From Site to App: Easy Desktop Apps For Every Site And Service

I am using Bluesky a lot more now; add me! I'm @starbuxman.joshlong.com. It's a pretty great experience except that there are no really good macOS desktop applications. And, come ot think of it, the native macOS desktop app for X (formerly called Twitter) just got an update a little while back, but it's hard to use and acts more like an iPhone application than a native app. So, I've wanted suitable desktop experiences for both. None found. Took the easy way out and used a feature common to virtually all browsers which lets me turn a page into a standalone desktop app. Here's how you can do the same for these sites or indeed any other site on the internet. I also do this for a Github organization I tend to work a lot on, for LinkedIn (a desktop application for LinkedIn is super cool!), for Claude (though it just got a desktop integration recently...), for my Youtube channel, for GMail, etc.

In Safari, which I use, you simple navigate to the page of interest and then go to File > Add to Dock.

In Chrome, click on the menu (the three dots) > Cast Save & Share > Install Page as App.

In Brave, it's the same as Chrome.

In Edge, it should be the same process, perhaps under different menus, but I'm not sure and don't have access to it.

As far as I can tell, Firefox doesn't have an equivalent feature...

In Safari and Chrome, the integration is really slick. You get a windowless/chromeless browser window and your page. It's like using Slack or Spotify - Electron apps; they look nothing like the native desktop, but they're beautiful and you just know that the experience will be well looked after compared to the relatively less in demand macOS native experience.

Here's the Bluesky app running on macOS. I also have the settings for the window opened. They're in the normal place for macOS settings (see the App Name in the menu, then choose Settings):

Here's how the Bluesky application looks when in my macOS Dock. Slick!