How to Install & Use the ClickUp Desktop App

ClickUp has a desktop app. This is a downloaded application where you can open ClickUp without having to be in your browser. And I gotta admit, I haven't been the most impressed in the desktop app of ClickUp, which is why we haven't yet had a video on the channel talking about the desktop app at all. Pretty much when we've talked about it inside my member community, we've chatted about the desktop app and folks have asked, why haven't you made a video on it? And my response has always been, because I don't know what I would say. But there is some news around this desktop app, and I thought it was about time we gave this feature some attention here on the YouTube channel. So that's why in this video we're going to be going over the basics, the baseline of the ClickUp desktop app. So in case there are shiny improvements, we've at least got the foundationals covered. We're going to be going over how to install the desktop app, the main advantages of the desktop app, and the facts, the maybe not advantages, the things that have kept me from talking about the desktop app up to the now. So let's start with that very first step and talk about how to get the desktop app on your device. To get to that desktop app, we're going to go to ClickUp.com apps. The fact that the icon here is twice as large as any other ones is really making me raise some eyebrows as to whether there could be some things coming to this feature quite soon. But all we need to worry about right now is the install button, which is pretty easy to locate. Just click on the device that you have here and it'll prompt you to download. Once you've downloaded the app and followed the installation instructions, you're going to see this little. You can barely even see it. This tiny little guy here. This is what you're going to see on your desktop. This is opening up the ClickUp desktop app. Magical, right? So now all we need to do is open it and I'll show you the lay of land. So here we are inside the ClickUp desktop app. Does it look familiar? As you can see, the navigation of the desktop app of ClickUp is exactly the same as the web version. The sidebar layout is whatever you set in the web. Those two things sync so they always look the same. And I really don't have much to say in terms of the differences of navigation. I could not find one major difference between navigating the desktop app and the web app. If you're Comfortable with web Desktop's going to be seamless. If you're not comfortable with web, well, desktop is going to be what ClickUp is, and you're going to get used to two at the same time because they are identical. But I didn't want to make a video just to tell you that, hey, it's the same thing. Because there are some key differences between the desktop app and the web app. There's a reason they created these two things, and I want to start with the. The advantages. So the major perks of using the desktop app start off with a more personal focus and. No, no, I. I mean literally personal focus. When you're inside a web browser, whether that's Chrome or Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge or whatever, when you're browsing the Internet, it's really easy to just get in the habit of control t and opening up a new tab to go down some kind of rabbit hole on Facebook or see a flashing notification in your email. As you can see right here, it is very minimal. There are no tabs here. There's a few basic settings, but that's it. When I have this open, I have nothing else to distract me. It is just the actual view of ClickUp. And I can even choose to have notifications on if I want. But if I get rid of those, this is pretty much a seamless and immersive experience, making it easier for me to focus without getting distracted by all the other things I could be doing. So if you're someone who gets distracted by those unread notifications in Facebook, or the unread emails in your inbox, or find yourself falling down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia during the work, this could be a really good way for you to help yourself focus by having a separate tab, a separate icon, a separate space just for work. The second reason to use the desktop app, and this is anecdote from some of you guys who have chimed in and told me that you like to use the desktop app because you find it a little bit faster when you have lagging Internet speeds. So I haven't been able to test this on my own end, but some folks do say that the desktop app gives them a faster experience than what they're going to get on Chrome. So slight speed improvements on the desktop app, if only only because you don't have to have Chrome open at the same time, is one of the other benefits of using the desktop app. The third reason to use the desktop app is the ability to auto launch at startup. So you'll see here in the window. If I go under Settings, there is a Launch at Startup option here and if I click on that, it'll actually check this box. That ensures that every time I turn on my PC, ClickUp will automatically open. So if you're someone who's trying to build ClickUp as a habit, and currently your habit is to go right into email or right into Asana, or right into whatever else you use, if you're trying to change that habit, one effective way might be to have ClickUp be first thing you see in the morning, and it pretty much be hard to miss because it'll open automatically when your computer turns on. If that's something that would be helpful to you. That is another benefit of the desktop app. Now, of course, I want to also talk about some of the cons of using the desktop app, because there are some disadvantages here. Like I said at the onset, though, I do expect these to change and I expect to see a lot more advantages coming in the very near future, just from what I'm hearing in the rumblings. But at this point, some of the disadvantages of desktop to me are a bit of a deal breaker, and ClickUp addresses each of these issues head on inside this Help article. So I'll actually link this in the description, but we'll walk through it here together. The first one is that integrations that use a Chrome extension are not supported in our desktop app. If you have Chrome extensions that you rely on using frequently in order to get your work done, that's going to be a bit of a problem because you're going to have to open Chrome every time you need those features. If you don't know what I'm talking about with a Chrome extension, first of all, you can learn about ClickUp's Chrome extension here, and second of all, I just wouldn't really worry about it. If you don't know what it is, you're not going to miss it and you are good to go. The second major feature that you are missing inside the desktop app, which to me is kind of a huge one, Clip. Clip allows you to record your screen or portions of your screen and then save those clips to share inside your ClickUp account. It's a really useful feature, and it's one that is not available if you're using the desktop app. So if you use Clip as much as I do, that is going to be a deal breaker and you will not be able to use the desktop app because at this point in time it is not supported. But again, if you are someone who never Sends voice clips, you never send video walkthroughs, or maybe you use another third party tool for that, like Loom. Then disregard this advice. You can use whatever you're normally using and just open that up on the side. The last feature you might see missing is embedded content. So things like bookmarks or being able to embed that Google Doc may get a little funky. If you're using the desktop app. This is not an always or an absolute. But if you're someone that embeds or links a lot of content and you expect that to be there on desktop, this doesn't mean your embedded content will break, but more likely you'll see a box that says hey, to see this, open it in a new tab and it'll actually open it in the browser, even though you started out in the desktop app. So just like many of these trade offs, it's not, you know, world shattering. It's just a slight inconvenience that if you need these features a whole lot, it might not make it make sense to use the desktop app. Finally, I just want to tackle three common FAQs about the desktop app questions that I have gotten or if I have had along the way about using this feature. The first one is about multiple windows. If I have one edition of the ClickUp Chrome app here, can I actually have another one? The answer is yes. All you have to do is go into file new window and you have another edition of ClickUp just like what you could do in a Chrome tab. You can even have both of these in a different workspace. You can see this is demo and this is my main one. And what about logging into separate email addresses? Because right now these are all different workspaces at the same account. Unfortunately, just like the browser version, you cannot be logged into two different accounts at the same time in the desktop app. But that is exactly the same as the browser. There's no difference here, but it's just crummy on both parts. So if you had one email with Layla at ProcessDriven and one email @LaylaXampleCompany, and you had these two different emails that you were constantly having to switch back and forth into the desktop app, just like the web browser will not allow you to be logged into two different accounts at the same time. Remember, by accounts I mean people. That's different than workspaces, really. Another commonality, but just something I want you to be aware of. Can you be in multiple instances? Yes. Can you use multiple workspaces? Yes. Can you use multiple user accounts? No. That's why it's really beneficial to have everything under the same email address. Next question is, will I get the most recent update if I am using the desktop app? The answer to this is yes or no. So inside the mobile app, if I just expand this back over, you do have the option to check for updates, which will allow you to update your app to the newest version. But in my experience, even the very newest version of the desktop app still is usually behind where the browser app is. So, for example, something like Clip is only in the web version. It arrived there first and it still isn't in the desktop app months and months later. Now, for many of us, this could be both a pro and a con, because sometimes when ClickUp updates, more bugs happen and many of us don't want that. So if you're someone who likes to take things slow, not be the first beta tester for each new release, the desktop app could actually give you a bit of an advantage on that front because you have a bit more control and knowledge as to when you're going to be updating to the newest version of ClickUp and you're getting brand new features when they're slightly less brand new. So hopefully more of the bugs would have been worked out. But for some people who read the release notes every single week and want to see exactly what's happening, you're probably going to prefer the browser version because you get all of the newest features and nothing is left out. So in terms of does this update. Yes, it's just a little bit different than what the mobile app is, where it just updates without you really having to consent or even know about it. The final question about the desktop app is, is the desktop app offline? Not really. I mean, ClickUp officially will say that yes, the desktop app is offline friendly, but some so is the web and mobile apps. They're all kind of the same. It doesn't give you much of an advantage to use desktop over mobile if offline is your main priority. Actually, let me just show the ClickUp doc. So, as you can see here at the very top, offline mode is available on all of the different platforms. And basically what it does is it allows you to create tasks and a few other minor elements while not having connection to the Internet. When you're in offline mode, you'll see a little icon like it's showing here in the Clip to the left. And you remember how I said offline mode is kind of like offline mode? Well, it comes down to features like this. You can see this in ClickUp's own Help docs. Only once you've recently viewed a task or saved it to your tray does ClickUp allow you to open it and view it inside offline mode. So really, the main features you have when you are away is the ability to create reminders, view your inbox, use the notepad and create tasks. But you can't actually interact with any of your data unless you've already put it in the tray or have it in home. So so it makes offline mode very watered down compared to what you would expect an offline mode to include. I suspect there's more to come here, especially if you're someone who's working in the field. This degree of functionality is not going to be very effective, and unless you're going to spring for 5G on every job site, gets to be a little ridiculous. In all, the offline mode in ClickUp is not very strong, and the desktop app doesn't give you any distinct advantages in a poor Internet environment than what you would have using the browser. Except maybe that it could be less greedy on bandwidth, depending on how hungry your Chrome is. If you're someone who needs offline mode, make sure you're saving things to your tray, but just know that ClickUp is not the strongest for offline users at this point in time. I think there's so much more that could be done here, and it's not a real reason to go desktop or mobile or whatever because it doesn't really make a huge difference no matter which app you're using. In conclusion, we talked about how to install the desktop app. What are the advantages, disadvantages and just kind of FAQs or facts about using the desktop app? I am sure I have missed things and hopefully by the time you're watching this there are even more updates and excitement about the desktop app. So if you guys would like to see a Part two or if you have your own questions about the desktop app of ClickUp, please do leave them in the comments below and you know the drill. Like and subscribe help this video reach more people and thank you guys so much for watching. I'll see you back here next time for another video about ClickUp process and everything in between. Until then, enjoy the process. Sam.