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Comment by shoggs | Hacker News Reader

This just seems to be exactly like the Whatsapp Web running in the browser. I don't understand what benefit comes from the native client.

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It's somewhat covered in the blog post:

> Because the app runs natively on your desktop, you'll have support for native desktop notifications, better keyboard shortcuts, and more.

With a desktop app you can easily and quickly command-tab to it if you want to use it. In contrast with a web app it's often awkward and time consuming to find the window/tab of the web app you're running amongst your other browser windows/tabs.

Try fluidapp, solves that problem very quickly.

Chrome has that sorted already on android, where you can run up a site with a home screen link, different icon and separate listing in the task list. Given the work they've recently put in on full screen mode on desktop it looks like they're maybe a couple of versions away from having something similar on desktop

Actually they're removing it on Android even :(

Really? Thought support for that feature was increasing with the web app manifests. Do you have a source?

They're actively adding features. It's a little more complex than it used to be with the manifest, and needing a service worker and encryption for a lot of features, but it's all still there

This used to be possible on desktop with create application shortcuts, but this feature seems to be gone now :(

Still there:

Hamburger Menu -> More Tools -> Add to Desktop

This capability was removed from the OS X version of Chrome some time back.

Interesting. I saw it work as recently as a few weeks ago. Looking at the support article (here: https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/3060053?hl...) it looks like OS X is the only platform where it no longer works. How strange.

Chrome? I thought all browsers had it, my Symbian device did iirc as well as Firefox for Android.

Firefox has it but it's not as tight yet. In particular it doesn't have a good splash screen experience or notifications on android

Not really. Extract the web.whatsapp tab into its own window and now you can command-tab to it.

---- Plus, on my OS at least, I can even search for the window by its title. That, combined with workspaces, is an organizer's godsend.

This isn't how cmd+tab works on a Mac.

Do you mean alt+tab in Windows?

I don't really treat cmd+tab and cmd+` very differently, sorry. On my OS, both work: I can alt-` to cycle through windows of same application and alt+tab to cycle through each individual window (grouped by application); maybe that's given me the habit of treating alt+` merely as a filter on alt+tab.

Oh! This is perhaps also why I get annoyed by cmd+tab on Macs!!

Next tme on mac try cmd+' to cycle between windows of the same app(although im not sure, because it really is muscle memory). Cmd tab cycles through wndow groups? Or does it cycle through each window?

Which wm on which os do you use? gnome kde or something else?

> Next time on mac try ...

I do know how it works on Mac, it's just my muscles don't.

> Which wm on which os do you use? gnome kde or something else?

Kwin (from the KDE suite) on Arch Linux.

I see three "nice to have" benefits: full keyboard, copy and paste text/links when you're browsing the web and sending images taken with a traditional camera. None of these are essential for sure and I for one prefer using my phone but sometimes it can be handy.

I think he means compared to the web one

None in my [Mac]book. If you're running on OSX, open WhatsApp web on Safari, allow notification & pin the tab. Same outcome but resource efficient (compared to an Electron app).

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