sindresorhus / caprine

Elegant Facebook Messenger desktop app

Caprine

Elegant Facebook Messenger desktop app

Caprine is an unofficial and privacy-focused Facebook Messenger app with many useful features.

Caprine is feature complete. However, we welcome contributions for improvements and bug fixes.
Website

Highlights

• Dark theme
• Vibrant theme*
• Privacy-focused
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Menu bar mode*
• Work Chat support
• Code blocks
• Touch Bar support*
• Custom styles
• Cross-platform
• Silent auto-updates
• Custom text size
• Emoji style setting
• Respects Do Not Disturb*

*macOS only

Install

macOS 10.12+ (Intel and Apple Silicon), Linux (x64 and arm64), and Windows 10+ (64-bit) are supported.

Download the latest version on the website or below.

macOS

Download the .dmg file.

Or with Homebrew: $ brew install caprine

Linux

Distribution	Repository	Automatic Updates	Maintainer	How to install
Arch Linux	Community	✔️	Frederik Schwan	pacman -S caprine
Debian / Ubuntu (manually)	GitHub	❌	Official	Download the .deb file
Debian / Ubuntu (deb-get)	GitHub	✔️	Official	Follow the instructions below
Debian / Ubuntu (APT)	Gemfury	✔️	Lefteris Garyfalakis	Follow the instructions below
RHEL / Fedora / openSUSE	Copr	✔️	Dušan Simić	Follow the instructions below
AppImage	GitHub	✔️	Official	Follow the instructions below
Flatpak	Flathub	✔️	Dušan Simić	Visit Flathub and follow the instructions
Snap	Snapcraft	✔️	Official	Visit Snapcraft and follow the instructions

Installation using deb-get:

• Download and install deb-get.
• Run deb-get install caprine.

Note: deb-get is 3rd party software, not to be associated with apt-get.

APT repository (Gemfury):

Run the following command to add it:

wget -q -O- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sindresorhus/caprine/main/packages/deb/addRepo.sh | sudo bash

Alternatively (for advanced users):

# Add the repository
echo "deb [trusted=yes] https://apt.fury.io/lefterisgar/ * *" > \
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/caprine.list

# Update the package indexes
sudo apt update

# Install Caprine
sudo apt install caprine

Copr:

For Fedora / RHEL:

sudo dnf copr enable dusansimic/caprine
sudo dnf install caprine

For openSUSE:

• Create a new file in /etc/zypp/repos.d/caprine.repo.
• Copy the contents of this file and paste them into the file you just created.

Alternatively use the following one-liner:

curl -s https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/dusansimic/caprine/repo/opensuse-tumbleweed/dusansimic-caprine-opensuse-tumbleweed.repo | sudo tee /etc/zypp/repos.d/caprine.repo

AppImage:

Download the .AppImage file.

Make it executable:

chmod +x Caprine-2.xx.x.AppImage

Then run it!

About immutable Linux distributions:

Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite, EndlessOS, CarbonOS and other immutable distributions only support Flatpak and/or AppImage.*

Note: On some distributions Flatpak must be pre-configured manually.

Windows

Method	Repository	Automatic Updates	Maintainer	How to install
Manually	GitHub	❌	Official	Download the .exe file
Chocolatey	Community	✔️	Michael Quevillon	choco install caprine

For taskbar notification badges to work on Windows 10, you'll need to enable them in Taskbar Settings.

Features

Dark mode

You can toggle dark mode in the View menu or with Command d / Control d.

Hide Names and Avatars

You can prevent others from looking at who you're chatting with by enabling the “Hide Names and Avatars” feature in the “View” menu or with Command/Control Shift n.

Vibrancy (macOS only)

On macOS, you can toggle the window vibrancy effect in the View menu.

Privacy

You can choose to prevent people from knowing when you have seen a message and when you are currently typing. These settings are available under the Caprine/File menu.

Mute desktop notifications (macOS only)

You can quickly disable receiving notifications from the Caprine/File menu or the Dock on macOS.

Hide notification message preview

You can toggle the Show Message Preview in Notification setting in the Caprine/File menu.

Prevents link tracking

Links that you click on will not be tracked by Facebook.

Jump to conversation hotkey

You can switch conversations similar to how you switch browser tabs: Command/Control n (where n is 1 through 9).

Compact mode

The interface adapts when resized to a small size.

Desktop notifications

Desktop notifications can be turned on in Preferences.

Always on Top

You can toggle whether Caprine stays on top of other windows in the Window/View menu or with Command/Control Shift t.

Work Chat support

Support for Work Chat: Messenger for Workplace. You can switch to it in the Caprine/File menu.

Code blocks

You can send code blocks by using Markdown syntax.

Background behavior

When closing the window, the app will by default continue running in the background, in the dock on macOS and the tray on Linux/Windows. Right-click the dock/tray icon and choose Quit to completely quit the app. On macOS, click the dock icon to show the window. On Linux, right-click the tray icon and choose Toggle to toggle the window. On Windows, click the tray icon to toggle the window.

Note that you can change the behavior of Caprine so that the app closes when the window is closed. For this, you'll need to go to the settings and click on Quit on Window Close.

Quick access to conversations from the Dock menu (macOS only)

Touch Bar support (macOS only)

Custom languages for spell-check (Not for macOS)

Users can select supported languages from Conversation → Spell Checker Language.

macOS detects the language automatically.

Custom styles

Advanced users can modify the colors/styles of Caprine. Click the menu item Caprine/File → Caprine Settings → Advanced → Custom Styles and a CSS file will open up in your default editor.

Menu Bar Mode (macOS only)

You can enable Show Menu Bar Icon in the Caprine Preferences menu to have a Caprine icon in the menu bar. The icon will indicate when you have unread notifications and you can click it to toggle the Caprine window. You can also toggle the Caprine window with the global shortcut Command Shift y.

You can also remove Caprine from the Dock and task switcher by clicking Hide Dock Icon menu item from the menu bar icon. There will then no longer be any menus for the window, but you can access those from the Menu item in the menu bar icon menu.

Keyboard shortcuts

Description	Keys
New conversation	Command/Control n
Search conversations	Command/Control k
Toggle "Dark mode"	Command/Control d
Hide Names and Avatars	Command/Control Shift n
Next conversation	Command/Control ] or Control Tab
Previous conversation	Command/Control [ or Control Shift Tab
Jump to conversation	Command/Control 1…9
Insert GIF	Command/Control g
Insert sticker	Command/Control s
Insert emoji	Command/Control e
Attach files	Command/Control t
Focus text input	Command/Control i
Search in conversation	Command/Control f
Mute conversation	Command/Control Shift m
Hide conversation	Command/Control Shift h
Delete conversation	Command/Control Shift d
Toggle "Always on Top"	Command/Control Shift t
Toggle window menu	Alt (Windows/Linux only)
Toggle main window	Command Shift y (macOS only)
Toggle sidebar	Command/Control Shift s
Switch to Messenger	Command/Control Shift 1
Switch to Workchat	Command/Control Shift 2
Preferences	Command/Control ,

Tip

On macOS, you can change these in the System Preferences and you can even add your own keyboard shortcuts for menu items without a predefined keyboard shortcut.

FAQ

Can I contribute localizations?

The main app interface is already localized by Facebook. The app menus are not localized, and we're not interested in localizing those.

---

Dev

Built with Electron.

Run

npm install && npm start

Build

See the electron-builder docs.

Publish

npm run release

Then edit the automatically created GitHub Releases draft and publish.

Maintainers

• Dušan Simić
• Lefteris Garyfalakis
• Michael Quevillon
• Nikolas Spiridakis

Former

• Jarek Radosz

Links

• Product Hunt post

Press

• The Essential Windows Apps for 2018 - Lifehacker
• Caprine review: Customize Facebook Messenger on Windows 10 - Windows Central

Disclaimer

Caprine is a third-party app and is not affiliated with Facebook.

caprine's Issues

RAM: High memory usage on OS X

Hi! Just noticed that app (v1.2.0) uses more than 600MB of RAM (running since update, so few days). It's huge. After launch and few chats it around 130MB. Since launch laptop was suspended several times while on the go/at night.

Can something be done here? Suppose, it's all about Facebook JS leaks, but maybe there's an option to reload app from time to time automatically?

And more about Electron usage: is there a reason to build releases without any kind of Dev Tools, etc to use less RAM and space on disk?

Closing window closes app

Having the window closed, but reopened when a chat comes in would be more useful for me.

Linux support

• Adjust the build script to build Linux app. Eg. --platform=darwin --arch=x64 => --all.
• Icon
• Adjust the menu. Keyboard shortcuts are already cross-platform. Just need to make sure it's linuxy.
• Ensure everything works as expected

Support older OS X versions

Currently only OS X 10.10 and newer is supported because of electron/electron#2790.

Close button overlays message request back button

Hey @sindresorhus I got a message request on Caprine and the back button gets under the window close button, although it's clickable. Just wanna give feedback on this.

When resizing, text box resizes too small to use

I am using Caprine on Manjaro Linux, Cinnamon Desktop. I have this issue with MessengerforDesktop, and Caprine, that if you resize the width of the window smaller all the icons (add picture, choose stickers, GIF, send money, etc), or the space where they should be, shove the text box so small that horizontal and vertical scrollbars actually show up, and when the window is about 300px wide it leaves the text box like 20px wide. I have attached a screenshot.

Brew cask not working

$ brew cask install caprine
Error: Cask 'caprine' definition is invalid: Bad header line: parse failed

Not entirely sure what that error means, but install via Homebrew seems to be broken.

Implement spell checking

All apps on OS X can use the system's spellchecker, but it appears to be disabled in Caprine

---

IssueHunt Summary

nautatva has been rewarded.

Backers (Total: $65.00)

• issuehunt ($60.00)
• hazrpg ($5.00)

Submitted pull Requests

• #1336 Spellcheck with electron-context-menu update!

---

Tips

• Checkout the Issuehunt explorer to discover more funded issues.
• Need some help from other developers? Add your repositories on IssueHunt to raise funds.

Duplicated icon in taskbar on Windows

Once you pin Caprine to the taskbar on Windows and open it, it shows up a new instance of it.

Quite disturbing.

cmd+w functionality

Could we make the cmd+w functionality on the Mac not close the app but just close/hide the window?

Tray icon needs rework or option to turn off

I have a few problems with the tray icon:
-The show/hide right-click menu is extremely cumbersome compared to what most other programs do: click to hide; click again to show.
-There is no start-minimized option (and I mean minimized to tray, not as a minimized window).
-The icon doesn't change when there are unread messages, making it almost pointless as I still have to manually show the messages window to check after I've been away from the computer.

Because of these problems, I actually currently get a much better tray icon out of using alltray with the -H option. However, since I can't turn caprine's icon off, that leaves me with 2 icons. Because of that, I'm stuck on the seemingly abandoned other unofficial Messenger (https://github.com/Aluxian/Facebook-Messenger-Desktop) because it does not have a tray icon, making alltray viable.

[Not an issue] Congratulations on being featured at Changelog Weekly

The new issue of Changelog just arrived and this repo was one of the projects listed. And I must say Caprine works incredibly well, much better than any other messenger apps I've tried so far.

Windows installer

https://github.com/unindented/electron-installer-windows

PR welcome :)

Tray icon on KDE

The tray icon on Linux (KDE) is a blank white rectangle with no title, also clicking on it does nothing, I have to right click and choose either show or hide or exit.

Auto-update

Need to find a good auto-updater that will just update the app in the background like Atom or Chrome. I don't want any UI for that. It should update when a new version is published on GitHub Releases.

Candidates:

• https://github.com/jenslind/electron-gh-releases
• https://github.com/evolvelabs/electron-updater
• http://electron.atom.io/docs/v0.32.0/api/auto-updater/ (requires an actual server and is OS X only...)

Pressing 'return' leaves a newline after a message sends

Description

As expected, if the text input box is empty the placeholder text appears "Type a message...".

On typing a message ("test 1 2 3"), then pressing return to send, the following happens:

• The message "test 1 2 3" sends and appears as expected in the conversation area.
• The input box now has a new line in it, so it is two lines tall, which is not expected. This also makes the placeholder text disappear since the box is no longer empty.

User Path

##

Caprine 0.2.0
darwin x64 14.5.0

App quits when closing window

The app quits (or seems to - it disappears from the dock) when you close the window. Shouldn't it be expected to remain active / in the dock until you CMD+Q it?

encryption

good day, i like this project. do you plan to introduce any kind of encryption, like OTR? https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/

i would still like to be able to send encrypted messages over facebook chat, and i'm wondering if this is in the thinking.

thanks!

Does notifications only work on Yosemite?

Hi,

The readme said "notifications can be turned on in Preferences"

I downloaded the 0.1.1 release, I have OSX 10.9 and when I open Caprine Preferences menu I only choose the mute delay:

I have not cool notification like you:

The only notification I have is https://github.com/sindresorhus/caprine/blob/master/index.js#L26
with this result:

Notification only works on Yosemite ?

Thanks

Linux - segfault when clicking on notification

It happens both on Gnome and Plasma (KDE). When I click on native notification to see message, Caprine crashes.
There's message from kernel:
[14261.845970] Caprine[10685]: segfault at 0 ip 000000000312ed9b sp 00007ffdde03ad30 error 4 in Caprine[400000+3860000]
Feel free to ask me anything to try, test and deliver any logs.

Caprine 0.5.1
linux x64 4.3.3-3-ARCH

Preferences menu item is not working on macOS when logged out

Latest app and OSX El Capitan 10.11.2

Use retina assets on HiDPI screens

Unfortunately on retina screens the assets are really blurry.

Some text are hard to seen or can't be seen in dark mode

I'm using version 1.0.0 right now. Here's what I found.

In a group chat's people detail

In a new messsage invitation

It's probably just a CSS issues. Can I give this a try? Is there anything I have to do to contribute to this project? (I'm quite new to OSS though)

Windows Startup minimized on tray

This program works flawless on windows 7 it open pictures, play videos and even open links in the default browser. It needs a last addition to make it perfect, an option to launch on startup minimized on the system tray.
Sorry to pull a request in here but doesn't let me pull one in the other way. Thanks

Menu item and shortcut for quickly deleting a conversation

A user suggested it would be useful to have a menu item and shortcut for this.

Anyone wanna try doing a pull request? I can mentor.

Question: how does this work?

Silly question. But where is the source code for this app? I don't understand how it works. I am familiar with Electron but where is the actual source code for the app?

Menubar support

Being a messaging app, it's more useful if it's running all the time so messages can always come in. That being said, it kinda stinks that it has to take up valuable real estate in the dock. What would be nice to have is the option to move the app into the menu bar.

Also, #6 could be solved here by "minimizing" to the menu bar instead of quitting the app entirely.

Support for proxy

please add support for configuring proxy

App name not in Windows taskbar context menu

Not sure what other details to supply. Please let me know if this is unclear. 💃

Start minimized on Linux

#52 So it is not possible, or easily possible, to start Caprine minimized to the tray in Linux. This should be a option in settings/preferences, or at least available in the command line so it is easier to accomplish.

Window buttons overlap with the settings button

Error when MainWindow is minimized in OS X Dock

When the main Window is minimized in OS X Dock, Caprine > Préférences or File > New Conversation produces an error window:

A JavaScript error occurred in the main process
Uncaught Exception:
TypeError: Cannot read property 'webContents' of undefined
    at sendAction (/path/to/Caprine.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/menu.js:9:34)
    at click (/path/to/Caprine.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/menu.js:27:6)
    at MenuItem.click (/path/to/Caprine.app/Contents/Resources/atom.asar/browser/api/lib/menu-item.js:58:20)
    at Function.delegate.executeCommand (/path/to/Caprine.app/Contents/Resources/atom.asar/browser/api/lib/menu.js:127:69)

Enable Caprine dark mode when OS X dark mode is enabled

Depends on electron/electron#4300.

Linux installer

Looks like we can use fpm to easily create a deb package.

Example: https://github.com/Aluxian/Facebook-Messenger-Desktop/blob/29b493f443ce2dc385ed62437a5c9013e4e45408/gulpfile.coffee#L107

@tschuy Interested?

Linux: Javascript Error

I am starting to look into what is needed to make this work flawlessly on Linux, right now the app works using the dev commands, one thing that is popping up is this error:

Uncaught Exception:
TypeError: Cannot read property 'setBadge' of undefined
    at updateBadge (/home/adam/Projects/caprine/index.js:22:10)
    at BrowserWindow.<anonymous> (/home/adam/Projects/caprine/index.js:52:3)
    at emitTwo (events.js:87:13)
    at BrowserWindow.emit (events.js:172:7)

I'm going to see if I can fix some of those todo items in the other bug as well.

Heres a screenshot for anyone curious what it looks like on Ubuntu running KDE

Error on building in Ubuntu

Hello,

I tried to build caprine on ubuntu and the following errors occured(http://pastebin.com/0M4WuxcY).

Progress indicator for file downloads

It appears that there is no progress indicator or action applied upon a user downloading a file shared via another user. I looked into forking this repository in order to add this feature, however time is currently scarce in my life.

This issue can also gage to see if anyone else would benefit/want from this feature.

Buttons overlap on "small mode"

If the window is small enough to shrink the people to their profile picture new message and the window buttons overlap.

Newline in input box

There's a blank newline in the text input field that appears after every message sent. Using OSX.

Blurry icon rendering on OSX (non-retina)

Messenger.com in Chrome vs Caprine:

Can't inspect it, but it's probably because it downloads the retina spritemap and dowscales it.

Cask installation failed

> brew cask install caprine
Error: No available Cask for caprine
Error: nothing to install
2015-10-05 13:42:49

Support for HiDPI

Could you please include support for hidpi? The font looks quite small on Windows 10.

Crashes on startup on Linux

As of version 0.5.0, Caprine crashes on Linux after starting up. It looks like the issue is related to the new tray icon.

When you start up, it displays a pop-up window displaying the following message:

Uncaught Exception:
TypeError: Error processing argument -1.
    at TypeError (native)
    at module.exports.win (/home/bob/software/caprine/resources/app/tray.js:11:15)
    at EventEmitter.<anonymous> (/home/bob/software/caprine/resources/app/index.js:76:2)
    at emitOne (events.js:82:20)
    at EventEmitter.emit (events.js:169:7)

As I was writing this issue, I discovered the solution. Will post a patch in a few minutes.

Homebrew: Cask 'caprine' definition is invalid

brew cask install caprine
Error: Cask 'caprine' definition is invalid: Bad header line: parse failed

Not familiar with Homebrew casks so cannot help out with this.

Change conversation shortcuts on OS X

This is funny but I opened up Atom, and wanted to implement conversation switching just to find out it's already there, only under key binding that I would never expected.

I'm kind of used to the native tab switching keys on OS X: CMD + Shift + [ and CMD + Shift + ].

I'm sure there's a reason why Caprine is currently using different ones, but perhaps it would make a good idea to change them for a more native experience?

Windows support

• Adjust the build script to build Windows app. Eg. --platform=darwin --arch=x64 => --all.
• Icon. Need a Icon.ico file. https://github.com/maxogden/electron-packager#packageropts-callback
• Adjust the menu. Keyboard shortcuts are already cross-platform. Just need to make sure it's windowsy.
• Configure the --version-string in the build script. https://github.com/maxogden/electron-packager#packageropts-callback
• Ensure everything works as expected
• Add brew install wine to Dev section in the readme: https://github.com/maxogden/electron-packager#building-windows-apps-from-non-windows-platforms

Some emoji's are not in the font used in the input box

For example ☺️ shows as a rectangle, sent and on messenger.com it behaves correctly however.

Multiple instances on Linux

When app is hidden into tray area and I click icon on taskbar - new instance is starting instead of showing existing one. Also there is no option to disable tray icon (which would be workaround).

Notifications don't work for me on El Capitan

I'm on latest El Capitan (10.11.3 (15D21)) & Caprine 1.2.0. I see the badge & hear the sound when a new message arrives but there is no notification banner. When I go to System Preferences -> Notifications I don't even see a Caprine entry; I see lots of them for other apps.

I have Chrome notifications disabled but that shouldn't affect standalone Electron apps that use native system notifications (by default Chrome uses its own flavor not integrating well with the OS).

Full screen displays large menu bar

Also the regular shortcut: ⌘⌃F isn't enabled.