caprine

Unfortunately I'm on Linux, and they don't seem to provide a Linux client. I did try out https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine/, which worked really well, but I'm one of those weirdos who prefers websites to desktop apps.

I currently use Caprine [1], which is an open-source Messenger client for Mac. It's great for stuff like privacy (I can block the "seen" indicator, "typing" indicator, and the "delivered" indicator, but its performace is pretty bad, especially for large group conversations. I'm trying out the new Messenger app now, and it seems to have better performance, but I still notice quite a bit of delay when interacting with the UI. Also, the right-hand sidebar isn't present and there's no way to enable it. Not sure which one I'll use, going to keep testing it out. [1] https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine

Caprine promises to be a privacy focused client for Messenger: https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine/

Facebook later disabled the possibility interacting with its chat via external non-facebook-branded clients (afaik) I don't think that's true, actually. The existence of Caprine[0] seems to suggest otherwise! 0: https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine

The first thing I do when installing a fresh Windows 10 build is download Chocolatey [0] and use that to install a list [1] of programs that I find extremely useful or can't live without. After that I set up Cmder [2] as my default PowerShell and Bash terminal, install Nylas [3] as my default mail program, install Caprine [4] which I use constantly throughout the day to communicate with friends and family, and then I turn on the Windows Subsystem for Linux [5] for my native Bash terminal. Somewhat related to this topic, I recently found this list of tips and tricks [6] for Windows 10 that I found pretty useful, even as a lifelong (by choice!) Windows user. [0]: https://chocolatey.org [1]: My Chocolatey install command is `cinst pscx firefox googlechrome 7zip vlc curl paint.net gimp cmder vim fiddler inkscape greenshot autohotkey nimbletex

Sure, but by making it an app it more tightly integrates with the desktop. For instance, I personally find it rather useless that when you resize gmail to a small screen, around 25% of my screen's real-estate is taken by the hangouts menu, which I almost never use. A much better use of screen space would be to hide the hangouts menu, when the screen diminishes. Also, by going the app route we can set some nice app specific shortcuts to gmail page functionalities that users might not know about and leverage Apple's awesome search bar under the help menu. The idea of this app was to make a gmail equivalent to what Caprine (https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine) is for fb messenger. I've been using the gmail app since last week (when I made it) and so far, I like it more than I thought I would.