Zulip Desktop Client

Destined as a valid alternative to collaboration services like Slack or HipChat, Zulip is an incredibly powerful and highly extensible open-source chat/collaboration app that has been recently acquired by Dropbox.

Don't be fooled into thinking that just because it's open source, this means that it's somehow lacking features when compared to other apps of this sort. The main purpose was to create a stable and capable environment for sharing private and public messages efficiently.

Other features that are worthy of your attention are as follows: support for groups and group conversations and topics, full conversation history, G-mail-style search function, support for drag and drop, markup, hotkeys, emojis, syntax highlighting and for message editing. The platform also has a powerful API and  offers dozens of integrations with various external services such as GitHub, Jenkins, Nagios, Basecamp, BitBucket, Codebase, Git, Google Calendar, JIRA, WordPress, Trello, and Slack, just to name a few.

To run Zulip on your computer, you must install and run Zulip Server which, unfortunately, at the current moment, it only works on Ubuntu 14.04. Up until recently, you had to use any typical web browser to access Zulip's UI, but now there's a far better solution that comes in the form of an official desktop app called Zulip Desktop Client. The app is available for both Windows and macOS, as well as for the two of the most popular mobile platforms out there, Android and iOS.

In just a few words, this Electron-based app offers you access to Zulip's full functionality with the added benefit of generous system native-wide notifications. There's only one extra step you need to undertake in order to benefit from everything this solution has to offer, namely a simple installation process, a small price to pay for the convenience of using Zulip directly from your computer's desktop and without requiring the assistance of a web browser.