Turn Your Favorite Website Into a Desktop App
Windows, Mac: you probably have several websites that you use all the time – perhaps a dedicated CMS you need to work, a time tracking site you use to track and bill customers, or a web game. that you just can’t get enough of . If you’re tired of launching your browser every time you need to access it, you have an alternative: turn it into an app.
I say this with a caveat, as the Web2Desk web service does n’t actually do the crazy amount of hard work converting your favorite web apps to desktop apps. It creates an Electron wrapper for websites. These wrappers don’t take up that much space on your hard drive and will use up a good chunk of system memory if you “convert” every website you like into an “application” and run several of them at the same time – so choose carefully.
Nevertheless, for a one-time use, Web2Desk is certainly convenient (even if the service is not that unique ). While I wouldn’t use it for any web services that already have an offline app – Trello, Twitter, or Whatsapp, for example, using the three Web2Desk examples featured on his site – it’s certainly useful if you want, for example, to let your favorite user sit idle. clicker game works in a window no matter what you do in your browser.
Web2Desk is also useful when the web application only has a desktop version for an operating system that you are not using. And if you just don’t want to wait for your browser to load those 40+ tabs you swear you’ll get through someday, “converting” your critical sites to “apps” could save you a little time (and probably eat less system resources than your bloated browser).
To get started, just visit the Web2Desk website. If it doesn’t already have an app for the service you like, just enter a website url, give your app a name, select an icon (or create your own – PNG files only), enter your email address and wait while web2desk builds an app to download … When everything is ready, you will receive a link in your email.
As mentioned, I wouldn’t do this for every web app you use. The wrapper for the online game Cookie Clicker ate over 100 MB on my machine, which seems a lot to me. However, Web2Desk is a great tool for storing files in your useful bookmarks folder in your browser, just in case you want an easier way to access some of your favorite web services outside of your main browser.
Do you have a Windows or Mac app that you really like? Leave a note in the comments or email me: david.murphy@lifehacker.com .