What just happened? Team collaboration software maker Slack on Monday announced a new version of its desktop client that is designed to be faster, more efficient and easier to work on. You won't notice a ton of changes cosmetically but it'll be a lot faster under the hood.
The desktop version of Slack was developed during a time of rapid growth and experimentation. Father Time has never lost a battle and over the years, some cracks started to show in the foundation. Further compounding matters is the fact that Slack's desktop client was built using tools that most have since shifted away from.
Despite the team's best efforts to keep things feeling zippy, it became apparent that fundamental changes were needed in order to evolve the desktop application and prime it for the next wave of product development.
Over the past two years, Slack has been working to revamp the desktop client. Lots of work went into the overhaul - a deep-dive is available over on Medium - but chief among the changes were building all UI components with React and getting Slack to be multi-workspace aware.
The efforts will pay off in the coming weeks with the launch of a new client that opens 33 percent faster and requires roughly 50 percent less memory. It'll also launch VoIP calls 10 times faster than before, we're told.