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I have four messaging clients running on my desktop: Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp & Slack. It's not dead.

How many of those have full functionality? I know that WhatsApp is just a client for the mobile app, without voice and video.

It has voice and video now (marked 'beta' and only for 1-to-1 calls).

But I agree, all of these clients suck in their own way. :(

Signal and Telegram include audio/video functionality on the desktop.

Also, not sure what they do to it (no Electron?), but Telegram feels super fast, really pleasant experience.

The fact that Telegram is a Qt app that looks nice and is lightweight makes it really good; it's just a shame it's centralised.

Almost any other messaging platform is dominated by Electron clients (bar the few very WIP Matrix clients such as Neochat).

Slack is an Electron app. It's basically their website on top of a bundled browser.

I don't know about the others. Are any of them native?