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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

The 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.

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Want to double-down on this. I read "native" and immediately assumed the main selling point was perf - which enticed me to open the link.

Well the other selling point would be a native UI experience. I like apps that use the native UI style of the host operating system.

Paying for native macOS apps is like buying vinyl records. It’s an aesthetic choice, nothing more.

It is a user experience choice. Most decent native macOS apps adhere to system conventions. Text editing works as one would expect in a system text field. Keyboard shortcuts behave as expected. Custom keyboard shortcut definitions from the Keyboard section in Preferences actually work. And on and on.

Slack in particular is extremely, extremely slow, even by Electron standards. I can't expand it to the full-height of a 4K (running at 1080p) portrait monitor without typing becoming unbearably laggy, so I either have to keep it at 1/3 monitor height, or have to use another application for writing the text.

it also has multiple accessibility issues for low vision users. I'd happily switch to a native client because using native widgets instead of HTML would likely address most, if not all, of my accessibility needs.

Sadly, this take misses so much about Mac native software, things that many people just do not know are possible.

- accessibility built in which benefits everyone

- native application scripting

- consistent keyboard shortcuts, including focus ring movement

- ability to App Nap / fast system shutdown

- consistent retina/DPI behavior across display drags

I've been developing Mac native software for 20 years now and I'm still wowed by some of the things that come with the toolkit for free.

> crashes

I've literally never had or heard of Slack crashing, across Windows, Ubuntu and macOS, regardless of memory available (8-32GB) and use. Do people really have Slack regularly crash on them or is that just something that gets attached to Electron (for some reason).

A slack crash would be the window going white and reloading.

I get them occasionally.

An electron crash would kill the window. I get these sometimes too when I try to run natively in wayland, which I’m aware is unsupported so I’m not blaming anyone for that.

Happens to folks on my team on occasion. Slack crashing. And the whole Electron app crashing too. Linux users.

Slack crashes on my Ubuntu setup on the regular.

Grey screens. Unresponsive during video calls. Eats all of my memory at least once a day. The app is a mess.

Not a single crash on Mac in 5 months I’ve been using it. Perhaps it’s the Linux version? Or your system?

Slack crashes quite often for me-try to do too much? That’s a crash.

Accidentally toggled the “huddle” button a couple of times - it’ll crash so badly, I legitimately have to restart the computer to fix it.

You’ve never seen Slack reload while using it? Often, that’s a “crash” in an Electron app.

I have not seen that. It's crash-free for me, running 24x7.

But all that tells you is that it's crash-free on at least a small % of machines, so not a great way to analyze robustness. Maybe create an HN poll?

> I have not seen that.

No offense, but you must have blinders on then. On a fresh install on a new machine it’ll do it in the first day.

> It's crash-free for me, running 24x7.

There was a person who legit got struck by lightning multiple times in their life and lived, so anything is possible. Your claim is comparatively improbable though, but still has the possibility of being true.

I get them all the time on my M1 Mac (Like at least once a week.) Sometimes even the white window that requires a force quit and doesn't auto-reload.

I have experienced few crash like scenario with network issues on my Mac. If my wifi is poor for a minute, slack will permanently stop working unless I force reload using menu or restart it. Messaging apps are basically meant to not have permanent connection, but I have seen very few that could work with this assumption.

Slack regularly crashes with an empty window on my Mac. Not like a process crash, but the whole window going empty, needing to quit the process and reopen.

Slack crashes (unresponsive white window -> hard reload) for me at least once a day on the latest MacOS and Intel MBP, and it seems a common occurrence for many of the coworkers I talk to.

I’ve never seen one on Mac OS Slack

An 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.

If 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.

That'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.

How is installing rando native apps any more secure?

>Slack is one of the most secure Electron apps currently in existence at the moment, they have been...

And from your other comment

>we in the Slack Desktop team

Seems misleading to declare something like this without a disclaimer that you work for the company in question, especially when phrasing it as if you are definitively not a part of said company.

Most of the point of skipping electron is memory usage, which is a major issue with having a full separate installation of Chrome just to handle a webpage, which is what Slack is.

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