HN Explorer

Ask HN: Recommendations for an alternative native chat client? (Slack, Discord)

9 points by apatheticonion ↗ HN
Looking for a native desktop chat client that consolidates other chat applications into a single, efficient, native desktop client.

It's okay if it's _only_ an alternative client for Slack (as that's the one I use the most), but support for other services would be awesome too.

Happy to pay for this, Linux support would be ideal.

Any ideas?

10 comments

[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 33.4 ms ] thread
palata
I just stick with IRC. Comes with tons of clients, even convoluted ElectronJS ones for those who are nostalgic of Slack.
apatheticonion
While I'm with you, I can't really do that given the company I work for uses Slack.

If there was a self-hosted service that could translate Slack to IRC, I'd switch over in an instant lol

stop50
Matrix has an functionality that allows you to use bridges. A client logs in as you and relays it from and to matrix. The people there think their talking to you on slack/irc/icq/..., but they are talking to an bridge that relays the messages to you.
wkat4242
That was native functionality not too long ago :'( Very sad they dropped it.

But yes there are in fact a few self hosted slack to IRC bridges on GitHub. I looked into it a while ago but ended up using matrix instead. I don't remember the choices but there were even multiple.

Ps obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1782/

LinuxBender
Slack have/had an IRC gateway but they blocked it because you see the original message and not edited messages. Also you will see messages that people delete.
btdmaster
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.

coldtrait
So, not an alternative but an app that lets you integrate Slack?
wkat4242
As some others have said, matrix is great at this.

I use this ansible playbook to set it all up: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy it supports slack and discord too. There's not a lot it doesn't support actually, it's very good. The one thing I miss a bit is running multiple bridges of the same type on the same account (I have two WhatsApp and telegram numbers for example)

You can also use beeper which is hosted if you don't want to self host. Costs $10 a month. They employ one of the major bridge Devs so they know what they're doing. It's not to be confused with the recent beeper mini that's just for iMessage.

There's also element one from the Devs of matrix but they don't support all services you're looking for.

And yes native clients are available for matrix.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)