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Comment by arithma | Hacker News Reader

Why not call it "standalone app" (Chrome-less! though that might be confusing for other reasons.)

Mattermost (and Telegram?) call the electron-based apps "desktop apps", which is I feel is a nice tradeoff: not native but not browser.

I think Telegram uses Qt.

Yep, Telegram on Desktop uses Qt. It's even open-source and on GitHub: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop

There's a separate macOS version as well: https://github.com/overtake/telegram

They used to have two apps, one using Cocoa (named "Telegram") and the other Electron (named "Telegram Desktop"). They transitioned the Electron app to QT and kept the "Telegram Desktop" name.

Electron is a browser though, just one with a lot of the chrome cut out.

Chrome without the chrome.

Naming things is tricky. Postman exists in the following places:

1. In-browser Chrome extension with a UI (Postman legacy app)

2. In-browser Chrome extension without a UI (Postman Interceptor)

3. Stand-alone/desktop Chrome app (can be run withput Chrome)

4. Command line tool (newman - runs the same runtime as Postman)

5. Stand-alone/native apps that can be installed (where most of the debate on this thread is)

6. Server-side runtime

We chose to use "native" because it avoids the confusion with the existing Chrome desktop app and informs people about the advantages of this version v/s the previous version in one word.

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