MacOS to Ubuntu Part 5: Wunderlist and other Webapp only / non native Linux apps on Linux

I recently switched away from iOS and therefore also away from Apples Reminders and Apples Notes. I liked them, they were good enough for what I wanted to do. But while Wunderlist doesn’t have all the platforms, Apple, as always, only has their own. So how do I get Wunderlist on the Linux?

Turns out they have a client for almost any platform except a native one for Linux. But I like my little dock at the bottom of the screen and I hate jumping through tabs to find a web-app I need. Sure, Albert quickly lets me find it too using its chrome history plugin but I still like having native apps. So I remembered Nativefier on Mac and decided I’d see if it works for Linux too. Turns out it does.

So assuming you’ve got Node and NPM installed on your system, this should do the trick (remember to place a logo on your desktop)

npm install -g nativefier
 nativefier -n "Wunderlist" "https://www.wunderlist.com/webapp" -i ~/Desktop/wunderlist.png

you get the application. I created a folder ~/apps for all my custom applications and other apps that I have not installed through my package manager so they get backed up with my home folder.

Now just add the newly created app to the Mate Menu using right click → edit menus and then simply follow the instructions or check the screenshots

Now I have wunderlist as a first level application on my system. But really it’s just a frameless chromium window without a URL field. So it wrapps the wunderlist webapp. Still it’s a good webapp and why not use webapps? They are really rocking these days

In fact you can do this with any application that doesn’t have a native Linux app but a good webapp. Just use the nativefier CLI.

Please keep reading. Just pick a part in the index post

Getting started on Ubuntu Mate as a long time MacOS user