CL Desktop

A dedicated Craigslist browser in a skinnable desktop wrapper is what you’ll find in CL Desktop. The Adobe AIR application has a few nice perks overall, with a couple more baubles than you’d find online–such as naming and saving search requirements and saving links to favorite posts. You’ll also be able to choose from a handful of skins (the black ones are best) and set the number of search results to display. Beyond these customizations, CL Desktop mostly mirrors Craigslist’s searching filters, down to showing only those records that include photos. Well-placed navigation buttons let you easily view the whole post, open it online, and respond to a classified listing directly from the application’s interface.

However, a few other features are absent or could be improved. Local-level neighborhood search hasn’t been implemented in the U.S., which put a hamper on my house-hunting. Likewise, the text in some of the returned results cut off instead of wrapping to the next line, which made the interface look a little sloppy. CL Desktop is also only currently available in the U.S., Canada, and Germany, and new features only roll out based on the critical mass of user demand. The search results were fairly close in our tests, but not in lock step–CL Desktop dragged by a hair.

Regardless of the few setbacks, this free Craigslist companion is a good stand-in for the spare online version, especially for power users.