How to Get the Trello Desktop Client on Linux

There’s no doubt that Trello is a great program. It helps both teams and individuals become more productive. The program emulates the experience of using Post-it notes to track the progress of work. It has quickly become one of the de facto tools in doing collaborative work and managing personal projects as well.

Trello is available for web, mobile (App Store and Google Play), and desktop (Mac and Windows). It supports most platforms. However, there isn’t a Linux desktop version from the creators, which is too bad for the Linux users. Luckily, there’s a fix, thanks to generous Daniel Chatfield.

Remember, this is not an official desktop client. It was only built by a generous person for Linux users who love Trello. The program is hosted on this GitHub page. Let’s go through the installation process step by step.

Downloading the Application Zip

This link should take you to the download page. Select the Linux option to download the zip file. You can also download the source, but building it takes longer and is more complex; I’ll ignore that option in this tutorial. Unzip the downloaded file to any location of your choice. Make sure to remember the path to the directory where you unzipped the file.

Running the Trello Desktop Client

From the directory where Trello is installed, open your terminal and enter:

./Trello

This should open the desktop client. From here, you can log in to your account or sign up for a free account.

Running the desktop client like this every time becomes too much work at some point, so we will create an icon for the desktop client; that way, a single click will be all that is required to run the client. The process of creating the icon has been tested and works perfectly on Linux Mint. It should work fine on any Ubuntu-based distro and should not differ for other distros. Make sure to report any problems you face in the process.

Create a file named Trello.desktop in the “~/.local/share/applications” folder. The file should have the following content:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Trello Client
Exec=<path to the unzipped Trello folder>/Trello
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=<path to the unzipped Trello folder>/resources/app/static/Icon.png

Now, from the applications menu the Trello icon should be visible to you. You can now launch the application by just clicking on the icon. An alternative way of creating the icon on Linux Mint is by using the Menu Editor to add a new menu item. For the command option, enter:

<path to the unzipped Trello folder>/Trello

For the icon, navigate to “resources/app/static/” from the Trello directory, then select the icon.

Conclusion

Trello is a tool that can drastically increase productivity. Although it does not come with an official Linux desktop client, Linux users are not left out of the fun. The unofficial desktop client is a great tool and works fine without ruining the experience gained using the official version. Have fun with your Trello client!