With Chrome or Edge, you can take any web page and turn it into a standalone "app" that lives in the start menu and can be pinned to the taskbar and Alt-Tabbed to, etc.
In the Chrome menu, select More Tools / Create Shortcut... and edit the title and check the Open as Window box.
In Edge, select Apps / Install this site as an app. Edge has a lot more options here than Chrome. You can pin it to the Taskbar or Start, create a desktop shortcut, and set it to auto-start. (You can do those manually with a Chrome shortcut if you know your way around the Start menu and Startup folder, but it's easier in Edge.)
I don't see a similar option in Firefox. No idea about Safari. If anyone knows about those browsers, please comment.
And having posted this comment, I am now wondering why I am still running the Slack app. I think I will try making it an Edge app!
Some people in the thread said they preferred running Slack in a browser tab instead of the Electron app, perhaps to avoid the memory overhead of a separate browser instance.
The comment I replied to described a preference for the app because of OS navigation, e.g. Alt+Tab, a separate taskbar icon, etc.
This Chrome shortcut or Edge app trick lets you combine these approaches, running the website in your browser but giving the site its own main window that you can pin to the taskbar, set to auto-run, and navigate to like a native app.
I would have guessed the memory consumption would be similar given the sandboxed tab model of Chrome. Anyway... even if not, do any of you guys really find that the memory consumption of Slack is a problem for you in practice?
In the Chrome menu, select More Tools / Create Shortcut... and edit the title and check the Open as Window box.
In Edge, select Apps / Install this site as an app. Edge has a lot more options here than Chrome. You can pin it to the Taskbar or Start, create a desktop shortcut, and set it to auto-start. (You can do those manually with a Chrome shortcut if you know your way around the Start menu and Startup folder, but it's easier in Edge.)
I don't see a similar option in Firefox. No idea about Safari. If anyone knows about those browsers, please comment.
And having posted this comment, I am now wondering why I am still running the Slack app. I think I will try making it an Edge app!