Allo for Desktop

If you're even slightly interested in the latest tech news, you might have heard about Allo, Google's latest Android, and iOS-ready communication application.

The first and quite understandable reaction might be to ask yourself why do you need yet another communication app on your devices when Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are already such big parts of everyone's lives.

Allo aims to stand out from the crowd by offering its users tons of expression possibilities, a very secure, encryption-powered chat environment and instant, in-app access to Google's smart and handy Assistant.

Just like WhatsApp, it uses your phone's number, therefore allowing you to send instant messages to anyone from your device's phonebook, not just Allo users. Also similar to WhatsApp, Allo offers a web client (Allo for Web) that allows users to use their computers to send messages without actually using their phones.

However, there's a small catch, you can't access the web app on just any modern browser, but instead, you must use Google's popular browser, Chrome. If this does not work for you or if you would actually prefer using the web app outside the web browser altogether, then you will find Allo for Desktop to be quite useful.

To keep things as simple as possible, Allo for Desktop is a third-party, unofficial, open-source application built with Electron and Nativifier that allows you to access the Allo web client directly from the comfort of your computer's desktop.

To use it, you must make sure that Allo is installed and properly configured on your Android device (Allo for Web is not yet supported by iOS devices, but this situation is sure to change in the near future). Next, download the wrapper's package, unzip it and use your phone to scan the instantly generated QR code (you know the drill from WhatsApp Web) and that should be about it.

Of course, it goes without saying that you both your computer and your phone must be Internet enabled. Another feature that needs pointing out is the fact that the uses system notifications to make sure don't miss any new message.

To conclude, Allo for Desktop is a fairly simplistic and non-impressive wrapper for the Allo web client that will undoubtedly prove itself useful for a handful of users who prefer using the web client in a more classical format (as a standalone app) and not from their Google Chrome browsers.