Drift Desktop App Overview

Click below to download the Drift Desktop App:

System requirements 

Windows 10 or above, 64-bit

macOS 10.13 or above 

If you're a Premium or Enterprise customer and would like to use the desktop app, make sure to reach out to your CSM.  Not sure who your CSM is?  Just chat in and we can find them for you!

What is the Drift Desktop App?

The Drift Desktop App is an application for your desktop device which will allow you to quickly access your Drift conversations! When using this app, messaging prospects via Drift live chat will be faster, easier, and more reliable than ever. Currently, the app only supports live chat.

Why should I use the Drift Desktop App?

The Drift desktop app was built to allow you to respond to leads faster than ever. The app is much faster, simpler to use, and comes loaded with new features. Download it, sign in, turn on desktop notifications, and get alerted immediately when leads come to your site. Here’s a detailed breakdown of all the new stuff:

All your conversations, now in one place

Never lose a conversation again! Every conversation you’ve ever had lives in your sidebar on the left. Simply scroll down to find an older conversation!

Search your conversations

You can search all the conversations you've had by typing the name of the contact or a phrase that was used in conversations. 

A cleaner view that keeps itself tidy

Conversations that haven’t had any activity for a few days become inactive and hide from view! Click the “Show inactive conversations” button to view them again. Learn more about inactive conversations here.

Faster, more reliable desktop notifications 

Respond to visitors even faster than before. Turn on desktop notifications and let the leads roll in from your site! Respond inline directly through the notification.

In addition to inline notification replies, the app also has notification badging! You will be able to clearly see when you have a notification that needs your attention by simply glancing at your dock. A red dot will appear at the top right of your desktop app icon to indicate that you have a notification to reply to! Learn more about how notifications work in the desktop app here.

Powerful features at your Fingertips 

Use slash commands when typing top quickly add tags, send transcripts, add internal notes, and so much more for a seamless experience when chatting. Learn more about slash commands here.

Never worry about closing a conversation 

When you’re done chatting, just let the conversation stay in the sidebar. No need to close it! You can hide it by clicking the “x”button to hide the conversation. Learn more about hiding conversations here.

Install & Updates

How to Install:

To install the Drift Desktop App, click the download button at the top of this page, which will download a .dmg file to your Mac computer (or .exe file on Windows). To open, simply double click the .dmg or .exe file! If this does not open the app, you can also right click the .dmg or .exe file to open it instead. From there, you will be prompted to sign in!

• System requirements: macOS 10.13 or above, Windows 10 or above

How to Update:

You will occasionally see a notification from Drift that looks like this:

This means that a new version of Drift is available to download. Just click on the notification to start the update process and get the latest version of Drift. We highly recommend that you click on the notification right away as soon as you see it to start the update process. If you missed the notification, you can also trigger the update manually.

To manually check for updates, you can click on the “Drift” option in your menu bar, and select “Check for Updates” -- if you are using an outdated version of the app, this will start installing the latest version of the Drift app. Make sure to periodically do this if you're not seeing the latest features in the app.

Signing in:

To sign in into the desktop app, click the “sign in” button here:

This will redirect you to the web browser sign in page. Once you enter your credentials there, you will be prompted to open the Drift desktop app! Once you select that open, you will be brought to your inbox in the Drift Desktop app.

Where to give feedback:

We would love to hear from you! We want to grow and develop our app in order to better suit your needs and improve the overall user experience, so your feedback is essential to us. To submit feedback directly to our product team, go to your right sidebar, and hit the megaphone icon - this will prompt you to enter a rating as well as any additional written feedback.

If you haven’t tried the Drift Desktop App yet, you can download it at the top of this article! 

Need troubleshooting help? Click here.

***Note: The Drift desktop app does not yet support all of the features of our paid plans - for this reason, if you were on the Free plan but upgrade to one of our paid plans you can opt out of the Desktop App view by going to app.drift.com/conversations and clicking 'Switch to Drift's legacy live chat' at the top of your view!