[HN Gopher] Claude for Desktop
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Claude for Desktop
Author : meetpateltech
Score : 145 points
Date : 2024-10-31 15:04 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (claude.ai)
(TXT) w3m dump (claude.ai)
| kennethwolters wrote:
| can someone tell me what the difference is to the webclient?
| Seems like a webview to me. No local caching/store.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Kids these days insist that they need the "app" of something,
| even when it's literally the exact same thing as the webpage.
|
| Between this phenomenon and the refusal of many to close tabs
| in their browsers, I can't help but wonder if a huge percentage
| of the populace have never heard of or used Bookmarks on their
| web browsers before.
| gigatree wrote:
| I think it's less about not knowing what a bookmark is and
| more about just having a more direct way to access it, where
| it's more high-level than just in a tab. There's just
| something mentally different about opening a program from
| your dock as opposed to from a tab, even if they're both
| basically a website.
| xd1936 wrote:
| This line of reasoning was why I was hopeful that PWAs on
| the desktop would become first-class citizens, as far back
| as Mozilla Prism[1] in the late 2000s. They never really
| did seem to take off.
|
| 1. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| It used to be fairly common to have web-page shortcuts back
| in the mid-00's. Lots of apps would add spam shortcuts to
| your desktop that would just open your web browser to a web
| page where you were encouraged to buy
| something/donate/start a free trial.
|
| Anyways I think that capability still exists on all modern
| OSes.
| jerpint wrote:
| Having a hotkey to access the app removes a lot of friction
| xster wrote:
| I have ChatGPT app and Claude and Gemini PWAs on my dock. I
| gravitate towards using ChatGPT much more. It's just faster
| vs launching Chromium for each small query.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| I like to ALT-TAB instead of CTRL-TAB because I always have
| fewer applications open than I do sites. I don't have dozens
| and dozens of tabs always open either, but always more than
| my programs.
| lancesells wrote:
| I'm not a kid and I know about bookmarks, but I prefer using
| apps to apps in my browser. Electron apps I have less
| interest in, but I really don't like working in something
| like Figma (which is in the top of it's class) in the
| browser.
|
| In-browser apps do all sorts of clunky things like going back
| a page because I'm trying to scroll right or left or hotkeys
| not working. Native apps feel so much better to use and I can
| close my browser and stay focused on the task.
| exe34 wrote:
| > the refusal of many to close tabs in their browsers
|
| I have too many bookmarks, I'd never find anything in there.
| Keeping it open is the only way.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I was thinking more about people who use Tree Style Tabs
| and have nested Tab folders and such when I wrote that
| part. It's simple enough to save an entire session as a
| bookmark folder, to open an entire folder of bookmarks as
| new tabs (rather than needing to hibernate tabs to save ram
| while still keeping them "open"), and to search through
| bookmarks ad-hoc. Bookmark folders can be infinitely
| nested, categorized, ordered by when you were looking
| (though searching through your browser history also works
| for that), combined, copied, pasted, moved, put into or
| removed from the bookmark toolbar.
|
| It's an incredibly flexible system that allows for a
| massive variety of workflows and it feels like people just
| keep finding ways to recreate it, but worse: less platform-
| independent, eating more system resources, dependent on
| third-party plugins, or (in the case of using an app for
| everything) eating up orders of magnitude more storage
| space at rest.
| zarmin wrote:
| Dinosaurs these days insist that there's only one way to do
| things, even when most apps are literally designed to
| accommodate different workflows.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Please, tell me where I said there's only one way to do
| things.
|
| My question was not meant as a critique of people who know
| what they're doing. I'm not talking about engineers or sys-
| admins like the typical HN crowd, I'm talking about the
| population at large. The average person understands their
| devices just enough to get them to work the way they want.
| It stands to reason that a fairly large percentage of the
| modern population, used to using apps for every individual
| service, may never have had a use for browser bookmarks and
| may therefore never have even attempted to use them.
|
| I have a few friends who work as professors and tell me
| stories about how their students don't know how to navigate
| a filesystem in Windows. Why would a person like that, for
| instance, have bothered to learn what a bookmark is vs just
| keeping a tab open?
| result2vino wrote:
| You aren't as wise and smart as you think you are. Perhaps
| people just have different preferences to you?
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I have no issue with others having differing preferences,
| just making an observation about the continual reinvention
| of this particular wheel
| gdhkgdhkvff wrote:
| I swear if all the ai chat apps started as fat apps and then
| Claude just released the first port to the web, I would be
| reading this exact same comment on hacker news except
| complaining that there was nothing wrong with the fat app.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| but _this_ can start with Windows and sit in your system tray,
| sending you popup reminders!
| szundi wrote:
| Pssst, they are probably here reading
| pjmlp wrote:
| You can do exactly the same with a PWA without Electron
| garbage.
| pc86 wrote:
| We're 2-3 sprints away from a claude popup saying "It looks
| like you're writing a resume, would you like help with that?"
| bitwize wrote:
| A Copilot version is probably slated for 2025H1.
| wifipunk wrote:
| From what I can tell you're right, it's essentially a web front
| end made to compete with ChatGPT's desktop app.
|
| The only real benefit is the hotkey (ctrl + alt + space) for
| starting a new prompt when the window is closed, but still
| running in the background.
| ksd482 wrote:
| chatgpt has that shortcut too.
|
| option + space for mac, and alt + space for windows.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| There isn't one, it's just an Electron app that opens slower
| than the webpage and flashes white before it appears.
|
| You'd think, a company that has such powerful AI and no
| restrictions on requests to it would be able to bash out truly
| native apps no rather than something that looks quite shoddily
| made, like making your electron app not flash white when in
| dark mode is amateur level stuff.
| pjmlp wrote:
| An Electron app is anything but fast.
| yesco wrote:
| It can be faster than a normal web page depending on how they
| configure it though.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Indeed not everyone is able to write Web sites with good
| performance across multiple browsers, that is 3l1t3 skill,
| better ship Chrome alongside the application.
| yboris wrote:
| What a simplistic (and I think erroneous) view of Electron!
|
| You can't spare 40mb of RAM?
| pjmlp wrote:
| I already have a browser installed.
|
| Apparently the developers couldn't get rid of turning the Web
| into ChromeOS.
| skydhash wrote:
| It's more like 400MB due to how they're packaged. And when
| you could have it run with 10x to 20x less RAM, it just
| scream "we don't care about you". Not everyone have 64GB RAM
| and 22 cores of CPU in their laptop.
|
| It's like using a semi-truck (with the trailer attached) to
| go buy groceries 100 meters away.
| Wissenschafter wrote:
| The fact people prefer webapps over native locally run
| software because of '400MB' honestly pisses me off it's so
| stupidly trivial.
| skydhash wrote:
| It's not for the storage or ram space. It's for being
| inefficient which always making me doubt about the
| company culture. If you want native capabilities so much,
| just build a proper software for the platform. If VLC and
| Calibre can do cross platform, you can do it too.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| It's not native though. It's just a webapp in a second
| browser without any of the usual browser features, and
| reduced sandboxing.
|
| It's all the negatives of a webapp and all the negatives
| of a native app with none of the positives.
| pjmlp wrote:
| A website packaged with the Web browser isn't a native
| app.
| yboris wrote:
| I'm unsure where I'm supposed to look. In the Task Manager,
| the app I created (Video Hub App), when running, is
| routinely between 40MB and 120MB under the "Memory" column.
| Are you saying there is RAM use tucked away under different
| row than the app name?
|
| https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
| sv123 wrote:
| Perhaps a gateway to run computer use locally?
|
| https://www.anthropic.com/news/3-5-models-and-computer-use
| numbers wrote:
| yeah, that's what it seems like. As of today, there's no
| additional features I notice compared to having a Safari-based
| desktop version of this (which I uninstalled to install this
| one).
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I don't think they could release computer use for $20/month
| plan. It seems super expensive and you could easily involve
| Claude for hours of work for manual tasks like data entry or
| data cleaning.
| snug wrote:
| I was hoping that's what this was, sadly it's not, but defn
| opening the door for it in the future
| blixt wrote:
| They add the same Option+Space (on macOS) shortcut that ChatGPT
| has, but the app feels a bit like a quick build overall, as it's
| just a web container. Hopefully they'll add some nice features
| that wouldn't work in a browser such as asking about what's on
| your screen or a shortcut to be able to speak questions and get a
| voice response.
| latentcall wrote:
| No Linux, I should have expected that. Web works fine, but damn
| no Linux.
| politelemon wrote:
| It's disappointing that these companies are perfectly happy to
| use it for their own wealth creation strategy, but have no
| interest in giving back and furthering the ecosystem.
| internet101010 wrote:
| Other than ease of set up, why would anybody use this over
| LibreChat, which allows you to plug in api keys for all services?
| result2vino wrote:
| Other than ease of set up, why would any one use this over
| training their own large language model from scratch using
| magnets?
| zarmin wrote:
| LibreChat is still a webapp, not a native app (ie, the topic of
| this post).
| vunderba wrote:
| I like LibreChat a great deal, but its pretty heavy-weight
| (over a more bundled solution like Jan) in terms of spinning up
| a bunch of docker containers (meilisearch, mongo, vector db,
| etc.)
| lambdaba wrote:
| I only use the chatgpt desktop app for quick throwaway
| interactions.
|
| For anything more involved, I want a tab and an URL. Perfect use
| case for a webapp, native is pointless for this, especially if
| it's just a webview.
| stephencoyner wrote:
| Native desktop apps give these companies access to more system-
| level functions which will be super useful for...
|
| - Voice dictation / interactions
|
| - Agents accessing other applications and controlling your
| desktop
|
| - Agents performing background tasks like continuous
| monitoring, periodic data processing, or ongoing analysis
|
| I would expect to see these kind of features start to take off
| next year
| lambdaba wrote:
| Oh I agree, but this is definitely not it, I don't understand
| why Anthropic released this, other than squatting the same
| keyboard shortcut the ChatGPT app uses, with no ability to
| change it :P.
| stephencoyner wrote:
| By not it, do you mean those features aren't available yet,
| or you don't see the value in them?
| lambdaba wrote:
| I do see value, but the Claude app is just a webview with
| a keyboard shortcut, I don't even think it has voice
| dictation, I uninstalled it immediately.
| kristjansson wrote:
| The shortcut can be changed. Open the app settings from the
| menu bar, or the usual Command-, shortcut, and it's the
| only setting they expose.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Also data mining! :)
| nicce wrote:
| > - Agents performing background tasks like continuous
| monitoring, periodic data processing, or ongoing analysis
|
| Who said that this was to help the end user!
| moffkalast wrote:
| Hmm yes, I don't see any issues giving a corporate controlled
| model with the operational precision of a coin toss full
| access to my entire system. There is absolutely nothing that
| could ever go wrong.
|
| Nah but seriously, can we start a counter of how many times a
| chatbot agent has deleted someone's system32 because it was
| trained on data of the average tech forum?
| freedomben wrote:
| You're not wrong, but I'm willing to guess the biggest reason
| is: Analytics
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| You can also do a filesystem scan pretty easily. Both for
| useful features, as well as spying.
| runjake wrote:
| _> For anything more involved, I want a tab and an URL._
|
| Why, exactly?
| triyambakam wrote:
| Probably for bookmarking or working iteratively over
| different sessions on the interaction and allowing more than
| one session at a time.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Or sharing.
| lousken wrote:
| Don't see linux, also no screenshots?
| Nesco wrote:
| On macOS, why have an electron app when you can add the webpage
| to the dock as a PWA?
| Nesco wrote:
| Here is the comparison:
|
| Claude Electron app vs Claude Safari PWA
|
| Pros:
|
| * Can be opened with a customizable shortcut
|
| * Takes less RAM (400 MiB < 600 MiB)
|
| Cons:
|
| * Needs to be downloaded
|
| * Weight 150 MiB
|
| * Slower to start
|
| * Loose language localisation
|
| * Loose Safari's capabilities: - Printing the
| content of the current page - Speech2Text
| - Accessibility - ...
| __jonas wrote:
| The whole electron app uses less RAM than the page opened as
| a PWA? That's surprising to me, how come? I somehow thought
| Safari was more memory efficient than Chromium
| tiltowait wrote:
| I was surprised, too, so I just checked. Sure enough,
| https://claude.ai takes 663MB.
|
| I wonder if there's an architectural difference that allows
| the Electron app to be more lean?
|
| (Note I didn't download the new app, just installed the
| PWA, so I didn't verify those numbers.)
| orf wrote:
| The browser takes 663MB, or specifically the tab?
| tiltowait wrote:
| The Claude tab, itself. From Activity Monitor:
|
| 640.6 MB https://claude.ai
|
| 51.5 MB Claude
|
| 28.8 MB Claude Web Content
|
| 20.9 MB Open and Save Panel Service (Claude)
|
| 17.5 MB Claude Graphics and Media
|
| 15.5 MB Claude Networking
|
| 5.6 MB com.apple.Safari.SandboxBroker (Claude)
|
| 5.1 MB QuickLookUIService (Open and Save Panel Service
| (Claude))
|
| ---
|
| If I open Claude in Safari, Safari itself is 204MB, and
| the Claude tab is 640MB.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| that's wild that essentially a website that's a few
| textboxes should take 600MBs+
| notatoad wrote:
| as a chrome PWA it's 259MB for me, vs ~700MB for the electron
| app.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| The main questions: Can this be used with no limit on file
| "uploads"?
| emmanueloga_ wrote:
| I was surprised that simple things like sharing a chat in Claude
| doesn't seem to be there. I read somewhere that it was a feature
| that was disabled later.
| becquerel wrote:
| It's annoying, I'd really love to export my chats. Any
| Anthropic PMs reading this, as a paying subscriber I command
| you to prioritise this feature, on pain of failed training runs
| haizhung wrote:
| I've been trying to sign up for Claude for a couple of weeks now
| (I was even planning to pay), but alas, signups remain closed for
| now.
| vunderba wrote:
| Lots of people are _correctly_ suggesting this could function
| just as equally well as a PWA, but I will point out that (all
| things being equal) there are some valid use-cases when strictly
| choosing between Electron vs PWA that a LOT OF PEOPLE seem to be
| oblivious of:
|
| - Electron apps don't rely on a web server to function, so as
| long as you archive the app's installer, you can install it on
| future computers even if the original website goes down. This
| assumes that the PWA/Electron App in question doesn't need server
| features, for example Photopea, Obsidian, etc.
|
| - A bit easier to block network traffic to/from a dedicated
| application from a privacy perspective. Still can be done on a
| PWA, but it's trickier to set up.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I mean, re: point 1, we're talking about an app that calls an
| API for every interaction already, so that doesn't seem super
| relevant. If Claude is down, you can't use it whether it's
| through a PWA or an Electron app.
| vunderba wrote:
| > "Lots of people are correctly suggesting this could
| function just as equally well as a PWA, but I will point out
| that (all things being equal) there are _SOME VALID USE-
| CASES_ "
|
| YES - I am speaking _GENERALLY_. That 's why I literally
| called that out in my comment that this particular use-case
| (Claude Desktop) could easily be done with a PWA.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Gotcha. Sorry, I guess that was unclear to me based on your
| phrasing. When you said "some valid use-cases", I thought
| perhaps you meant (for this app) and not (for Electron apps
| in general) as the implied next clause.
| vunderba wrote:
| No worries, yeah I just meant that if a dev has no
| intention of building a native app and is only deciding
| between either a PWA or an Electron/Tauri App, then there
| are some advantages to the latter.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I'd say for the case of Tauri it's doubly so. You can
| have natively compiled Rust code for especially compute-
| intensive functions, rather than having it running via
| WASM.
| lostmsu wrote:
| If you could access chats offline, that'd be useful.
|
| But you should be able to do that with PWA.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Apparently running a daemon with the system browser has gone
| out of fashion, or a skill lost in modern times.
|
| Not to mention the whole calling into a server anyway.
| vunderba wrote:
| It would be nice to see a de-coupling of the backend (as a
| service, deamon, etc.) so that we could choose the desired
| frontend of our choice (net win from a UI/UX, accessibility
| perspective, etc.), but it's been a long time since I've
| encountered a consumer level application that did this.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| I hope this will be available from Homebrew soon.
| drpossum wrote:
| I would consider using this if I could just shove my API key in
| and have it run.
| bihan wrote:
| i've lost my faith to claude because of gpt4o and the advanced
| voice features.
| joshdavham wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated question for developers: when is an app
| generally better suited for the desktop vs a web app? Asking for
| myself.
| notatoad wrote:
| if your "desktop app" gives me a cookie consent banner, i'm going
| to assume it's a pretty lazy effort to have a desktop app.
|
| i can click the "install page as app" button in chrome myself,
| thanks.
| pants2 wrote:
| On the flip side, the ChatGPT desktop app is native on Mac and
| it's buggy and feature-incomplete compared to the web version.
| frogperson wrote:
| Claude requires a phone nu.ber to sign up and the won't accept a
| Google number so they are completely un-usable.
|
| I would love to try their services, but they refuse to take my
| money.
| stpedgwdgfhgdd wrote:
| I do not want to give my phone number to a company.
| sub7 wrote:
| This LLM hype is out of control, they literally bullshit on any
| novel input (admittedly there's not a lot of this) and are wrong
| 15-20% of the time for _all_ inputs
|
| This isn't a "we'll just add more context", "we'll just add more
| instructions and params", "our multi-head transformers will auto-
| attention the tits off your query" etc - this is search based on
| probability maps. It is structurally unable to be intelligent, no
| matter how many models you chain together and how much compute
| you throw at it. But it can sure mimic that shit, which is why
| LPs are going to lose their shirts and GPs are going to struggle
| to raise follow on funds.
|
| Let's move on.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| I'm still waiting for the ability to change my email address :/
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Tangentially, what are people using to have a unified interface
| to query multiple LLMs? Juggling multiple apps or websites for
| each provider gets annoying. I was using openrouter but the chat
| history is only stored in browser, so I'm looking for something
| else now. I tried open-webui[1] and that looks pretty good but I
| wonder if there are better alternatives.
|
| [1] https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui
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(page generated 2024-10-31 23:00 UTC)