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Turn your favorite websites into a desktop app in one click
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Felix Josemon

Web2Desk - Turn your favorite websites into a desktop app in one click

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Web2Desk is a tool to convert your favorite websites to Desktop app in just one click. Regardless of Platform( Mac, Linux, Windows) we got it covered and it's free!

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Anees.v
Maker
Hi ProductHunt👋, Anees from Appmaker.xyz, Web2Desk is a tool to convert your favorite websites to Desktop app in just one click. Regardless of Platform( OSX, Linux, Windows) we got it covered! Imagine having dozens of tabs opened on browser and the hassle it takes to navigate between those apps. It feels more convenient for plenty of users to have a Desktop apps for their favourite website(Product Hunt, Quora..) or urls(web.whatsapp.com,..). Web2Desk helps you do just that. That too in one click and for FREE. Web2Desk is currently supported on Linux, Mac and Windows! We at Appmaker.xyz 👷‍build this with 👨‍💻code and ☕️coffee in an internal 🛠 hackathon. This was build by inspiration from Nativefier, an opensource/command line tool to convert website to desktop apps. We would love to get some 🙏 feedback and are 😻 excited to answer 💬 questions!
Aslam Abbas
@aneesv Only a small feedback. An estimated waiting time would have been nice!
Saleeh
Maker
@aslamabbas Thanks for checking out. We'll definitely add estimated waiting time.
Allen lee
@aneesv For people wanna go deeper about Nativefier: https://github.com/jiahaog/nativ...
Allen lee
@aneesv Well done btw!
Joshua Pinter
@aneesv Was it built with "inspiration from Nativefier" or does it actually use Nativefier under-the-hood?
Hidde Schultze

For each desktop app you're downloading the same bulk of identical base files.

You could also use Chrome's built-in desktop 'app' functionality (still eating memory 🙄) and make use of the chrome base that's already on your OS.

Pros:

Standalone-ness of each website app

Cons:

Storage usage per app

Saleeh
Maker
Thanks @hiddehs for your feedback, We'll definitively have a looking into reducing the size of apps.
Johnathan Lyman
The size is based on the fact that they're likely using Chromium to build them. They're single-function browsers, basically. Now if these were WebKit-based (at least on MacOS), they'd be a handful of MB instead.
Saleeh
@theejl Exactly, We will do some more research on this and come up with less app size.
Hayden Evans
I really wish people would stop claiming that tools like these (or Electron) “turn web apps into desktop/native apps”. Nothing is further from the truth. It’s about the equivalent of creating a dock shortcut for a website that launches in its own web view. That’s it.
Imre Lovasz
@hayden_evans I was about to post something like this but you beat me to it. It's amazing that people still fall for this... and wasting resources like memory and hard disk space instead of trying to organize their stuff in the browser.
Daan Debie
@hayden_evans I couldn't agree more! I find it very strange that everybody on Product Hunt seems to be gushing over this. Why on earth would you want to exchange 1 browser with a bunch of tabs for multiple resource-hungry browser instances?!
Michael Ball-Marian
@hayden_evans Indeed. I tried this with a sample Thesaurus site. Sure, it works, and has the nice feature of maintaining separate cookies / cache. But it also seems to install a background service for each site that you add...and it sits there hogging up memory even when your "desktop app" is not actively running. Eww.
G G
"Welcome collect information you provide us on our Sites such as your name, email address, postal address, phone number, fax number, company name, credit card payment information and demographics. We may also obtain information from other sources and combine that with information we collect on our Sites." How nice of them to provide this and not nice to collect our info...
Chris Savoie
Came here to point this out. ⚠️⚠️⚠️ Just to re-emphasize for others, they're recording your "name, email address, postal address, phone number, fax number, company name, credit card payment information and demographics" ⚠️⚠️⚠️
Anees.v
Maker
@androidlove @chrissavoie Hi, Sorry for the miscommunication in our privacy policy, "We collect information you provide us on our Sites..." is referring to appmaker.xyz main website. We are storing that details for our paid customers to process payments. We are not collecting any information from apps created. Thanks
Chris Savoie
Thanks for the clarification, @aneesv. I'd be comfortable with the tool if you updated the policy to match.
Scott Bowler
I'm very interested in using this for our whitelabel customers for www.chooseholly.com However, I have a few questions / concerns: - Are you logging anything and sending it back to your servers? - Will you be maintaining this for future os updates? - How does this work.. is it a simple Chrome window in an app? - Any plans to add an installer? (e.g. on Windows) so that the application can be installed into Program Files etc I'd be willing to pay for a service which can include the last option. Edit: I see you guys mention you're using https://github.com/jiahaog/nativ... - as this is an Electron app I guess you could use this package in conjunction? https://github.com/electron/wind...
Saleeh
Maker
@scotty_bowler Thanks for comment. Really appreciate it. We are sure Web2Desk would help with making great Desktop apps. Presently we are not tracking. We might be in future updates to serve users better. Ofcourse! We are running woocommerce mobile apps ( one click solution to create Native Woocommerce apps)[https://appmaker.xyz/woocommerce/] powering 500+ clients across world. We are here to stay and build many products up from our team. This is built on top of Electron. This technology makes it possible for us to make Desktop apps. Yes we would definitely be working towards more changes based upon user feedbacks. If you have further queries , drop me a mail here saleeh@appmaker.xyz.
Shibin Dotco
This is really cool ! Kudus to the Makers - Saleeh and Anees
Saleeh
Maker
@shibinco Thank you
Ozgur Ozer
I've downloaded Product Hunt's MacOS version and the .app size is 359.2 MB. I think you're doing something wrong. Because I've made the exact thing now and it's only 170.8 MB.
Saleeh
Maker
@ozgrozer Thanks for the feedback. We'll definitely check on that🚑. Would be great if you could let us know how did you got MacOS app 170.8MB. So that we can easily understand what's going on ✌
Ozgur Ozer
@saleeh Here's the boilerplate that I use. In the `electron.js` I call producthunt.com into the `win.loadURL()` instead of an HTML file. When I build it, I get 49 MB .dmg and 121.8 MB .app file. In my previous answer I've used the newer Electron NPM package. But with an old version it even decreased the size from 170.8 MB to 121.8 MB.
Aslam Abbas

It's very straight forward. Takes the load of my browser. Very helpful with frequently used webapps. Now I don't have to keep the tab in my chrome open every time.

Pros:

It just works!

Cons:

None

Daniel Grossberg
Curious how this compares to Fluid apps? It could be completely different, from the description is sounds similar, but I could be way off.
Saleeh
Maker
@deec_nj Thanks for checking us out! The biggest difference is Fluid(launched 10 years before) supports only mac platform. At Web2Desk we got major OS( Linux, Windows, Mac ) covered. And in Fluid, some of useful features such as full screen needs premium version. Our tool is free of cost.
Daniel Grossberg
@saleeh thanks, I appreciate the response!
Saleeh
Maker
Felix Josemon
Hunter

Using it for a week and neat work by makers (Appmaker.xyz).

Pros:

It works

I get standalone Desktop apps in few minutes

And it's Free!

Cons:

None

Shyjal
Very handy tool to turn websites into desktop apps. Thanks for making this Appmaker.xyz team ❤️
Saleeh
Maker
@shyjal Thanks for checking out ✌️✌️
Esh
This is super cool product. What are the technical stack used to impl..?
Saleeh
Maker
@beshu09 Apps are build on top of electron
Ajith kv
Very convenient to those who gets tangled on their browser tabs.
Sooraj Chandran
Good one. Gonna try this straight away :100:
Saleeh
Maker
@iamsooraj Glad you liked it ✌️🤞
Saneem
This is super cool. Exactly what I wanted to make a desktop app for my SaaS product's web dashboard.
Felix Josemon
Hunter
@xaneem Agreed. This is one of best use-cases I like about Web2Desk. Having option to have custom URLs (web.whatsapp.com or personal Youtube channel/dashboard) into Desktop apps(for Free) that boosts one's productivity. Kudos to @saleeh and @aneesv 👏
Sam Hamou
Very handy tool to turn websites into desktop apps. Thanks for making this App
Saleeh
Maker
@sam_hamou Thanks for you words ✌️🤞, Hope you create more apps.
Matheus Guerra Costa
What a great tool! Thanks guys for making it! Awesome idea, great execution, you guys rock!!! :)
Saleeh
Maker
@matheusguerra ✌️🤞 Thanks for kind words
Martin Manzo
Hi! It looks great. I tried it with my web app product. I have two questions. 1 - How can we do this to web apps that are only available through an intranet? 2 - (I assume that the answer to this one is yes) Everytime a new version of the webapp is released we need to re-package it and distribute it to our users right? Anyway you got my vote! Great product
Saleeh
Maker
@tincho89 1). It will work on LAN, we would love to know more about your use-case so we can assist you. Why don't we start an email thread (saleeh@appmaker.xyz)? 🤩 2). No, you don't have to do that, It's all live from web 🙅‍♀️
Martin Manzo
@saleeh hi! Check your inbox 📨 😁
Yasi

Now i can get rid of searching my instagram from the pool of chrome tabs

Pros:

apps for my favorite websites like instagram and twitter in minutes

Cons:

None yet

Salman Khan
kudos Team and Thank you for this 3 in one Pack
Anees.v
Maker
@salman57sk1 Thank you :)