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Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

PSA: Zoom has a pretty decent web only experience you can access using a roundabout procedure:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/214629443-Zoom-web...

If the Zoom native app's security is a concern for you, the arguably increased security of your browser's environment should help.

If you are a Zoom meeting host, you can save your participants the trouble of the procedure described above by always showing the Join From Browser link:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115005666383-Show-...

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Why would you want to support a company who repeatedly takes shortcuts that endanger their users? There are lots of other options. https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto...

Zoom has become annoyingly a social phenomenon which makes so little sense given the many alternatives out there.

> Why would you want to support a company who repeatedly takes shortcuts that endanger their users?

My intention is only to inform people of an option that is more secure, but one that for whatever reason is obscured by Zoom.

A lot of people don't have a choice but to use Zoom because it is what their meeting host uses.

> Zoom has a pretty decent web only experience you can access using a roundabout procedure

I've written a browser extension to transparently redirect all meeting invites to use their web client:

https://github.com/arkadiyt/zoom-redirector

I recommend doing the same thing with other Electron apps if possible. For example, Discord.

Except that some features are only available in the desktop app like screen sharing.

Another advantage is being able to switch directly to an app instead of remembering which browser instance has which tab.

With Discord specifically I have a weird issue on Linux where my mic works fine in the browser but doesn't work at all in the desktop version.

First, yeah, that’s why I said “if possible”. Most people use Discord just for text and voice and that works okay inside the browser.

Second, some browsers allow you to create a window for a website that acts as an app on its own. I don’t remember which ones, I think Chrome was one.

Screen sharing is available on discord web. I believe the only major feature that is unavailable on the web is push to talk.

For me the audio stream crashes in the browser, when I allow microphone access, but mute it on the OS side (after about 5 min). I think whatever dies is connected to measuring latency or something. I assume Zoom actually listens to your mic, even when we it's muted in the app.

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