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Trello Desktop for Mac and Windows: Get More Done Without Distractions

100 points| okhudeira | 8 years ago |blog.trello.com

57 comments

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drinchev|8 years ago

It actually is an electron app

    λ /Applications/Trello.app/Contents ◆ tree -L 2
    .
    ├── Frameworks
    │   ├── Electron\ Framework.framework
    │   ├── Trello\ Helper\ EH.app
    │   ├── Trello\ Helper\ NP.app
    │   └── Trello\ Helper.app
    ├── Info.plist
Tried it. It's a bit laggy and seems not much different than the website itself.

CD1212|8 years ago

Oh dear. That's a shame.

I came here to post a comment asking if it was an Electron app. Hopefully Electron's overhead can become lighter in the future making useful applications like this less bloated.

kitotik|8 years ago

Yeah, extremely disappointed in this.

I’ve been a heavy Trello advocate since it launched, but the lack of real native clients puts a pretty low ceiling on it’s usefulness at scale.

Atlassian has plenty of native developers on their team, not sure why they would take this route...

drewjoh|8 years ago

Downloaded and tried it... main app and the helpers currently using 671MB of RAM. :(

stevekinney|8 years ago

I haven't had a chance to download it yet, but my suspicion says it's probably an Electron application. What do you all feel about this practice of taking long-lived web applications and getting them out of a tab and into a desktop shell with a place on the dock/task bar and the ability to Atl/Control-Tab?

joshuacc|8 years ago

> What do you all feel about this practice of taking long-lived web applications and getting them out of a tab and into a desktop shell with a place on the dock/task bar and the ability to Atl/Control-Tab?

I intentionally do this with Chrome's Tools > More Tools > Add to Desktop > Open as New Window option. Wrapping Spotify Web, Outlook 365 and HipChat into their own "application"s lets me treat them as if they are native apps, but for some reason it uses a lot less resources than the actual native apps.

Willson50|8 years ago

Definitely some sort of electron app. Certain things are broken like trying to use your webcam to take a profile photo because it doesn't know how to ask for browser permissions.

I really hope this trend stops soon.

seanalltogether|8 years ago

Notifications are always the killer feature for me on desktop and it's one of the main reasons i don't use gmail/hangouts/google calendar in the browser. Sure you can keep them open all day in a browser window, but i don't want permanent browser windows open all day.

alkonaut|8 years ago

Useless. I'd pay for many web apps to bring a snappy native experience, but if an app is slacklike I won't use it even if free.

Maybe I'm missing the key point of a desktop Trello - what does it do that can't be done on a webpage?

dpflan|8 years ago

I haven't downloaded either. You mentioned "out of a tab" and 'Atl/Control-Tab' context switching. I usually pin such an application in the browser; this makes it easy to go visit the site (on OSX and Chrome, use CMD+<tab #>, pinning makes it one of the first tabs so CMD+1 as an example) and easy to use the browser as intended and switch back to the web-app. You could look at the memory footprint of the tab vs. the application and the performance implications of using a desktop app vs. the web-app. That could be useful info. :)

bengale|8 years ago

I'm not sure anyone thinks its ideal but there is certainly software built with it that just wouldn't otherwise be, no matter how many people talk about Qt on here.

rorykoehler|8 years ago

Pointless. Works great in the browser. Won't install this

jbob2000|8 years ago

It's an inevitable step for any mature software application. At some point, the business side will want a feature that web browsers won't allow or have poor support for. Initially, developers push back and this feature gets delayed, but sure enough, executives get eager and eventually make the call to build a desktop app.

I have seen this twice now; our file transfer service was being hindered by poor file API support by the browsers, so we built a desktop app to wrap the web app and provide better file access. And for a shopping app to get around iframe restrictions.

JamesMcMinn|8 years ago

No Linux version is disappointing, especially considering it's an Electron app. Other than global shortcuts, it doesn't seem to offer much over using the web version as a Chrome app with its own launcher and window.

neoromantique|8 years ago

It actually is just another Electron app.

dangoor|8 years ago

To all of those saying "why not just use the webapp directly?", a global hotkey to add new items is probably the main thing that caused me to not take Trello seriously as a personal task manager. Being able to instantly collect a new task to get it out of my head and worry about it later is a key feature for me.

This app will do that, so I'll seriously think about Trello again.

baldfat|8 years ago

I made one with Auto Hotkey a while back. Works pretty well for the time. I think if I used headless Chrome I could get it to be even a little better.

simonswords82|8 years ago

I live in a web browser day to day. I'm constantly in and out of Teamwork, Harvest, Google Drive, Slack, Google Analytics etc etc.

Trello is also a core part of our workflow (we're custom software developers) and so Cmd/Ctrl + T to open a new tab and type in "tre"...<Enter> to load Trello is basically muscle memory at this point.

All of that is to say, what's the need for a "native" app? I say "native" because it's Electron, which isn't really native per se. But still, why??

reustle|8 years ago

I also live in the browser and prefer everything to be in it, but I do know plenty of people who prefer their desktop apps, especially some windows users.

harperlee|8 years ago

One use case would be to be able to have everything available offline. I don't know if this is supported with this app though, but the main reason Trello is not my main goto software for personal management is that one.

zokier|8 years ago

I love the irony of having the marketing lines "Experience Trello without distractions" and "Native notifications" follow directly each other in the trailer.

jedberg|8 years ago

Well to be fair, the Trello notifications don't distract you from using Trello...

freqn|8 years ago

Ugh.. Sorry, but an additional app is more of a distraction than a new tab for me.

purplezooey|8 years ago

Is it just me or is Trello the most overrated software ever.. stack some lists, group them, color them, collaboration... woo.. could have done that with a google doc.