Serein

A lightweight, native Discord desktop client written in Rust, powered by egui and wgpu.

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📦 Downloads  •  ⚡ Highlights  •  ✨ Showcase  •  📊 Benchmarks  •  🛠️ Quick Start  •  📋 Features  •  🏗️ Architecture

[!WARNING] Unofficial and not endorsed by Discord. Serein communicates directly with Discord's public gateway and REST endpoints for your existing account. Automating normal accounts outside the official OAuth2/bot API violates Discord's Terms of Service and carries risk of account termination. Technical interoperability does not imply platform approval. Review the compatibility matrix and authentication guide before use.

Downloads & Installation

Pre-compiled releases for macOS, Linux, and Windows are published on GitHub Releases.

curl -fsSL https://viceverse-cz.github.io/Serein/setup.sh | sh

# Ubuntu / Debian: sudo apt install serein
# Fedora:          sudo dnf install serein
# openSUSE:        sudo zypper install serein
# Arch Linux:      sudo pacman -S serein

sudo eselect repository add vitaly-zdanevich-overlay git https://github.com/vitaly-zdanevich/gentoo-overlay.git
sudo emaint sync -r vitaly-zdanevich-overlay
echo 'net-im/serein ~amd64' | sudo tee /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/serein
sudo emerge --ask net-im/serein

nix run github:ViceVerse-cz/Serein#serein
nix profile install github:ViceVerse-cz/Serein#serein

{
    inputs = {
        nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
        home-manager = {
            url = "github:nix-community/home-manager";
            inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
        };
        serein = {
            url = "github:ViceVerse-cz/Serein";
            inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
        };
    };

    outputs = { nixpkgs, home-manager, ... }@inputs: {
        # NixOS
        nixosConfigurations.hostname = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
            system = "x86_64-linux";
            specialArgs = { inherit inputs; };
            modules = [ ./configuration.nix ];
        };

        # Standalone Home Manager
        homeConfigurations.username = home-manager.lib.homeManagerConfiguration {
            pkgs = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.x86_64-linux;
            extraSpecialArgs = { inherit inputs; };
            modules = [ ./home-manager.nix ];
        };
    };
}

{
    nixosConfigurations.hostname = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
        system = "x86_64-linux";
        specialArgs = { inherit inputs; };
        modules = [
            ./configuration.nix
            home-manager.nixosModules.home-manager
            {
                home-manager.extraSpecialArgs = { inherit inputs; };
                home-manager.users.username = import ./home-manager.nix;
            }
        ];
    };
}

{
    inputs,
    pkgs,
    ...
}: {
    environment.systemPackages = [
        inputs.serein.packages.${pkgs.stdenv.hostPlatform.system}.default
    ];
}

{
    inputs,
    pkgs,
    ...
}: {
    home.packages = [
        inputs.serein.packages.${pkgs.stdenv.hostPlatform.system}.default
    ];
}

chmod +x ./serein-*-Linux-X64.AppImage
./serein-*-Linux-X64.AppImage

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\setup.ps1

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\setup.ps1 -Uninstall

powershell -File .\install-notifications.ps1

brew tap ViceVerse-cz/serein
brew install --cask serein

Highlights

• ⚡ Pure Native Performance: Built with pure Rust, egui, and wgpu. Immediate-mode rendering with minimal idle CPU, low memory footprint, and instantaneous launch times—zero Electron, Node.js, or web runtime overhead.
• 🌐 Direct Gateway & REST Transports: Direct connection to Discord's official endpoints with active rate-limiting cooldowns, heartbeat handling, reconnect/resume loops, and partial payload patching.
• 🔒 Secure OS Credential Storage: Session tokens use your operating system's secure vault by default (macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager, or Linux Secret Service). Settings › Storage offers an explicit, unencrypted plaintext fallback when the keyring does not work.
• 🛡️ Ephemeral Authentication Webview: Sign-in uses Discord's official hosted login page inside a temporary native webview (WKWebView, WebView2, or WebKitGTK) supporting email/password, QR login, and MFA. An origin-checked handoff secures the session credential and immediately terminates the webview.
• 💾 Bounded Local Persistence: Recent chat history, drafts, image previews, settings, and diagnostics are stored in an account-isolated, bounded local SQLite database. All local data is strictly cleared upon explicit logout.
• 🎙️ Voice Calls, Video & Screen Sharing: Complete native voice engine with 1-to-1 and group DM calls, server voice channels, push-to-talk, Sonora AEC3 acoustic echo cancellation, RNNoise noise suppression, Opus codec, and DAVE v1 end-to-end encryption. Includes native screen capture (macOS ScreenCaptureKit, Windows Graphics Capture, Linux portal/PipeWire with VA-API/NVENC hardware encoding and software fallback; Linux native capture remains unverified) and incoming stream & camera video playback with hardware-accelerated decoding (VideoToolbox, VA-API, DirectX).
• 🧵 Forum Channels & Active Threads: Browse forum channels, view posts sorted by recent activity, read message threads with unread indicators, and create new forum posts directly in-app.
• ⚙️ Server Administration Suite: Full server management interface including Server Profiles (banners, icons, traits, descriptions), custom sticker management, role editor with fine-grained permission matrix, paginated audit logs with action filters, invite manager with revocation, integrations and webhooks, and member moderation.
• ✨ GIF & Twemoji Picker: Instant KLIPY GIF search with favorites and one-click sending, full Twemoji picker with search and quick-reactions, plus custom guild emojis.
• 📎 Multi-Attachment Batch Uploads: Composer staging tray supporting multiple files of any type (PDF, ZIP, 3D STL, videos, audio, images) with file-type badges, thumbnails, size indicators, individual removal, and progress tracking.
• 👤 Native Profile Customization: In-app profile editor for global display names, bios / about me, pronouns, and custom accent colors with real-time live preview cards.
• 🎨 Extensions & Theme Shop: Git-backed plugin engine and community theme shop with preview cards, color preset toggles, permission verification, and a built-in deleted-message retention protector.
• 🎬 Rich Media & Video Player: Inline video playback for MOV, MP4, and WebM attachments where platform codecs are available, interactive seekable voice message waveforms, right-click media save/copy context menus, and full-resolution image viewer modals.
• ⌨️ Keybinds & Shortcuts: Built-in keybind reference sheet styled with raised keycaps, quick edit (Up), quick delete (Backspace), and intuitive keyboard navigation.
• 🎮 Rich Presence & Game Detection: Built-in Discord IPC and WebSocket RPC servers, plus executable-based detection of running games, showing live game activities in member rosters, DM lists, and user profiles, with opt-in system tray integration.

Feature Showcase

Voice Calls & Live Screen Sharing	User Settings & Profile Customizer
Server Administration & Profiles	Threads & Forum Channels
Multi-File Attachment Uploads	GIFs & Twemoji Picker

Measured Performance vs. Official Discord

Testing Scenario: Browsing channels while joined in a Voice Channel (VC) and streaming screen at 60 FPS on macOS.

Official Discord (Electron)	Serein (Native Rust)
RAM: ~1,178.4 MB across 7 processes	RAM: 129.7 MB single process
CPU: 22.8% total	CPU: 8.1% total

Quick Start

Prerequisites

Rust 1.99.1 is pinned. Ensure you have the standard C/C++ toolchain, CMake, Git and libclang installed for your platform (the bundled BoringSSL TLS library is built from source): - macOS: Xcode command-line tools (xcode-select --install) - Linux: GCC/Clang, ALSA development headers, pkg-config, GTK 4, WebKitGTK 6.0, fontconfig, and Vulkan drivers (see Platform Support) - Windows: Visual Studio C++ build tools and WebView2 Runtime

Running Locally

# 1. Run synthetic conversations; extension browsing uses public GitHub downloads
cargo run --locked --features demo -- --demo

# 2. Launch standard client with voice (uses saved login or official webview)
cargo run --locked

Default source builds keep SQLite, image caches, extensions and game metadata in the OS-local serein-development directory, isolated from installed Serein data and safe from cargo clean. Set SEREIN_DATA_DIR to another absolute path when development copies need separate data roots; packaged builds use the normal serein directory when the variable is absent. Login tokens remain in the operating-system credential store under separate development and packaged-build entries.

Workspace Commands

# Run full workspace validation (formatting, Clippy, tests, policy checks)
cargo xtask check

# Run release reducer benchmark
cargo replay

# Run authentication bridge JS test harness
node tests/login-handoff.cjs

# Package release including voice (macOS .app bundle, Linux .deb by default)
cargo xtask package

Feature Matrix

Architecture Overview

Serein is engineered as a clean multi-crate Cargo workspace, isolating UI rendering from networking, persistence, and service protocols:

serein/
├── apps/
│   └── desktop/          # Application entrypoint, CLI flags, window lifecycle
├── crates/
│   ├── client-core/      # Client state coordinator, generation tracking, events
│   ├── session-cache/    # In-memory bounded cache and state reconciliation
│   ├── ui/               # egui widgets, message virtualizer, themes, design tokens
│   ├── model/            # Strongly-typed Discord domain entities
│   ├── discord-protocol/ # Wire protocol serialization and partial payload patches
│   ├── discord-api/      # HTTP/2 REST client with rate limiting and backoff
│   ├── discord-gateway/  # WebSocket gateway client with heartbeat and resume
│   ├── discord-voice/    # Opus codecs, RTP/UDP transport, DAVE v1, Sonora AEC, RNNoise, video decoding
│   ├── local-store/      # Bounded SQLite database for history, drafts, settings
│   ├── platform/         # OS credential store (Keychain/CredManager/SecretService)
│   └── test-support/     # Deterministic synthetic fixtures and mocks
└── tools/
    ├── replay-bench/     # Benchmarking harness for state reducers
    └── xtask/            # Workspace automation tasks (packaging, checks, linting)

Security & Storage Policy

• Token Protection: Tokens use the native OS credential store by default (macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager, Linux Secret Service). An explicit Storage setting allows private, bounded plaintext files when OS saving fails; disabling it deletes those secret files. Active tokens remain redacted in memory.
• Local Cache Bounds: SQLite databases store recent channel history, drafts, settings, diagnostics, and image preview metadata within bounded byte and count limits. The local SQLite store is not encrypted by the application.
• Sanitary Logout: Executing an explicit logout destroys active network sessions, purges active secrets from memory, deletes the token from the OS credential store, and erases that account's local cache and drafts.
• Zero Telemetry: Serein contains no analytics, telemetry, background crash collectors, or tracking beacons.
• Platform Integrity: No CAPTCHA/MFA bypasses, bot substitutions, token scrapers, or third-party relays. Every Discord connection presents one consistent browser identity matching the platform webview (unofficial; see authentication); it is not randomized or rotated to evade detection.

For full details, review the Storage Policy and Threat Model.

Documentation

• Architecture & Monorepo Design
• Discord Compatibility & Protocol Details
• Authentication & Login Handoff
• Storage Policy & Cache Retention
• Platform Support & Build Requirements
• Nix Package & Development Shell
• Voice Architecture & Procedure
• Design Tokens & UI Styling
• Extensions & Plugin Architecture
• Extension SDK Creator Wiki
• SDK Examples and Offline Authoring Guide
• Theme API Specification
• Threat Model & Security
• Third-Party Licenses & Notices

License

Original Serein code is dual-licensed under either: - MIT License (LICENSE-MIT) - Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)

at your option. Third-party library notices, bundled font licenses (Inter, Noto Sans CJK/Arabic), and Twemoji graphics licenses are cataloged in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Demo fixtures and simulated actions are excluded from normal app and CI packages. Build with --features demo and launch with --demo to enable them; --demo-* scenario flags additionally require --demo. cargo xtask package always builds without demo support, while offline tests can still use synthetic fixtures.