We are currently focused on support for web-based apps on desktop and mobile and native apps on mobile. Because of this, first class support for native desktop apps isn’t currently on our roadmap.
Ultimately, our roadmap is driven by what types of apps developers want to build and users want to use. We’d like to hear your feedback on this priority.
Are you planning to build a native desktop app and does Blockstack Authentication as is work for you? What would you like to see?
It’s quite interesting to think about the implications of developing native apps for blockstack. Because of how profile.json’s work by using the URLs as app-buckets, most apps would probably have to register a custom url scheme that doesn’t collide with other apps lest they share data (not very safe, but also a hacky way to implement cross-app/shared data buckets).
As for developing native apps, Electron-type apps would probably be the easiest to start with, as they have a built in webserver to redirect to from the authentication popup (much like the browser action in the mobile setting). Native apps would probably have to follow a solution like the ones laid out for OAuth apps, though only the last one will work for now due to how the browser(.blockstack.org) works afaik.
Was anybody able to make this work for file urls (e.g. file://local…/index.html)? I also wonder if it is somehow possible to sync my webapp with the electron app, when both are on different urls…