Watch a planner work for ten minutes and you notice something about the browser. Transportial is open, but so is the mail client, the carrier portal, a spreadsheet someone sent, the customs site, and four tabs whose purpose nobody remembers. The planning board is in there somewhere. Finding it is a small tax, paid a few hundred times a day.
Today Transportial installs properly on macOS, Windows and Linux. It is the same platform you already use, with the same login and the same data — it simply stops behaving like a tab and starts behaving like an application.
It is where you expect it to be
The desktop app lives in your dock, your taskbar or your Start menu, with its own icon. Pin it once and it is one click away for good. No URL to remember, no bookmark bar to scan, no alt-tab roulette through twenty tabs that all look alike at thumbnail size.
Type "Transportial" into Spotlight or the Start menu and it comes up, the way Outlook or Excel does. Close the window and the app keeps running quietly in the background — click the icon and you are straight back where you were.
You can see what is waiting without opening it
Unread chats and alerts show as a number on the app icon. A planner glancing at the dock knows there are four things waiting without opening anything, and knows there are none without checking. That single number removes a surprising amount of low-grade tab-checking from the day.
When something does need attention, it arrives as a real system notification — the same kind your mail client sends. Click it and Transportial opens directly on that trip or that conversation, in the window you already had open. Not the dashboard, not a fresh login screen. The thing the notification was about.
Two monitors, finally used properly
This is the part planners tend to notice first. Any view can be detached into its own window: the planboard on the left screen, the trip you are building on the right, the map planner below. Drag them where you want, size them how you want, and the app remembers the layout for next time — including which screen each window was on.
In a browser that means duplicate tabs, a shared session that fights itself, and a layout that resets the moment anything reloads. Here each window is a real window. It also means a dispatcher can keep a live board permanently visible on a second screen while working normally on the first, without one interfering with the other.
It survives the lid closing
Close a laptop at the depot, open it at the office two hours later. In a browser tab, that is the moment things get quietly strange: the page looks fine, the connection is dead, and updates stop arriving until someone thinks to refresh.
The desktop app knows the machine went to sleep. It renews the session and reconnects on its own, before you have finished typing your first message. If the network is genuinely gone, it says so plainly and keeps retrying rather than pretending everything is fine.
It updates itself
New versions download in the background and install when you choose to restart — never in the middle of a dispatch. Nobody has to chase installers, and nobody ends up three versions behind because they always click "later".
Installing it
The download comes straight from transportial.com. Pick your platform on the desktop app page — it highlights the one that matches the machine you are browsing from, and every other option stays visible for the times you are downloading on someone else's behalf.
- macOS: a normal .dmg. Drag it to Applications. The app is signed with our Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple, so it opens without security warnings.
- Windows: a standard installer. Run it, and Transportial appears in the Start menu.
- Linux: AppImage, .deb and .rpm, so it fits whatever your IT team already uses.
Sign in with the account you use today. There is nothing to migrate, no separate setup, and no extra cost — it is included with every Transportial plan. If your team is already logged in on the web, they can keep using the web. Both work against the same platform, at the same time, on the same data.
What it is not
It is worth being clear: this is not a different product, and it is not an offline copy of your operation. Transportial is a live system — trips change because someone else moved them, ETAs update because a truck moved. The desktop app needs a connection for the same reason the web app does. What it adds is presence: it is on your machine, it tells you when something happens, and it gives your screens the space that planning actually needs.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need a separate account for the Transportial desktop app?
- No. Sign in with the same account you use in the browser. There is nothing to migrate and no separate setup — the desktop app works against the same platform and the same data.
- Does the desktop app cost extra?
- No. It is included with every Transportial plan, including the free Starter plan.
- Which download do I choose for my Mac?
- The download page detects your machine and highlights the right build. Apple Silicon covers M1 and newer; Intel covers older Macs. If you are unsure, the Intel build runs on both through Rosetta.
- Does the Transportial desktop app work offline?
- No, and deliberately so. Transport planning is live — trips, ETAs and messages change because of what other people and vehicles are doing, so the app needs a connection for the same reason the web app does. When the network drops it tells you clearly and reconnects on its own once it returns.
- How do updates work?
- New versions download in the background and install when you choose to restart, so an update never interrupts a dispatch. There is nothing for IT to distribute after the first install.
- Can our IT team roll it out across the fleet office?
- Yes. Windows ships as a standard installer, Linux as .deb, .rpm and AppImage, and macOS as a signed and notarised .dmg. All downloads are served from transportial.com.
