Slack updates its desktop app for Windows and macOS, which is still built on Electron, claims it now launches 33% faster and uses 50% less RAM than before
Your browser does not support … Killian Bell / Cult of Mac : Slack finally fixes its horribly slow Mac app in huge overhaul Mahit Huilgol / iPhone Hacks : Slack Updates Desktop App for macOS and Windows to Make It 33% Faster, Consume 50% Less Memory Eric Abent / SlashGear : The new Slack desktop app is making big claims to win over critics João Carrasqueira / Neowin : Slack announces a faster and more efficient desktop app Tweets: @slackhq : We've got a snazzy new Slack for you. It's a faster, more efficient experience for everyone who uses Slack for desktop. Read about it here: http://bit.ly/2LCQRgX pic.twitter.com/bAcvuHjLsf Sean Larkin / @thelarkinn : Wow @SlackHQ gained a 33% performance improvement. According to changelogs, thanks to switching over to @webpack?! 😳😳😳😳 😍😍😍😍 😍😍🔥🔥 🔥🔥🔥🔥 Anyone from Slack Eng want to verify?! Super awesome if true!!!!!! https://www.theverge.com/... Daniel Jalkut / @danielpunkass : The memory usage improvement in this update is PHENOMENAL. Real praise due here. https://twitter.com/... Tomomi Imura / @girlie_mac : Slack desktop v4.0 is faster & uses less memory. The team modernizes the codebase by doing: 👋 Say goodbye to the legacy code ⚛️ React all the things 🐨 Lazy load data to speed up UI rendering 🗃️ Handle multi-workspace data with Redux Read more at: https://slack.engineering/... Felix Rieseberg / @felixrieseberg : @shiftkey @kenneth_chau @TheLarkInn @wSokra I can! To;dr: React, Redux, a single renderer for all workspaces, and an optimized boot pipeline paired with service workers. We just published a little blog post with some juicy details: https://slack.engineering/... Finn Ellis / @relsqui : to the person who asked me last year “slack has N hundred engineers? what are they all DOING?” a) that was rude and b) this is what I wasn't telling you. they were rearchitecting the client out from under itself. it took a ton of work from many, many skilled people. https://twitter.com/... Mark Erikson / @acemarke : Great writeup by the @SlackHQ engineering team on how they rebuilt the client to handle multi-workspaces, partial data, and way less memory - using React, Redux, and thunks! https://slack.engineering/... Johnny Rodgers / @johnnyrodgersis : Stoked to share how we have evolved Slack's desktop app - rebuilt from the ground up to be faster, more efficient, and easier to work on: https://medium.com/... Ben Sandofsky / @sandofsky : Rather than write two separate native apps, Slack has now written a cross-platform app four different times. https://medium.com/... Hayato Huseman / @hayatohuseman : “The Slack app will even use 50 percent less RAM than before” Nice, maybe now people can run Slack and Chrome at the same time https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This update closes a promise made more than half a year earlier, when Slack said it was building analytics tooling and a faster desktop client targeted for early 2019. The delivery matters because the client remains built on Electron, the web-tech wrapper whose memory appetite has been Slack's most persistent criticism since it first shipped a Windows app in 2015.
The performance claims also set up the argument CEO Stewart Butterfield would later make in his Q&A on competing with Microsoft, defending the decision to stay on Electron rather than rebuild natively while demand surges.
First-order effects
- Windows and macOS users of the existing Slack desktop app get the claimed 33% faster launch and 50% lower RAM usage as a free in-place update, no migration or new install required.
- Slack gains a concrete rebuttal to the loudest criticism of its Electron-based clients, which reviewers like Cult of Mac had called out as horribly slow.
Second-order effects
- By improving performance without leaving Electron, Slack lowers the pressure to fund a costly native rewrite, freeing engineering capacity for the collaboration-analytics and redesign work already in its roadmap.
- Rivals building cross-platform chat clients — Microsoft foremost among Slack's named competitors — face a higher bar, since 'it's just Electron' stops being an automatic knock against a competitor's desktop experience.
Third-order effects
- If a heavily used Electron app can cut RAM use by half through tuning, the industry argument shifts from abandoning web technology to optimizing it, making framework-level efficiency a competitive dimension for every company shipping Electron software.
The trend: Cross-platform frameworks like Electron are being optimized in place rather than replaced, letting desktop apps narrow the gap with native software while keeping one codebase.