Not a high-quality Mac app.

I really wanted this app to be great. It just disappointed me repeatedly. It doesn’t have the level of UI polish that Mac users expect.

1. Issues with their network/API stack. There are some issues retrieving chats for certain friends. For several friends, the chat history would continue to load infinitely and never finish. It’s understandable; they’re using private APIs, and stuff is likely to break.
2. The text entry box is HUGE and can’t be reduced to a reasonable size. (Minimum appears to be 25% of the window height!)
3. The default 3-pane design is cluttered and not very intelligent. There is no reason for Online to be in a separate list. Look at Facebook Messenger for iPad for an intelligent tab design.
4. The bottom of the window is littered with unnecessary icons – settings, view management, online/offline status. That’s what the menu bar is for. (And I don’t need to see “Press Enter to send” in every tab.
5. The visual design just doesn’t feel like high-quality. The fonts in the conversation list are oddly non-standard. An ugly “X” icon appears when hovering over every tab. The default font size for conversations is gigantic. The sticker window looks like a throwback from 10 years ago.
6. There’s almost nothing in the menu bar, or keyboard shortcuts for anything. All of the functionality is shoved into different corners of the UI — right-click menus and such. The expected Mac keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Cmd-W to close a conversation tab, Ctrl-Tab or Cmd-Shift-] to change tab) don’t work as expected.
7. During start, there’s an ugly splash screen and loading status - not very Mac.

The dev needs to stop adding feature bloat (annotated screenshot tool? menu bar icon? themes? customizable selection background color? Mr. Potato Head build-your-own user interface studio?) and focus on polishing this app and improving the details of the experience. It looks like they might benefit from teaming up with a UI designer who has experience designing for the Mac platform.

At this point, I just prefer using Facebooks web app for messages instead of this app. Astro wasn’t the native-feeling Facebook Messenger experience that I was hoping for.

greensgod about Astro for Facebook Messenger