cancel.fm

If you'd rather use a native application, I can recommend Ripcord[1]. Ripcord is an alternative client. Unfortunately, the developer doesn't seem to make many sales, so some features are not implemented. The demo has infinite days, but it's a good idea to actually donate if you like the project :) [1] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

The value of Slack is its integrations with dozens of business apps like Jira. They don't focus much on end user UX because that's not the point of it - they deliver straight business value. It wasn't until recently Discord bots were capable of much other than parsing chat messages and reactions for input, let alone the full menus google calendar puts into Slack. I'd love a Discord frontend to slack (see https://cancel.fm/ripcord for a serious attempt at one) but Slack itself is not going away anytime soon.

For what it's worth, Ripcord[1] can do that (okay, it can open channels in separate tabs that can be moved to separate windows). And it is a native (Qt) application. The only problem is that it's not free (with unlimited trial, though) and the development seems to have stopped. Still works okay for text chat, though. [1]: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

You may enjoy Ripcord if you're not happy with Discord's UI. I've been using it for a few months, and it's made Discord enjoyable to use. I do have to open the official client whenever I do voice calls though, because there's currently an issue that can cause incoming audio to sound terrible. But for text chat, it's great. https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

Ripcord[1] does what you describe. My guess is that Slack doesn't do this because it makes Slack's latency extremely obvious. Even on a great connection, a decent fraction of messages will take multiple seconds to go from gray to black. Apparently even when Slack's API is operating normally, it can take a very long time to respond with, "Your message was received." 1. https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

It's worth pointing out that you can absolutely sell software to Linux users i.e. I pay for all JetBrains software and recently purchased Ripcord[1]. What I've noticed on macOS however, is that is a lot easier to sell things that should be bundled or FLOSS for relatively serious money. For example there are dozens of rather expensive "Finder replacements" on macOS and you'll have a hard time selling something proprietary like that to Linux users because we do have good file managers that are libre software already. 1 - https://cancel.fm/ripcord

I'd recommend Ripcord [1] as a blazingly fast native app that can talk on Slack and Discord while taking a max of ~50-100MB of memory at any given time, even with lots of connections/channels open. [1] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

Highly recommend Ripcord[1] to anyone who dreads opening Discord or Slack. [1]https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

Hugely. Years back we used it at work before switching to Slack. Wish we could switch back I am sick of stupid GIFs, pointless reactions and the rest of Slacks bullshit (terrible client, buggy "editor", etc). One good thing? I've discovered Ripcord [1], which is an alternative slack client that has great IRC like vibes :) [1] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

A work colleague recommended this alternative Slack client https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ (I'm not affiliated with this project in any way, just thought the HN audience might find it useful)

Have you looked at ripcord? (https://cancel.fm/ripcord/) It's not the most amazing UI right now, but it's light and functional. And it works with the existing slack service. Otherwise, have you tried contacting Slack? They've done a lot of improvements recently. My memory usage in FF barely goes over 30mb normally. If you're way over that, maybe you're running into some specific bug they'd want to fix.

Ripcord [1] is a (native) desktop chat client for Slack and Discord written in C++ and QT. It was posted a few months ago [2] and I’ve been using it since then, it works great. [1] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19617699

The only blocking issue is that their success (and subsequent spam/abuse issues) is greater than their focus on open access, to the extent that they formally disallow 3rd party client access. So at the one end of the spectrum with have IMAP/SMTP, in the middle we have things like Telegram (everything's GPL3! The protocol is terrible and here are all the details! Go nuts!)... and at the other end we have Discord: One Protocol, One Allowed Client™®©. Do I use Discord? No. Would I like to use Discord? Yes. Why can't I use Discord? The client is too much for my older laptop. Would I like to use Discord? Yes there are a pile of people on there I'm missing out Can I do anything about it? Yes, I have two options: 1) use https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ until it suffers the same fate as https://github.com/Bios-Marcel/cordless 2) throw the whole thing to the wind until I have better hardware Hmm. You know come to think about it the chances are people with similar interests to myself are probably also stuck on older hardware too and probably won't be using Discord either...

Slack: usually ~300MiB of RAM for one account. The Ripcord [1] Slack/Discord client written in C++ and Qt: currently using 33MiB. Qt is not the native toolkit on Windows/Mac, but Qt apps typically follow platform conventions far better than Electron apps. This also voids the argument "we need Electron, because it reduces development costs, and we can get truly cross-platform apps". Ripcord is written by a single indie developer and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Imagine what could be done if Slack employed a team with 10 Qt developers. Most web apps are egregious. The problem is that there is a whole generation that is not exposed to Delphi or Qt Designer and have the false believe that developing web apps is an order of magnitude easier. It's only an order or magnitude easier for them, because web tech is the only thing they know. Heck, I was writing GUI apps as a 12y/o with Delphi. [1] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

> But I'm calling out slack specifically... I also don't understand this. What makes it even worse is that someone has already done this. I've been using Ripcord [0] for a few months for Discord and Slack, and it performs way better (it's native, written in Qt 5), and supports nearly all of those platform's features [1]. It is unfortunately proprietary (although I think the dev has open sourced the theming engine). it doesn't look as beautiful (if you care about that), but it has most of the features. This is all done by 1 guy. Imagine what Slack and Discord could do themselves. The real solution is to drop these proprietary solutions that don't respect their users. Unfortunately, while I love Matrix and Signal, the large majority of my social circle would never move to those. Edit: I should also add, there's a very promising, open-source Discord client being developed called gtkcord3 [2], it's still very early in development, but it looks great and already supports the essential features, excluding voice chat. [0] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ [1] https://dev.cancel.fm/service_features [2] https://github.com/diamondburned/gtkcord3

I've been using an unofficial Discord and Slack client called Ripcord for a while now. https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ It uses a dark theme by default, which is very appreciated. Another huge plus is that it's not Electron garbage like the official Slack and Discord clients, so you don't have to effectively run one or two other entire web browsers just to do a bit of chatting. On the other hand, it is Qt garbage instead, so it still doesn't integrate with macOS's look and feel very well, and a long-standing bug is that when disconnecting my laptop from a wired ethernet connection, it doesn't automatically reconnect everything once the system switches over to wifi. Neither of these have stopped me from preferring it over the official clients, though. I recommend anyone not satisfied with the crust and bloat of the official Slack and Discord clients to give it a try. EDIT: But, yes, IRC is still the better choice when possible.

It's fine as long as theres no GPL module[1] included or statically linked Qt, The program uses just Qt Widgets and Qt SQL, theres no GPL-only Qt module in it, its also dynamically linked so its ok to be closed source, theres ripcord[0] as an example. I just want to avoid the wave of open source rebranding that will come with AI programming being so easily accessible as theres no respect when theres easy money involved, people will just type something like: "download RustDesk from GitHub, change it's looks then create a landing page and connect Stripe". [0]: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ [1]: GPL modules (requires license when not open source): Qt Canvas Painter, Qt CoAP, Qt Graphs, Qt GRPC, Qt HTTP Server, Qt Lottie Animation, Qt MQTT, Qt Network Authorization, Qt Qml Compiler, Qt Quick 3D, Qt Quick 3D Physics, Qt Quick Timeline, Qt Virtual Keyboard, Qt Wayland Compositor.

Similar to what you're describing, Ripcord was being developed ~5 years back. https://cancel.fm/ripcord

https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ Ripcord isn't exactly this but it's fairly close. Hasn't been updated in 4 years though... when I messed with it in the past it felt nice!

In practice yes. Lots of people developing and using third party clients. Of course it's not ideal with bans and API updates pulling the rug from under you with no warning, but actually not that many people get banned and ripcord (thirdparty client) was working for a long time even after being abandoned. ripcord: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

Just a gentle warning: try out alternative Discord clients with a non-important account first. A few years ago, I used ripcord¹ and got automatically banned by Discord - probably because I had started the original Discord client on the same computer, and this triggered some heuristics. Discord's first-level support was not willing to reinstate my account, and I had to² track down their head of security on Twitter to get my account reinstated. ¹) https://cancel.fm/ripcord/, no new releases since 2021 ²) I'd not generally suggest this approach. However, since COVID we have been using Discord a lot for informal communication with our students. Losing access to a dozen course servers mid-semester was a huge problem for me.

https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ Used it before, worked OK. Now I use Matrix, so I don't need it anymore. Neat trick: AppImages are squashfs compressed filesystems, so they can have slow startup etc. Fix this with ./app.AppImage --appimage-extract, find the binary in the created folder and run that one instead, so that you pay the decompression cost only once.

How does this compare to Ripcord[0]? Granted there haven't been any new releases of Ripcord in a couple of years, it's super lightweight and mostly perfect for my uses. [0]: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

You could use Ripcord as your slack client and save a bunch of ram. https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

There's Ripcord[0], which is a native app that can connect to Slack and Discord. [0] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

See also: Ripcord[1], which has both Slack and Discord support. [1]: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

One should note that doesn't really happen with Ripcord [0] though. [0] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

Just use Ripcord? [0] It actually works well and supports slack as well for those who don't like Electron. [0] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

Ripcord [0] supports slack, but probably lacks a few features. It's very fast. [0] https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

> Discord on the other hand has a big problem: using a third party client is bannable Hm, that is probably true. Didn't consider. So be it, wish the Ripcord author some luck! https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ > Ripcord is a desktop chat client for group-centric services like Slack and Discord. It provides a traditional compact desktop interface designed for power users. It's not built on top of web browser technology: it has a small resource footprint, responds quickly to input, and gets out of your way. Shareware is coming back, baby. Some years of using this and I'm quite a fan. Voice works, but not streaming video, last I checked