Use the desktop app

VNCtask has a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux. It gives you a dedicated window, a tray icon and task notifications that arrive in your operating system — so you see them even when the app is behind other windows.

Get and install it

Open your VNClagoon portal and use its Get the app entry (the same place that links the suite’s other clients).
Download the build for your platform and install it.
Open it and sign in — the desktop app uses the same suite sign-in, so there is nothing extra to configure.

Your tasks and settings are the same as in the browser; the desktop app is another way in, not a separate account.

Tray icon

The app keeps a tray icon (menu-bar icon on macOS, notification-area icon on Windows). Its menu lets you:

Open the app.
Pause notifications — a do-not-disturb switch that silences notifications without quitting.
Quit the app.

Closing the window on Windows or Linux hides the app to the tray rather than stopping it, so it keeps receiving notifications. To leave completely, use Quit in the tray menu.

Task notifications in your operating system

When a task notification arrives, the desktop app raises an operating-system notification — the same kind you get from any other app — with the task’s title and a short body. Selecting it opens that task in VNCtask.

The app is careful about noise: if the VNCtask window is already in front of you, it does not pop a redundant notification. (Notices that should always be shown, such as app updates, bypass this.)

Unread badge

The number of unread notifications is mirrored onto your device’s own surfaces:

macOS — a badge on the app’s Dock icon.
Windows — an overlay on the taskbar icon.
Tray — the count in the tray icon’s tooltip.

The badge clears when you read your notifications, so an at-a-glance look at your taskbar tells you whether anything new needs you.

Updates

VNCtask checks the download server for a new version shortly after it starts, every hour while it runs, and again when you bring the window to the front or wake the computer (that last check is limited to once every ten minutes). You are offered a release promptly rather than hours later, and it never downloads anything behind your back.

When a new build is available you get a dialog telling you which version is ready and which one you are on, with three choices:

Download & install — fetches the build, then offers Restart now (or Later, in which case it installs when you next quit).
Later — dismisses the prompt. You are asked once per version, so it does not nag you about the same build again.
Open download page — opens your organization’s Clients page in the VNClagoon portal, for a machine that cannot reach the download server.

If the app is not in front of you when a version appears, you also get an operating-system notification. Otherwise the dialog is the only prompt.

You can also check by hand: Settings → Software updates shows the build you are on and the live state of the check — checking, up to date, downloading with a percentage, ready to install, or an error with the reason it failed. Check for updates asks the download server now, and Install and restart applies a build that is ready. In the web app the same entry says that updates are only available in the installed app.