AppSana just doesn’t cut it. So buggy! Goggle auth is broken and so is Harvest auth.
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Using Nativefier here, works fine.
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+1 for native Mac App. But thanks for the Nativefier tip @Bastien_Siebman. Hadn’t heard of it, just tried, and seems great. Best feature for me is ability to get multiple tabs.
To date, I’ve tried Appsana, Fluid, threedots (electron), and pinning Asana to a tab: all have issues.
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For those interested, I have a few tips to make a faux native app for Asana:
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@Noel_Howell1 Interested to know why you are after a Native App?
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Hah didnt see this!
Well… (1) Im on a macbook, (2) I hate having multiple chrome tabs open (3) the iPad and iPhone apps are not full-featured enough (and creating tickets with attachments is a drag).
Also, everyone else has one!! It makes worklife SO much easier to just have asana sitting in the bottom tray and not hidden in a chrome tab.
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Yep can understand that… I usually expand the Asana tab on its own to the full window and then just use the four finger swipe.
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WebCatalog is another great app for creating native apps out of web wrappers. The dev does a great job of keeping it up-to-date too.
But I would love a native Asana app for macOS.
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Make sure you check out my post above. It solves the problems of no longer keeping multiple tabs open (you don’t even need your browser open), and you can keep Asana just like an app in your dock.
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I’m chiming in to say I would really appreciate a native Asana app. Yes, I made my own version using Fluid, but it’s not the same thing. Features that would be important in a real app include:
-Offline access. I do most of my work on my laptop, not my phone, and the web interface is way better for viewing projects than the mobile app. That’s not a problem! My phone is for getting a quick overview of tasks for the day, checking things off, and adding new tasks on the go. But this means that actually reviewing projects requires me to have internet access. Not ideal, especially when traveling.
-Relatedly, responsiveness. Compared to applications that have native apps and sync (e.g., Evernote), my Fluid version of Asana is laggy. It takes some seconds to load, sometimes takes a moment to let me check off a task, etc. Having a real desktop version that could sync data but let me enter it in realtime would be fabulous.
-Eliminate random bugginess. I don’t know why, but the Fluid app occasionally messes up how the window should be displayed which doesn’t let me get to the progress tab of my bigger projects. Not a huge deal, but something that I can’t imagine would be an issue in a real app.
I really like Asana and am likely to continue using it in any case, but a desktop app would be a huge plus.
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To add to your list:
- Quick add shortcut native to macOS. I used to use Todoist (Things also) and that was one of my favorite features. Whatever app I was in I could hit a key command that would bring up the quick add window.
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I think desktop notifications, offline access (like the mobile apps), and a global keyboard shortcut for Quick Add (similar to Things) would be my favorite features of a native app if it ever comes on Asana’s roadmap.
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Hi Todd,
Finally got around to trying Fluid.
Any help you can give me on how to get my newly-created fluid app to let me authenticate via google? It opens a new tab for the authentication and then opens a Chrome tab that is blank and never resolves. As a result… I can’t actually log in to my Asana app.
Thanks!
Did you whitelist Google in the preferences? See the info box on Turn Asana into a native Mac app with Fluid as well as go through some of the comments for an alternative with adding an email directly if your organization lets you do that.
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@Noel_Howell1 have used this as an alternative to fluid and the asana app I created does not log me out.
@dorisbarber No dice-- Chrome wont let me install the extension from that ‘applicationize’ website.
@Todd_Cavanaugh I’ve whitelisted the right URLs, but it just refreshes back to the login page. Our asana org does not allow login with anything other than google, so its not possible to add a second email with PW. Any other suggestions?
@Noel_Howell1 I just created a new extension and added it to Chrome. I click okay when the error message occurs and it downloads. I then add it to Chrome by going to More Tools and then extensions and drop it in from there. Works for me.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure what else to do at that point 
Here is my experience with working with these products. There are several problems with web SaaS solutions. But the biggest 3 are:
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Time to load: Using a native solution like Omnifocus, one can press option-spacebar and type your task in a overlay, and be done in two seconds and then back to work in a third the time Asana takes to even load. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it turns out with a workgroup there is a half-life of a task or idea for every second waited. I find that the latency causes it to not be used by busy employees.
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Integration: The speed at which one can app switch, copy and paste, add items, and automate gives a huge edge to native apps. Also integration with GPS for geo-fencing, Siri for quick task addition are a big deal.
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Off-line: Tools that are only available on-line work 98% of the time, which means it doesn’t 100% of the time. The question is can you depend on a tool that only sometimes works?
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That’s a big one for me. Asana has really good availability but there was a time earlier this year where it was down for a few hours. And I literally couldn’t get anything done until it was back up and running.
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