
Launch HN: Station (YC W18) – One place for all your web apps - jberthom
Hi HN,<p>We&#x27;re Alex and Julien, the founders of Station (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getstation.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getstation.com&#x2F;</a>). Our free desktop app unifies all your work applications in one neat interface. Think of it as an efficient workspace for all your web tools.<p>We&#x27;ve always had a love &#x2F; hate relationship with our browser: it&#x27;s been our main work environment for the last 6 years but we keep struggling to stay focused and never found an efficient technique that would fix my natural impulse to open a new tab and get distracted.<p>After trying quite a few methods (Pomodoro, White noise, Do Not Disturb, ...) &amp; tools (Franz, Toby, Rambox, OneTab, etc.), we came to the conclusion that distraction is a core-design issue in modern browsers that can&#x27;t be solved with cosmetic changes or simple hacks. If you look at the very first Chrome interface (released 10 years ago!) you&#x27;ll notice that it isn&#x27;t significantly different from today&#x27;s v69. What has dramatically changed is the number of working hours you spend in it.<p>That&#x27;s why we built Station: it&#x27;s a SaaS focused, distraction-free platform (600+ apps) that&#x27;s not meant for browsing but solely for working with web apps. This translates in the first features we shipped: a &quot;Quick-Switch&quot; (a la Alfred) that allows you to quickly change page without losing focus, a &quot;Smart Dock&quot; that segments your workspace by automatically linking all pages to an app, a &quot;Focus Mode&quot; that kills all notifications with 1 click and an &quot;Autosleep&quot; (a la The Great Suspender) that intelligently unloads unused apps from your computer&#x27;s memory.<p>We realize we still have a long way to go to offer the delightful experience we aim for, but we&#x27;re committed to it. There are quite a few technical challenges, the main one being pushing the Electron framework to its limits: copy&#x2F;pasting is sometimes erratic, CPU load can spike, embedded Chrome is constantly obsolete, support of extensions is experimental, multi-window is a bit laggy, and I could go on and on :)<p>We won PH&#x27;s Product of the Year award last year (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.producthunt.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;station-3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.producthunt.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;station-3</a>) which led to a huge boost in active users. This comes with increased pressure to ship features and kill bugs: the community-fed roadmap (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.getstation.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.getstation.com&#x2F;</a>) is completely crammed but our team of 8 is truly grateful for the user feedback we&#x27;ve been getting. It&#x27;s been really precious, both motivation and product-wise.<p>This is just the beginning. Our vision is to build an entire operating system for SaaS applications. We want to provide a platform so 3rd party developers can build new features on top of existing web apps, offering users a more native and integrated experience across all of their work tools. Ultimately, anyone using web apps at work would find value in using Station.<p>We&#x27;re really excited to get your insights on what we&#x27;re building. On average, our users are active 5h per day in the app: we hope you find it nearly as useful!<p>PS. You can download the app here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getstation.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getstation.com</a>.
It&#x27;s available for free on Mac, Windows and Linux.
======
acconrad
As a freelancer and consultant I find this app to be incredibly useful because
it essentially puts all of my client work into one app. I basically run this,
my terminal, and Sublime and I've got everything I need that is fast and
quickly toggle-able. Thank you for putting out a great product!

A few suggestions, after having used it for quite a few months now:

\- I have probably 15-16 apps connected and it would be great to get keyboard
shortcuts for them all. They stop at 9, but would be great to extend the top
row further for app tab movement.

\- The notifications bar is dominated by slack and feels redundant. I would
like a "do not disturb" for Station only...so I can turn off the redundant
notifications that Station sends me _without_ putting my on do not disturb
_in_ Slack.

\- Zeplin integration is funky. Other apps will move to the correct page (like
a pull request in Github) but Zeplin for some reason doesn't move to the
correct page of the mockups I want to see. Would love to have this fixed.

Thanks!

~~~
jberthom
Thanks a lot!

\- Good point. It's exactly facing this issue that we build a feature called
the "Quick-Switch. Not sure if you had a chance to give it a try. Basically
hit "Cmd+T" and you will see a spotlight type of search bar. From there you
can search for any app or even page opened within an app. For GDrive (if you
connect it) you can search for any document directly there, on Slack you can
search any channel or person. We are working on even more integrations. We
have built an algorithm that learns from it as you use it, therefore the
results will get even better overtime!

\- You can already do that by clicking on the bell icon on the left bar
(Disable Notifications). It will snooze all notifications from all your app so
you can stay focused. We obviously need to communicate better about it :)

\- I see what you mean with Zeplin, some of our team members have the same
issue. That's because we do not handle well when a URL has a "#" and whatever
comes after. We are investigating this issue to fix it.

------
mychael
I've always disliked intense cynicism in Show HN and Launch HN, but...

It's a web browser, but instead of being open source (Chromium) or a non-
profit (Mozilla Foundation), it's run completely by a single for-profit
company. Seems pretty backwards to me, but maybe I'm missing something?

~~~
jberthom
It's a fair point. We are actually based on Chromium (we run on Electron). So
we are a for-profit company building a browser based on an open source project
- just like Google with Chrome.

------
justkez
This isn't an Electron bash, but I tried this a few weeks ago (found via
Product Hunt) and after adding a few apps (G Suite, Trello, Slack, Workflowy),
I found the UI frustratingly sluggish and ultimately counter-productive. This
is on a well specced 16gb MBP.

Should I try again?! It seems you'd have to move the needle on performance
quite significantly to remove the lag. In a non-Station workflow I'd just cull
the offending tabs/browsers.

~~~
jberthom
14 days ago we have released improvements on the performance of the app (see
release note:
[https://community.getstation.com/t/station-1-24-0/4015](https://community.getstation.com/t/station-1-24-0/4015)).
If you tried the app before the app you might see a difference. Let us know
how it goes.

Performance is a priority and an ongoing work for us. We know Electron has
limitations and we are working hard to limit memory & CPU usage.

------
wink
This sounds useful.

I haven't tried it yet so please excuse if this has been answered - but this
sounds just like I use several browsers, being logged in to different
accounts. And also why I don't like webapps as much (lack of alt-tab and
separation).

But I have a pressing question: How does it handle opening links in new tabs?
Imagine me going through a pinned TweetDeck and looking at all the links? It's
hard to describe, but if I "break out" a webapp via chrome for example, I
either get a lot of windows or all the tabs in the wrong window. How are
people using this? will I have all e.g. articles on random websites inside
Station or in my default browser?

~~~
jberthom
Interesting point!

If I understand what you mean correctly, you are concerned about how we handle
links that are not from an app (articles or anything that does not belong to
an app we support). It's a big question for us we are still discussing.
Ultimately I think we will want to handle links so you are not constantly sent
back to the browser if all you want to do is just quickly read an article from
a link you clicked. The question remains on whether we also want to handle
full-on navigation.

You can divide navigation in two categories: 1\. quick read you won't access
again 2\. longer term navigation including articles or pages you wish to read
again later

For case n.1 I think we should definitely handle it (the same way when you
click a link on a mobile app you are usually sent to a provisory browser and
can later decide to open it in your default browser) For case n.2 there are
still discussions on whether we should leave this to the default web browser,
integrate an existing web browser inside Station to handle all external links
or build our own within Station.

~~~
wink
Yes, thanks. Meanwhile I could think of a good example.

Someone shares a Google+ post via Twitter. Right now I have TweetDeck in my
normal chrome instance where I am not logged in to Google (for reasons). So
everytime I click this link I have to copy/paste the link from the newly
opened tab into Firefox, where I am logged in to Google.

And yes, this is a homemade problem, I should just be reading RSS feeds, but
some people seem to prefer G+ and so I get no RSS feed :(

------
CharlesW
It surprised me how many different services it wants to connect to at first
launch (thanks, Little Snitch!), not to mention access to System Events.

Do you document all the services you're connecting to, and what data is being
collected?

~~~
jberthom
Yes you can find more information about the data being collected here:
[https://faq.getstation.com/data-and-privacy/what-are-your-
pr...](https://faq.getstation.com/data-and-privacy/what-are-your-privacy-
policies)

------
ankit219
Had tried it early this year, when you guys were covered by Techcrunch or some
other publication I think.

I liked the idea, and gave it a shot. I think that was a very early version,
and while I did like some of the features, I returned to doing it on chrome.

What I liked: \- Use of apps. \- Design: I liked the thought behind using both
horizontal and vertical switching (not sure I described it right) which would
means less tabs. More familiar for me since me taskbar is always on left.

Why I went back to chrome: \- I usually have two gmail accounts open
simultaneously (one personal), so if I were to use station, I would still have
to use Chrome anyways. \- No way to import history from chrome. (useful if I
wanted to visit the same websites that I do now) \- Memory usage and
performance (I am sure that would have been fixed now.) \- Autostart on every
reboot: I am sorry, but this was the only reason I uninstalled it. I used it
sparingly when I needed to focus, but autostart was really irritating so I
uninstalled it.

Wish you all the best, and would love to use it more, but right now, I can
focus with Chrome itself.

~~~
jberthom
Thanks for your feedbacks! On some of your points: \- we do allow you to use
multiple Gmail accounts, back when you used it it might not have been obvious
enough but you can use as many Google accounts as you'd like \- indeed we are
working hard on memory usage and performance at the moment. Since the
TechCrunch cover you should definitely see a difference. Let us know in our
community if this is not the case \- we've fixed that since then, you can
remove autostart in the settings and it works now

~~~
ankit219
Hey, one more reason I preferred Chrome was Adblocker. Sorry, forgot to
mention this in previous post. Not so sure if it can be integrated in this,
but I had gotten used to it, so it's weird to see the ads popup again.
Especially when you are looking at marketing channels, and browse Instagram
and Twitter too.

Have installed the app yesterday. The interface is more intuitive now. Looks
good. Love the collection of apps too. And the quick switch as well.

~~~
jberthom
Yes we didn't dedicate efforts to integrating an ad blocker because we mostly
integrate applications in which you shouldn't see ads but Twitter or Instagram
are good examples of where it's needed. We are working hard to integrate more
extensions in the future and Ad blockers rank high on the list.

------
atombender
This seems like a potentially very useful app, bordering on capturing the idea
that I've described on HN several times (recently here [1]).

That said, I don't use Gmail. I'm forced to have a Google account since my
employer uses G-Suite, but I pretty much don't use their apps and Google is
not what I would use Station for. I'm disappointed to see that this is so
Google-oriented. I get that it's an early MVP and a work in progress, but
seriously.

From the looks of it, Station is entirely app-oriented. It would be
disappointing to me if you could only choose from Station's own roster of
apps. Back in the day, there was a macOS app that could create a desktop app
from any web site — basically starting a special version of Firefox in its own
instance — so that you could run, say, Github as a desktop app. It makes sense
because obviously web sites can be considered "apps".

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18054150](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18054150)

~~~
jberthom
We've limited to Google login indeed as it was the first version of the app
and we wanted to make it easy for as many users to sign up and get started on
Station. We will very soon release a username/password login which will answer
your concern.

Yes I think see which app you are referring to, it's Fluid app (and there's
been others of the same type since then). It was one of our inspirations in
fact. I think that type of app is useful if what you are looking for is to
turn a few specific websites into native apps in your dock (Github is a good
example). But it does not make it easier to switch between those apps,
essentially it just encapsulates a webview into an OS window. What we want to
do is go much further and add extra functionalities that make it feel like you
are really consuming a native app (ex: searching for information across all
your apps, quickly accessing various parts of this app, giving an overview of
notifications from all your apps, etc.).

Checked your link, it's really interesting actually. It really goes along the
line of how we think about Station. When you say Google Doc is not something
that works well as a tab, I think it's true for a lot of SaaS applications.
They've leveraged the browser to work because it guaranteed massive adoption
and instantly worked cross platform, however browsers were built to - as its
name indicates - browse the web, mostly reading content. If you can offer a
tailored experience for each doc, chat, note taking app, etc. that you use on
a daily basis, I think there is no reason why you wouldn't switch from the
browse. To use another analogy: the same way you prefer to use the Gmail app
on your smartphone than go on gmail.com on your mobile browser.

------
bradknowles
So, the only way you can use Station is to log in with your corporate Google
account?

Is there no way that I, as a private individual, can use Station with my
various personal accounts?

~~~
jberthom
For now we've limited to Google accounts indeed but we will soon release the
option to login with username & password. We do say corporate accounts because
we see Station as a work environment and therefore think it's best if you can
connect your work account to then use it to login to other work apps (assuming
they use Google login). However you can use your personal Gmail account, it
works just as well.

------
FreezerburnV
I quickly scrolled through the list of supported “apps”, and one of them is
Reddit. Doesn’t that kind of go against the “don’t be distracted” idea of
Station if something supported as a first class citizen is a distraction site?

Also is it possible to add custom sites to Station? Like if I have an internal
tool at work, which can’t be supported by Station at large due to it being
custom for my job. And does it support stuff only available on an internal
work network? Eg: even if JIRA is supported, if my work has an on premises
deployment of it I wouldn’t be able to use the JIRA app if I can’t point to
that instance.

EDIT: otherwise I think the idea is interesting. Considering I basically put
my life into workflowy, having a nice wrapper around it sounds pretty great.
Among the other sites I use.

~~~
jberthom
Very good points. We discussed a lot internally before adding content websites
like Reddit. There are 2 reasons why we decided to add them in the end. First
some people actually use such sites for work (they look up for information
they need for work). Second, we offer a "Disable Notifications" option so you
can avoid receiving notifications from all or specific apps hence giving you
control over what can capture your attention or not.

Yes since recently you can add custom sites to Station. Simply go to the app
store in the Station app and click on the "+" button on the bottom right. You
will be able to request a custom app (available either just for yourself or
your entire team).

Look forward to your feedbacks as you test the app!

------
pedalpete
An integration with lastpass or other password managers would be great. At the
moment I have to copy my passwords into my apps in station. I am sitting here
hoping station will keep those logins active.

~~~
jberthom
Yes we plan on adding more password managers including LastPass and Dashlane
which are the most requested ones on top of 1Password which we have already
integrated.

------
mkjonesuk
I'm already a Wavebox user which is pretty great for this:

[https://wavebox.io/](https://wavebox.io/)

Any improvements offered?

What's the plan to monetise. Wavebox is about $50 a year.

~~~
jberthom
Wavebox is a great tool. One thing we focus on is making switching between
apps easier and faster. We have a feature called the Quick-Switch that allows
you to easily switch to a different channels on Slack or search information
across applications. It's still a work in progress.

As for monetization we do not plan on charging the end user but rather charge
for team functionalities but we haven't yet worked on that. We are focused on
the end-user experience first.

------
rajekas
I have used it off and on from the time it came out and love how it aggregates
many of the apps I use everyday. Nevertheless, I find myself leaving Station
for standalone apps/web apps for three reasons:

1\. By aggregating all the apps I use, it invites almost as much distraction
as the open web :) I would love it if there was a distraction free mode that
locks Station for X amount of time in a pre-chosen cluster of apps. That way,
I get to work with all the apps in my current workflow while being protected
from the big bad web out there.

2\. Resource use: not only does it become slower with multiple apps open, my
laptop fan spins like crazy. Not the silent meditation I want as I attempt to
enter a flow state.

3\. My mental UNIX wants to work on one thing at a time and do that well. When
I am in UNIX mode (i.e., whenever I am not distracted by the spawn of Zuck and
Jack) I use the native/web app for that specific use case. I know switching
out of that one app into another takes time, but it's still under _my_
control.

In all, I am wondering if by recreating a full-fledged OS for apps Station is
replicating the very problem that it's trying to eradicate.

~~~
jberthom
1\. Good idea, this is definitely something we have in mind as we look to
revamp our dock and the way we handle notifications across all your apps

2\. Improving performances is one of our main focus at the moment. You should
definitely see improvements over the next few weeks and months.

3\. Interesting. Actually one of the developers in our team has edited the app
to remove the dock so he is not distracted by the icons on the left side.
Essentially what would help you here is having some sort of full-screen mode
that allows you to stay focused on one app only without being distracted by
the Station interface.

The frustration we are trying to address is the way browsers handle
applications. Indeed we could end up replicating the very problem we were
trying to eradicate if we end up just creating yet another browser. We started
from a blank page for that very reason - so we could in fact build the best
experience possible for web apps. I do believe it gives us enough freedom to
avoid running into the same issues you can find on traditional browsers. The
future will tell!

------
runaway
I really love the concept and I've used it since August, but I frequently
return to the app and it starts "reloading" making me concerned that I'm
missing notifications. It's also frustrating that my configuration doesn't
transfer between computers which I do frequently.

~~~
jberthom
Indeed the reason why you see this reloading is because we have built an auto-
sleep algorithm that allows us to make sure you never have more than 8
processes open at the same time (and therefore affecting CPU or memory usage).
For apps like Gmail or Slack (apps on which you are expected to receive
notifications) we always keep the page active. Ultimately we plan on
supporting notifications for apps even if they are inactive but it's not
possible for all apps.

For which app are you experiencing reloading that makes you fear you are
missing applications? We might have missed some use cases.

Yes we plan on allowing you to use Station across different devices, it's been
requested by a lot of users.

~~~
runaway
I could swear I've seen it reload on slack, whatsapp, circleci, and clubhouse.
Can't wait for the cross-device features. Thanks!

~~~
jberthom
Whatsapp, Circleci and Clubhouse definitely possible if you haven't looked at
it in a while and opened a lot of new pages.

As for Slack it shouldn't!

------
indigodaddy
Station finally getting some HN love. That's great to see. I use this everyday
at work for Slack, Outlook Pro/365, Salesforce, DataDog..

I would like to see the ability to specify jira.mydomain.com for the main Jira
app (eg kind of like how you can do custom domain login to the Salesforce app,
but I do understand that that is actually accomplished by Salesforce WebUI
functionality itself there). Having Jira accessible within Station would
really complete the circle for me.

I know we can request custom/private Station apps, but not sure I want to
request that, as I'm really the only one at the company who uses it... I've
shown Station to co-workers and they think it's cool, but they love all their
individual apps I guess... :)

I wish the Station team continued success and all the best!

~~~
jberthom
Thanks a lot!! When you request a custom app you can pick the option to have
it just for yourself and not for your co-workers.

------
newscracker
I have an aversion to any site or service that doesn't have a "Pricing" link
right on the home page. I feel like the site doesn't want to expose this
information because it's either not straightforward or very expensive.

I searched on your help site and found the answer on pricing [1], which is
well written. But ideally it shouldn't be this hard to know. Please add this
link on your homepage and everywhere else that you'd add FAQ, Help, etc.

P.S.: Your help documentation looks well written so far (except for some
typos).

[1]: [https://intercom.help/station/general-questions/is-there-
a-p...](https://intercom.help/station/general-questions/is-there-a-pricing-
for-station-how-do-you-make-money)

~~~
jberthom
Thanks for the feedback. We plan on insisting on the "Free" aspect on the V.2
of our website so it's clear that it is free for the individual user. Once we
price for teams we'll have a dedicated page.

------
dzek69
There is Franz, there is Rambox (which seems a bit abandoned because of
premium version), there are few another I can't remember.

How is your app better than these? I switched from Franz to Rambox because of
support of self-hosted and/or custom apps. Is there a reason for another
switch? After a quick look - it looks like you don't support self-hosted apps.

And a bit aside of main topic - I really hope everything will get PWA support
eventually. It's much better experience to make an app really an app. Still
waiting for Google to deliver their apps as PWA, like promised. I could ditch
Rambox then.

~~~
jberthom
Franz is all about handling messaging app while we handle all types of web
applications. As for Rambox, indeed they are closer to what we do with a
different type of interface though.

We do support self-hosted apps (any kind of custom apps) but as of today it
requires a few weeks before it is added. In all honesty if that's a key factor
for you, I would stay on Rambox and wait for us to have released the V.2 of
custom applications before bothering to try it :)

Indeed PWA would be amazing especially for offline functionalities and push
notifications.

------
reitanqild
Take a tour sends me to a video.

As someone who entered the Internet more than half a life I assumed it would
be a a screenshot tour, maybe with animated gifs.

Like many others here I can't stand videos so I left that page immediately and
slightly disappointed. I was not able to glance another place to find what I
looked for either (screenshots and text explanations).

By all means, -keep the video, some people seems to prefer them but

\- use a less confusing link text ("Watch a screencast tour" or something that
indicates that this is a video)

\- if you care about people like me: add a single page with images, possibly
animations and text.

~~~
jberthom
Yes I agree with you. We are currently working on a V.2 of our website that
will offer a faster way to get a tour of the different features through
animations. We might not even need to keep the "Take a tour" part.

------
theseanstewart
Any plans to support custom icons/colors for apps? I just set up multiple
gmail accounts in Station, but it's really hard to distinguish between the
different accounts. I can see the account's avatar at the bottom right of the
Gmail icon, but it's __really __small. Another idea would be to provide an
option for adding a separator on the menu bar.

Also, another nitpick. The "on" toggle button is really ugly and doesn't fit
with the rest of the UI design (which is really nice looking overall).

~~~
jberthom
Good points. I agree the avatar app is too small and does not help much. We
plan on fixing this either by making the profile page more obvious or maybe as
you suggest allow for custom colors.

As for adding a separator on the menu bar, indeed we plan on doing a revamp of
the dock and the ability to separate apps in different groups is a feedback we
will take into consideration (if I understand correctly what you meant here)

Agree on the toggle button. Feedback forwarded to our brand new Product
Designer who is currently working on our design system and will fix that.

~~~
theseanstewart
Thanks for the response. Loving Station so far. Keep up the great work.

------
UltimateFloofy
I know this seems petty, but I cannot see "Get Station" as the url. I
continually read "gestation.com", which doesn't have quite the same
connotation.

~~~
jberthom
haha indeed, that's actually an inside joke in the team :) It's a provisory
domain name and we should have a shorter one soon.

------
davidmorris
I've installed station and created a distinct application password for station
in my google apps suite. However when I try to authenticate in station then
the app password is not accepted and only the password to my whole google
account is accepted.

The pop up box for station login doesn't show me which website it is
authenticating via and if I try the "copy current pages URL" in the
authentication pop up then the URL is not copied (at least not in ubuntu
18.04).

~~~
jberthom
This is the first time I hear of this case as I think few people create
distinct applications. We use Auth0 for authentication and we'll check with
them as it seems the issue is on their side. I'll let you know when we've
figured it out.

------
ttcbj
I downloaded this app, and really like it. Its a simple concept, but it would
be really useful for me. That said, in order for it to be useful I need to be
able to add an internal administrative app which I use frequently (its just a
website). If I could just do that, it would be really useful as-is.

Ideally, I'd also like to add an internal electron-based web app that runs
only on my machine as well, though that is lower priority than the standard
web app.

~~~
jberthom
Yes you can do that since recently! If you open the app store in the Station
app and click on the "+" button at the bottom right of the screen, you can
request an custom app such as an internal admin app you are referring to.

As for adding an internal electron-based web app it's not yet possible but
it's something we could imagine indeed!

~~~
ttcbj
Thanks, I just tried adding two apps (our internal one, and bank-of-america
small business login page).

------
Beefin
I used Station for a couple weeks and then I looked at my activity monitor...
it was eating up more cpu than 15+ chrome tabs. Have you fixed this?

~~~
jberthom
Indeed we are aware that we have issues with performance and we are working
hard to identify ways to fix it. We released 15 days ago but it's a work in
progress.

~~~
Beefin
Giving it another try. Would be cool if you had a "saved layout" where I could
just download a template that had all the apps I want to load up on new
installations.

------
Lenad
Any insight into what will be your business model?

~~~
jberthom
We plan on remaining entirely free for individual users and only charge for
team features (we are still discussing what those could be). Hence it's only
businesses that decide to use Station across an entire team that would
eventually have to pay.

------
owenconti
Your post says 600+ apps, but your landing page says "400 apps... and
counting"

If you're at 600+, update your landing page!

~~~
jberthom
Yes good point, we will update it!

------
xixixao
In what sense is station not a web browser?

~~~
jberthom
In the sense that we do not handle classic browsing tasks: searching on Google
and read articles across tabs. Our users do not stop using the browser when
they start using Station, they use both in combination: the browser for
browsing & Station for their apps.

We are building a platform for you to access all your web applications.
Ultimately what we aim to build is closer to an operating system for all your
apps than a traditional web browser.

------
qiqing
I'd be really interested to find out more about the security model of Station,
which would be useful for finding out if our infosec department would be
willing to approve it for internal use.

Also, ditto on the pointing to an internal Jira instance. Would love to know
the answer to that question.

~~~
jberthom
Good question. We are based on Chromium, the open-source Web browser project
started by Google that powers Google Chrome. Therefore on that part the same
security model as Chrome applies. On the data side, most information is stored
locally on your computer. Very few information is actually stored in our
database therefore reducing the risk. For instance we do not store any
username, passwords or token you use to login into your app in our database.

Now we haven't yet worked directly with infosec departments so we are well
aware that there is still work to be done for us to be fully vetted.

As for adding an internal Jira instance, you can do that directly from the app
store in the Station app. Click on the "+" button at the bottom right of the
screen and you can request a custom app (visible either just to you or your
entire team).

~~~
insomniacity
When we add a custom app, do you see those URLs?

Remember that even a URL could contain confidential information, such as a
project planning board for a corporate takeover or new product launch.

~~~
jberthom
Good point, I definitely understand the concern. We only see the main domain,
whatever comes after the "/" in the URL isn't visible to us or anyone else.

------
bradknowles
How would you use this tool with AWS console, where you might want to be
logged into multiple different accounts at the same time?

Normally, it forces you to log out of one account before you can log into
another, unless you use a different browser, or you're using something like
container tabs.

~~~
jberthom
Indeed for now we do not handle multi-account for all applications, AWS being
one of them. But we plan on supporting multi-account across all applications
by isolating cookies. You can see our public roadmap here:
[https://www.notion.so/stationhq/4fc4be71cb2f4ddcb59b8b38858c...](https://www.notion.so/stationhq/4fc4be71cb2f4ddcb59b8b38858cdd62?v=bcc00a702d7a4b7ba1837622f8a4f3c0)

------
aclave1
This is a really cool app! I downloaded it and added my most used apps which
allowed me to close some pinned chrome tabs! It's just like franz, but for
everything. It does feel a bit sluggish though but I do understand that's
mostly a limitation of electron.

~~~
jberthom
Thanks! Electron indeed has some drawbacks but we are working hard to improve
performance as we speak.

~~~
aclave1
So i'm using the system now and whenever i try to use it after stopping for a
few minutes, the entire ui is unresponsive. It doesn't appear to have
suspended the application. It looks like it happens for around 10 seconds
before it finally decides to let me use it.

~~~
jberthom
Indeed we know few users have this specific issue you are referring to. We are
looking into it.

------
FabianBeiner
Is there no unread count for each service? This is an immediate deal breaker
for me. :( I don't want to check the notification center to realize which
messages I've been missing. Also, I'd want the notifications to go the OS
based one.

~~~
jberthom
1\. Indeed we've removed it as it really made the interface distracting (with
numbers on every app). We could imagine having this information on hover on
the next version of the dock. We just want to make sure we don't make the dock
too messy with information (once you add up notification number, profile icon,
etc.) it starts looking really overwhelming.

2\. Good point, that's something we'll keep in mind once we start focusing on
notifications again.

------
shafyy
Just installed it and I like it. It's one of those things that don't really
make sense in theory until you try it out for yourself. Like Slack, or
Twitter. Cool, looking forward to how you evolve this!

~~~
jberthom
Thanks! Yes a lot of users tell us the exact same thing. It's not always easy
to understand what it does until you've tried it. That means we also need to
improve the way we communicate around the product and make the value prop
clearer. A new version of the website is coming soon!

------
kjvperspective
Awesome idea. One thing that would be really valuable to me would be multi-
account support even for apps that don't have it built in. Firefox's multi-
account containers are how I solve this now.

~~~
jberthom
Thanks! Indeed we plan on supporting multi-account for all applications soon.
You can find it in our public roadmap here:
[https://www.notion.so/stationhq/Station-s-
roadmap-030f47e10b...](https://www.notion.so/stationhq/Station-s-
roadmap-030f47e10b36450f91377035949b51ba)

------
aeschenbach
When using google analytics, when I try to switch to my default property/view
(which GA knows), Station opens it a separate window, meaning i can't navigate
there from within the app.

~~~
jberthom
Indeed we are aware of this bug and we plan on fixing it!

------
faitswulff
This is very compelling. Can you add a local dev server as one of the tabs? If
I do work on localhost:3000, for instance. I could see myself using Station
and pomodoro quite effectively.

~~~
jberthom
Good question, our own dev team would love to have that too and it's
definitely something we are considering :)

------
stephenr
So this seems to be basically, a bunch of web apps loaded in vertical tabs
rather than horizontally, and it's built on electron.

So it's a browser built on a browser, with vertical tabs.

~~~
jberthom
Yes at first glance from a UI perspective it's essentially what it is. A
friend of mine often jokes about it and tells me "ok so you just took the tabs
and put them on the left" :) We started from that bias in the interface but we
are building features that really differentiate us from traditional web
browsers: a Quick-Switch that allows you to switch across all your apps (kind
of like Alfred), a notification center that unifies all of your applications,
a performance algorithm that kills tabs you don't use to preserve memory & CPU
usage, a unified app store for teams, etc.

------
jason_wang
I have been using Station for ~6months now. Fantastic product! The biggest win
for me is I no longer have to hunt down which tab has email app and which tab
has the calendar cap.

~~~
jberthom
Great to hear! :) Means a lot to the whole team reading this.

------
drewmol
Looks interesting. Is auth0 the only option or am I missing something? Also,
just FYI I'm getting an Access Denied when clicking on the auth0.com privacy
policy link.

~~~
jberthom
For now only Google login indeed but you will soon be able to login with
username & password if you do not have a Google account.

Thanks for letting us know on the privacy policy link, we are going to check
that out.

------
bradknowles
Have you checked to see how well your site works in other browsers?

Like Firefox?

~~~
jberthom
I haven't in a little while personally but some of our team members use
Firefox and so far we never had any issues. Did you spot anything?

------
applecore
Can I limit resources per tab?

I'd like to give Slack 1GB of memory and one processor core so I don't have it
maxing out my CPU and cache every day.

~~~
jberthom
Currently you do not have the option to do it yourself. For now what Station
does is it run an algorithm that detects the apps you use the most often and
only keep 8 tabs open at any given time. We believe it's best if we can do it
intelligently rather than manually. But we also see that some power users
would like to be given control over that. Ultimately if we do a good job at
doing it intelligently, there shouldn't be any need to do it manually. It's
still a work in progress.

------
crooked-v
This desperately needs an option for a plain solid background and actual
contrast for the sidebar icons. Also, badging on the sidebar icons.

~~~
jberthom
Very good points. Indeed we plan on revamping the background of the app that
can be disturbing and make the app icons more visible.

------
blitzo
Pardon me if I 'don't get it' but is this an OS on top of OS? but instead of
hosting native app, this thing hosting sass app?

~~~
jberthom
Yes exactly. We use the term "OS" because it's an analogy we find well
represents our vision. We aim to become the app you use to access your web
applications and have built the app following a lot of the codes you find in
an OS (notification center, spotlight type of search, etc.). Essentially our
web browsers have become the operating system for the web but we think web
apps deserve a dedicated environment. The same way consuming Gmail in the
Gmail app in your smartphone is way better than consuming it in your mobile
web browser, we want to make consuming your web apps in Station better than on
your browser.

------
pbreit
Neat!

One thing for me: I could not find any sizable things to grab on to to move
the window, especially on non-Google apps (using Mac version).

~~~
jberthom
Indeed good point. We have slightly increased the area for moving the window
since previous versions but this is something we can still optimize.

------
aeschenbach
Your website says pagerduty is an integration, but i cannot add it from within
the app.

~~~
jberthom
Indeed it is an app we added just yesterday and that will actually be
available starting tomorrow. There is a slight delay between the time it is
available in the public app store and in the app store of the application.

------
nkg
It sound useful and it looks good. I am giving it a try

~~~
jberthom
Look forward to your feedbacks!

------
muhammetd
I could not able to connect multiple aws accounts.

~~~
jberthom
Indeed we do not support multi-account for all apps yet but it is part of our
roadmap (you can see a public version here:
[https://www.notion.so/stationhq/4fc4be71cb2f4ddcb59b8b38858c...](https://www.notion.so/stationhq/4fc4be71cb2f4ddcb59b8b38858cdd62?v=bcc00a702d7a4b7ba1837622f8a4f3c0))

------
lucasverra
how do you compare with Front app ? [0]

[0] : [https://frontapp.com](https://frontapp.com)

~~~
jberthom
Front app is a centralized interface to access your various inboxes. Station
unifies all of your web applications (e-mail, chat, tasks, notes etc.) in one
single app. Front is closer to being an e-mail client handling various inboxed
but in the cloud (and collaborative) while were are a better alternative to
the browser for all your web applications. You could use Front in Station :)

------
holychiz
what tool/service are you using for your Community Forum site? It looks very
well-designed.

~~~
mahesh_rm
Discourse. I personally don't like its design or functionality, though.

~~~
jberthom
Indeed we use Discourse. It requires quite a lot of customization to look
really good. But the depth of feature and the flexibility are unbeatable!

------
jirir
Can it run on/inside Safari?

~~~
jberthom
No it's a native application you install and run on your OS.

------
andrewmcwatters
The real golden paradigm shift here is that this treats web apps like _apps_ ,
rather than web apps as some sort of hack on top of the web, instead of the
natural evolution that has occurred.

If a web browser is for web pages on the world wide web, then maybe it's time
to start considering that we need an app browser. Something more distinct than
browsing the web for documents, and something that has first-class support for
truly browsing for apps.

This seems to be the sell, and I find it very convincing to think about in
this regard rather than some "glorified web browser." There is potential here,
and I'd like to see this explored.

Does this open up the potential for a faster browsing experience? Perhaps
there's a double win here. What if we move towards a world with web browsers
reverting to their original nature; a document browser that explores just
hypermedia, while tailoring app browsers to handle web applications
specifically.

We essentially have this already in a crippled form on mobile devices with
deep-linking.

~~~
shafyy
Haha, I like the idea. But isn't this then an infinite circle in the end?

~~~
jberthom
What do you mean by "infinite circle"?

------
jbverschoor
Tried it. Didn't like it. Sticking to manageyum for now

~~~
jberthom
Interesting. Would love to know what you like about Manageyum that you
couldn't find in Station.

