Amazingly both implementations burn 100% CPU when rendering text, which is just bonkers. Claude's web app crashes after few days and uses 30% on idle.
  - ec109685 2y ago
    When rendering text, what would you expect CPU to be? For however long it takes to render, you’d expect it to max out.
- timrichard 2y ago
  And doesn't work on Intel Macs. :-/
- caseyy 2y ago
  What are some of the bugs? I’ve not noticed any. The feature lag is real, still no canvas.
  - cromka 2y ago
    Also search is unavailable, regarding missing features.

frogperson 2y ago

Claude requires a phone nu.ber to sign up and the won't accept a Google number so they are completely un-usable. I would love to try their services, but they refuse to take my money.

SiVal 2y ago
Is this for the paid version? I'm using the free version, and it hasn't asked me for a phone number, but if the paid version requires a phone number, my reaction would be the same as yours: sorry, no.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  I was unable to use the free version without a phone number.
zippergz 2y ago
This caused me a problem because I signed up with my personal email address, and then wanted a separate account for work but I only have one phone number and they won't let me use the same one on two accounts. I don't really care about giving them my phone number (it's out there everywhere anyway) but this has really reduced my ability to use their product.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  Same. my work even provides a SIP number, but Claude won't do voicemail codes... So no help there either.
illiac786 2y ago
In the age of eSIM, just order a free eSIM with zero credit, never charge it, never have any cost, and only enable it on your phone when a service like Anthropocene wants to send you some (completely unsecured) SMS code.

stpedgwdgfhgdd 2y ago

I do not want to give my phone number to a company.

404mm 2y ago
Phone number is the new cookie. Just about every company now requires users to provide phone number. It’s insane.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

sub7 2y ago

This LLM hype is out of control, they literally bullshit on any novel input (admittedly there's not a lot of this) and are wrong 15-20% of the time for all inputs This isn't a "we'll just add more context", "we'll just add more instructions and params", "our multi-head transformers will auto-attention the tits off your query" etc - this is search based on probability maps. It is structurally unable to be intelligent, no matter how many models you chain together and how much compute you throw at it. But it can sure mimic that shit, which is why LPs are going to lose their shirts and GPs are going to struggle to raise follow on funds. Let's move on.

yawnxyz 2y ago

I'm still waiting for the ability to change my email address :/

thomassmith65 2y ago
I'm still waiting for the ability to change my email address... ...and also to log on without visiting an AlphaGoogle domain. It speaks poorly of Anthropic that their 1FA login requires a third party. Then again, Google isn't exactly a 3PP in relation to Anthropic, more of a 2½PP.

zaptheimpaler 2y ago

Tangentially, what are people using to have a unified interface to query multiple LLMs? Juggling multiple apps or websites for each provider gets annoying. I was using openrouter but the chat history is only stored in browser, so I'm looking for something else now. I tried open-webui[1] and that looks pretty good but I wonder if there are better alternatives. [1] https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui

iansinnott 2y ago
There are a ton of alternatives if you search around. I created my own because I wanted something keyboard centric, and use OpenRouter with it: https://github.com/iansinnott/prompta https://github.com/iansinnott/prompta. They all accomplish roughly the same thing though.
submeta 2y ago
Try MultiGPT which is a Chrome extension that consolidates several AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Bard, Claude, and more, into a single interfacee
lurking_swe 2y ago
this is the best app i’ve found so far, better than anything else. Unfortunately it’s not open source and is only free for personal use. It has web search and RAG that actually works properly out of the box. No fiddling with 100 settings. https://msty.app/ https://msty.app/
- punkspider 2y ago
  I agree, I'm also firmly convinced it's the best. Until a month ago it has some bugs I disagreed with some design choices, but since 1-2 weeks ago it's the absolute best I've ever used and have easily convinced others to use it.
iamjackg 2y ago
I'm a very, very happy user of TypingMind. It's not free, but it's worth the (one-time) license cost in my opinion. It has support for multiple providers, plugins, "agents" (pre-set templates), chat grouping, import/export, automatic syncing across devices, etc. https://github.com/TypingMind/typingmind https://github.com/TypingMind/typingmind https://www.typingmind.com/ https://www.typingmind.com/

Yeroc 2y ago

For those that use LLMs in a similar manner to a search engine the Anthropic team (unlike Meta AI and Google Gemini) have made it easy to use Claude from right within your browser. In Firefox add a bookmark with the following values: - Name: Claude AI - URL: https://claude.ai/new?q=%s https://claude.ai/new?q=%s - Keyword: ai (or whatever you'd like to use as a shortcut) Now from the URL bar you can type: ai <my question> For ChatGPT use https://chatgpt.com/?q=%s https://chatgpt.com/?q=%s as the URL and for Microsoft Copilot use https://www.bing.com/search?showconv=1&sendquery=1&q=%s https://www.bing.com/search?showconv=1&sendquery=1&q=%s.

reustle 2y ago
This doesn't seem to work for me. I'm getting "%s" as the initial prompt, even though the text is properly displaying in the URL. Almost seems like an issue on the Claude side.
- outside415 2y ago
  worked fine for me on google chrome by setting it up as a search engine/site search.
frankacter 2y ago
This is not unique to FireFox. This is also possible in Chrome (Settings -> Search Engine) and looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/qxap6iI https://imgur.com/a/qxap6iI Setup the way I have in the image you can simply type @claude and your search Worth noting that Gemini also offers a URL shortcut for searching Gemini via @gemini within the Chrome browser.
- Yeroc 2y ago
  Yes, I'm aware of @gemini on Chrome. If you look at how it's implemented they are purposely stashing the query into a HTTP header so it's not possible to use a simple bookmark to launch it.
  - 2y ago

grantcarthew 2y ago

I'm using AnythingLLM for this now. https://anythingllm.com/ https://anythingllm.com/ MIT License on GitHub This week it got the X.ai API added which is what I'm using. Grok is not as good as Claude or ChatGPT yet, but don't bet against Elon. https://x.com/ServeTheHome/status/1850917031421399543 https://x.com/ServeTheHome/status/1850917031421399543 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1830650370336473253 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1830650370336473253 It's the desktop solution I've been looking for. If you have a heap of prompts, you can create a Workspace for each. Super easy. Here's my prompts if anyone is interested: https://github.com/grantcarthew/notes/tree/main/Prompts https://github.com/grantcarthew/notes/tree/main/Prompts I only have two minor complaints with AnythingLLM: 1. No light mode (why does everyone want dark mode, it sucks for anyone older than 30) 2. It's electron Edit: replaced cluster link with source (I think)

ekabod 2y ago
The subject of the thread is "Claude for Desktop".
- downrightmike 2y ago
  [flagged]
- behnamoh 2y ago
  but it doesn't say "only Claude for desktop", which makes GP's comment relevant.
- grantcarthew 2y ago
  AnythingLLM supports Claude out of the box.
LeoPanthera 2y ago
Is there something like AnythingLLM that is a Mac native application?
- Terretta 2y ago

downrightmike 2y ago

No demo?

ngram 2y ago

Thanks guys for the linux release !!!

bumbledraven 2y ago

I wish I knew of a good way to voice chat with Claude, and unfortunately, the new mobile app isn’t it. The voice recognition is terrible. Does it just use iOS’s built-in text-to-speech? It needs to be as good as Whisper to be useful.

SlyShy 2y ago
I use superwhisper for this.
- bumbledraven 2y ago
  +1, that fixes the voice recognition part, but it doesn't automatically read Claude's response aloud.

steveoscaro 2y ago

Is there an actual good use case for these desktop apps vs the web?

hombre_fatal 2y ago
(I hope this thread doesn't go anywhere. I just feel like complaining.) There's been some inflection point where the desktop version is now often worse than the web app. And you can't blame web tech because the web app in the browser is usually quite good. WhatsApp on macOS has catastrophic bugs for years. I regularly can't focus the input field and have to relaunch it. Until recently, its image modal would regularly bug out and leave behind a global dimmed window that eats all input so you can't even close it. Poe's desktop app is less polished than poe.com. Off the top of my head, its desktop app scrollbar becomes so tiny that you can't even click and drag it. ChatGPT's desktop app is simply worse than its web app or was when I stopped using it months ago for that reason. Youtube Music is another pointless desktop app since it's just the web app inside a web view, though at least it embraces that. It's like the only thing going for these desktop apps is that you can alt-tab to them individually. It's time to come up with a trivial one-click first-class OS-level way to turn websites into apps and put all these sad desktop apps out of their misery. Oh well, it's come at a good time because I've mostly soured to the idea of having to install software at all. 90% can be run in a sandboxed browser away from my file system.
- steveoscaro 2y ago
  Yeah agreed on all of this. Most desktop apps that come after their web-based versions feel like an afterthought.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

WhereIsTheTruth 2y ago

Electron slop, a literal insult to the people who worked hard on what powers all of that bloated crap

rubymamis 2y ago

Yet another Electron app... In comparison, ChatGPT's awesome client is native.

Jemm 2y ago

Any site that hijacks the back button has lost my trust.

T3RMINATED 2y ago

[dead]

nextcaller 2y ago

I'll keep using mine https://github.com/Merkoba/Meltdown https://github.com/Merkoba/Meltdown

abenga 2y ago

Software engineering tools without Linux versions are baffling to me.

wilsonnb3 2y ago
Why? Linux users are a minority even among developers. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-operating-system https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-operating-...
- redpandadolphin 2y ago
  You sure about that? To my eyes those stats say Linux is more popular than MacOS.