Desk for Hark

An unofficial Windows desktop app for Hark, with hotkeys, screenshots, themes and a proper tray icon.

Unofficial. Desk for Hark is an independent open-source project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Hark. "Hark" is a trademark of its owner. The app simply loads https://app.hark.com in its own window.

Download

Grab the latest installer from Releases:

• Desk.for.Hark_x.y.z_x64-setup.exe (recommended)
• Desk.for.Hark_x.y.z_x64_en-US.msi (for managed installs)

Windows 10 (1809+) or Windows 11, 64-bit. It installs to C:\Program Files\Desk for Hark.

Updates are manual for now. Tray > Check for updates (manual)… opens the latest release; download the new installer and run it over your current version. Your settings and sign-in are kept.

The installers aren't code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen may warn you. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Features

Faster ways in

• Show/hide hotkey: Alt+Space (fallback Ctrl+Shift+Space).
• Quick Ask: Alt+Shift+Space opens a small floating box. Type, press Enter, and it goes straight to Hark.
• Screenshot to Hark: Alt+Shift+S lets you snip any part of the screen and attaches it to your message.
• Send selection: select text in any app, press Alt+Shift+C, and it lands in Hark's message box. Your clipboard is put back afterwards.
• Voice: Alt+Shift+V presses Hark's voice button, and the microphone is allowed for app.hark.com so there's no prompt.
• Send to: right-click any file in Explorer, then Send to > Desk for Hark to attach it (turn this on from the tray or Settings).
• Jump list: right-click the taskbar icon for Quick Ask, Screenshot, Open Hark and Settings.

Feels native

• Tray icon (white, black or colour, matching your taskbar) with an unread dot when Hark replies while the app is hidden, plus a taskbar badge.
• Always on top and Compact mode (a slim window pinned to the right edge of the screen).
• Native Windows notifications for every chat and project. The app checks Hark's own unread status every few seconds (inside your signed-in session, nothing leaves your PC), so when a reply lands anywhere you get New reply in , with the start of the reply for the chat you have open. Click it to switch straight there, without reloading Hark. While the window is hidden or minimised, the open chat isn't marked as read until you're back, and the tray and taskbar dot stays until then. Tray > Notification status… shows the last check, what's waiting for you and any error. Tray > Send a test notification checks that Windows is showing them; if not, turn off Do not disturb and allow Desk for Hark in Windows Settings > System > Notifications.
• Starts hidden in the tray when launched at login.
• Themed or Mica title bar, and Windows snap layouts.
• Single instance, remembers its size and position, closes to the tray.
• Settings (tray > Settings…): Save, Save and restart, or Close to leave without saving.

Themes

• Everyday: Hark (default), Midnight (true black), Teal and High contrast.
• Global events, each with its own animated effect:
  • Christmas: pine green, cranberry and gold, with snow.
  • New Year: black and champagne gold, with fireworks.
  • Halloween: charcoal and pumpkin orange, with bats.
  • Valentine's Day: wine and blush pink, with floating hearts.
  • Lunar New Year: red and gold, with lanterns.
  • St Patrick's Day: emerald and gold, with falling clovers.
  • Earth Day: forest and sky blue, with drifting leaves.
• Moods: Aurora (night sky with moving green and violet light) and Ocean (navy and aqua, with bubbles).
• Effects sit on top of the page, never block clicks, and can be turned off in Settings > Theme effects. They switch off when Windows is set to reduce motion. Only colours change; Hark's layout stays the same. On every Desk dark theme (the Hark theme is left exactly as Hark designed it), text stays white and readable: anything too faint against its background is brightened automatically.
• Follow Windows (Hark's light or dark mode plus your accent colour) and Scheduled (dark at night, Hark's light mode by day, at times you choose).
• Accent colour, font, text size and compact spacing.
• theme.css for your own CSS, reloaded live when you save it.

Reliability

• A clean offline screen that reconnects by itself.
• Automatic recovery if the page crashes or freezes.
• Downloads: every file you save from Hark opens a Save As dialog right away, in the last folder you saved to (Downloads the first time), while the file is already downloading in the background, with a notification when it's saved. The dialog is kept ready from launch so it opens quickly. Tray > Notification status… shows how long the last download took, step by step. Open Downloads folder is in the tray. Files Hark gives you are saved exactly as they are, so Arabic and other non-Latin text stays intact. Images and PDFs are saved too, rather than opened in your browser. Tray > Notification status… shows the last download and what happened to it. Clicking a file in a chat shows Hark's usual preview; it only saves when you click Download, with no extra window. Saving runs in the background, so the window stays responsive (the browser's own save picker, which hung the window, is replaced by the app's). When Hark asks for a new window on its own address (as its preview Download does), the app never builds one, since that froze the whole app; the file is fetched in your signed-in page and saved, and a real Hark page opens in your browser. Google and Apple sign-in popups work as usual.
• Project files panel: Ctrl+Shift+F in a project (or the FILES tab on the right edge, or Tray > Project files) lists every file in that project's chat, sent by Hark or uploaded by you, with search. Click one to preview it (images, PDFs, code and text, audio and video); ⌕ scrolls back to the message it came in (as far as needed, with Cancel); Message in the viewer shows that message and your request without scrolling; download it straight to Downloads, or ⧉ Ask in chat to have Hark send it again (fills the message box; you press Enter). If a file can't be shown, the viewer says why and offers Copy details (no private tokens). It only lists files that appeared in the chat (up to the last 10 pages of history). Turn it off in Settings > Files panel.
• Drag files from Explorer straight onto the window to attach them.
• Ctrl+R/F5 reload, Ctrl +/-/0 and Ctrl+wheel zoom.

Everything is configurable from Tray > Settings….

Quick Ask, Send selection, screenshots, Send to and the voice hotkey work by typing into, pasting into or clicking Hark's page. If Hark changes its layout, some of them may need an update.

What's new

See CHANGELOG.md.

Privacy

The app collects nothing itself. See PRIVACY.md.

Security

• Only https://app.hark.com and the app's own bundled pages can call the app's native functions. Google and Apple sign-in pages load inside the window but get no native access.
• Settings and Quick Ask commands only work from the app's own pages.
• Every other link opens in your default browser.
• Updates are verified against the updater public key in tauri.conf.json before installing.

Build from source

Requirements: Windows, Rust, Node.js LTS, and the WebView2 runtime (built into Windows 11).

npm ci
npx tauri dev      # run
npx tauri build    # installers in src-tauri\target\release\bundle

Icons are generated from assets/: python assets/make_icon.py, python assets/make_tray_icons.py, python assets/make_installer_art.py, then npx tauri icon assets/icon-source.png.

Releases (maintainers)

Every push to main builds the installers on GitHub Actions and publishes a release tagged v<version> (bump version in src-tauri/tauri.conf.json). The release notes come from that version's section in CHANGELOG.md, so add one with every change.

Name	Kind	Purpose
TAURI_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY	secret	Updater signing key. Without it the build still works but ships no update files.
TAURI_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY_PASSWORD	secret	Only if the key has a password.
WINDOWS_SIGN_COMMAND	variable	Optional Authenticode sign command, %1 = file to sign.
SIGN_SECRET_1..3	secrets	Optional credentials the sign command needs, exposed as env vars.

Licence

MIT. The licence covers this code only and grants no rights to Hark's name, logo or service.