yakyak / yakyak

Desktop chat client for Google Hangouts

YakYak

Desktop client for Google Hangouts (not Google Hangouts Chat, which is a different thing)

(This app is in no way associated with or endorsed by Google)

Install it

We provide prebuilt binaries for macOS, Linux 32 / 64 and Windows 32 / 64. This is the latest release

Check out our wiki for additional installation methods

We love bug reports!

What does it do:

• Send/receive chat messages
• Send/receive SMS/MMS (Project Fi / Google Voice) -- basic functionality
• Create/change conversations (rename, add people)
• Leave/delete conversation
• Notifications (using native OS notifications)
  • Toggle notifications on/off
• Drag-drop, copy-paste or attach-button for image upload.
• Hangupsbot sync room aware (no bot name, proper user pics)
• Show inline images
• Send presence/focus/typing/activeclient to behave like a proper client
• History scrollback
• Video/audio integration (open in chrome)
• Focus/typing indications (mainly a design issue. keep it clean)
• Offer alternative color schemes
• Translations in 22 languages so far:
  • English / Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil) / French / Spanish / Czech / German / Polish / Russian / Hebrew / Ukrainian / Slovenian / Korean / Tamil / Romanian / Swedish / Japanese / Italian / Danish / Bengali / Slovak / Turkish / Arabic / Telugu / Finnish /Breton / Simplified chinese
  • We're looking for volunteers to translate the app to new languages

NOTE

Yakyak may show up as iOS Device and Google may alert you that "some iOS Device is trying to use your account". This is normal as yakyak is an unofficial client and it mimics the behaviour of an iOS device in order to establish a communication with Google Hangout APIs.

Credits

Main authors

• André Veríssimo
• Davide Bertola
• Martin Algesten

Contributors

• David Banham
• Max Kueng
• Arnaud Riu
• Austin Guevara
• Mathias Tillman

Developing

This is an open source project. Please help us!

It is written in coffeescript (nodejs) based on hangupsjs using trifl on top of electron (atom shell).

How can you help?

You can improve YakYak in many ways:

• Core functionality
• Interface (example: new themes only require choosing less than 20 colors)
• Bug fixing
• Translations (new translation only need 117 strings)

Send a pull request, start a conversation with a new issue or participate on a ongoing conversation.

Setup

Requirements:

• Node.js (v4 or v6)

$ npm install
$ npm run gulp

Continuous build

$ npm run gulp watch

Run it

$ npm run electron app

Build Binaries for Deployment

Supported platforms: Windows (win32), Mac OS X (darwin), Linux (linux)

Suported architectures: 64-bits (x64), 32-bits (ia32)

# Building for all platforms and architectures
$ npm run deploy

# You can also build specific builds by using
#  deploy:<platform>-<architecture>
# example:
$ npm run deploy:darwin-x64

If you have fpm installed (gem install fpm), you can also build RPM, Deb, or Arch packages:

$ npm run deploy:linux-x64:rpm
$ npm run deploy:linux-x64:deb
$ npm run deploy:linux-x64:pacman

note: if you are building Windows binaries in Linux or Mac OS X, Wine (1.6 or higher) must be installed. It also requires a 32-bit Wine installation when building Windows 32-bit binary.

Structure

Location	Description
src/	Is where sources live
src/ui/	Holds renderer code (client side)
dist/	Everything is compiled to this directory

Acknowledgement

• All the users and developers of YakYak
• "You wouldn't believe" as the 'new message' sound for some platforms and is licensed under CC

yakyak's Issues

Command + m on OSX does not respond (should minimize window)

Command + m
Nor does
Command + ctrl + f

OSX (Ysemite) does not respond (should minimize window || should fullscreen app)

hidden pure (video)-hangouts are selected by conv keyboard nav

should skip those

upload screenshot

Option to disable animated conversation thumbnails

Okay first thing's first, this app is cool! I'm gonna use it as my day to day hangouts client for a while, as it's already superior to Adium/Pidgin in my book. :D

The first thing on my wish list: I'd love an ability to disable animated conversation thumbnails. Yes I've got one of those people on my contact list. ;)

Clicking notification doesn't focus window

On Windows when a notification popup comes up clicking the notification doesn't bring forward the app window.

There seems to be code written to implement that feature here however the res is looking for "Activate" and in my experimentation on Windows it will be "Activated".

But even if I fix that line action 'appfocus' doesn't actually do anything. It seems to do an IPC call to (I assume) electron but my understanding ends there.

Is this an electron issue? Or is yakyak not calling the right IPC function here? Does this work on mac?

feedback on dragging image

related to #7

Copying and pasting text from word uploads an image of same text

If you copy and paste some text out of a word document yakyak will also upload an image of the same text.

Smileys/Emoticons not displaying

The smileys and emoticons are not displaying in either the chat windows or in the chat headings. It just shows a small rectangle.

Also theres no button on the interface to add them either :)

Hide on close instead of exit [OSX]

Its common practice that applications which you want running in the background (like chat clients) don't exit when you click on the "close" title bar button but instead just hide the window (you quit the app by using the menu bar quit command or pressing its keyboard shortcut Command + Q).

When editing already sent text it doubles it

When editing already sent message instead of changing line it send it again.
Linux, 64bit

Not orienting photos properly

When displaying a photo uploaded by another person in the conversation the photo is not oriented based on the EXIF data. Photo appears oriented correctly via google chat web interface though.

new message notification on windows

Apparently windows user do not like the balloon coming from the system tray. They are more used to having the application BLINK in the task bar. The actual behaviour is that the app blinks a couple of times then it stops but keeps a "hi lighted" color. Need to investigate how to do this on electron

Link of image not showing the image inline

For example when pasting the link http://blogs.ubc.ca/lillienne/files/2011/01/nike-yesterday-you-said-tomorrow.jpg the image will show in the chat for a frame, then dissappear.

I have seen it work successfully, but 95% of the time it will show then immediately hide it.

Windows 8.1 x64 beta 3

logout does not work on windows

The logout fails when trying to delete chromes Cookie file with EBUSY (file busy) because Chrome is still using it. This is a known windows problem.

We probably need to wait proper cookies api support from Electron

Windows user can logout by closing the app and deleting C:\Users[username]\AppData\Roaming\yakyak

autosize is going crazy

Characters Not Supported

Many non-standard characters including emoji are not supported and show up as blank rectangles.

Private avatar images broken

If a user's avatar image is private it returns a 403 response, which displays as a broken image in the interface.

Here's the image, source, and google's response all crammed into one screenshot:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/wn0oryty1do7jho/u_df5zyp.png

icon brainstorming

Hi guys, I'm in for the icon design. We can start throwing ideas here so I may find some directions on how to build the first proposals.

If you don't have any premises, I can start with something. Just let me know. :)

Auth loop [from sources]

Prebuilded apps (under linux and windows) logins succesfully, but when i try do it from sources (under windows 10), i have such glitch:

1. enter login
2. enter password
   I expect pin-code input (two-factor auth)
   but i saw login form again.

May be i need somethiing more, then
npm install
gulp
?

sound notifications

in which case do we want it?

"Any way we can get sound notifications for new IMs? Other than that this is off to a great start! Keep it up!"

Blank Screen

$ ./yakyak

[7320:0712/001708:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(173)] Running without the SUID sandbox! See https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxSUIDSandboxDevelopment for more information on developing with the sandbox on.
GLib-GIO-Message: Using the 'memory' GSettings backend.  Your settings will not be saved or shared with other applications.
[7320:0712/001711:ERROR:cert_verify_proc_openssl.cc(231)] X509 Verification error unable to get local issuer certificate : 20 : 2 : 4

My OS = Fedora 22

Notification for "NEW Contact" is missing

the client does not catch any notification regarding a contact not in the list.
It's needed to add the contact from "Hangout" and after typing message it is involved in YakYak

Creates cookies.json in hangupsjs module directory

When starting yakyak it creates a cookies.json file in resources/app/node_modules/hangupsjs/cookies.json which isn't needed because the cookies are stored in app.getPath('userData').

I've created a package for Arch Linux where yakyak is installed globally. This means that the resources/app/node_modules/hangupsjs directory is not writable.

As a workaround I'm currently touching resources/app/node_modules/hangupsjs/cookies.json and setting the permissions to that it's writable by anybody during the installation. But it would be nice if I didn't have to do this.

BTW: You can now install the "yakyak" package from AUR on Arch Linux and Manjaro.

$ yaourt -Sa yakyak

or

$ packer -S yakyak

inline image loading broken due to google link tracking

https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fyakyak%2Fyakyak%2Fblob%2F6c5784e682d1952ce3043640c1c45c35f3849117%2Fsrc%2Fui%2Fviews%2Fmessages.coffee%23L118&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFZyWYVo1r5C4N-Kkz28cSfLIKzwg

HiDPi Support

Using yakyak on a 3200x1800 13" (~276 ppi) screen results in everything being too tiny, almost unreadable.

Here's a screenshot:

Opening the inspector and appending zoom: 2 to the body css rules seems to fix the issue.
Screenshot after:

yakyak version: latest git
Arch Linux 64-bit with 4.2.0-rc8 kernel
Gnome 3.16.3

Option to disable sending typing notification to recipient

(Feature request.)

Any plans for OTR?

Hi,

I was wondering if you're planning to do OTR in the future. Would that be a good thing to work on?

Does it support RTL?

I mean right-to-left direction for some languages, is it supported?

attach image button

not everyone is a drag-dropper.

"The one thing I'd like to request is the ability to send images. Looks great though!"

Double clipboard content on paste

When i paste my clipboard text into the message textfield the text gets pasted twice.

Periodic disconnect/reconnect problems

On 1.1.0, every few minutes, I get the "Not Connected" notification in the top right of the main window, followed by "Connecting". It seems to reconnect each time, but if messages arrive in the vicinity of this cycle, they show up on my phone but not yakyak for a while.

I'm on a wired ethernet connection, with lots of other things going on at once, so I think I can safely say that it's not actual network interruption causing the issue.

if you open the app while offline then it never connects even if network becomes available later

This has actually been tried by adding yakyak to the login items (OS X) so that it automatically opens
Thanks @sw360cab for noticing

Crash/Freeze on startup

Windows 8.1 x64
Extract the app, then it opens the window and says "connecting" the the app freezes.
If i kill the task "electron" i can resume using my computer...

Is there a log file somewhere I can submit?

context menus

at least for cut/copy/paste

"There also are no context menus. I can't right-click to copy or paste in the message box."

Some suggestions to make it the #1 IM app

Disclaimer :) I am not a developer and don't do any type of coding. Point is, I have no idea how to carry out these ideas, how difficult they may be, or if they're even possible. Since so, I greatly appreciate developers, you guys!

1. add the ability to use various types pf accounts, in addition to Google and have them active simultaneously. Such as Facebook, Yahoo messenger, Twitter. Those modules are pretty common in many IM apps, so I assume that it should be quite easy to integrate.

2. making the app lighter (as in less resource hungry). It uses a substantial amount of RAM. I've observed this on multiple Linux machines. Don't remember what I saw on Windows machines.

Thanks for the app. It is currently the only IM app that can be used with Google's heightened security settings.
I've used many IM apps, and tested many more. I really think that if these two will be addressed, Yakyak will outrun all others.

notify update availability

Cross-platform auto-update is a bit futuristic but having a way to inform the user a new update is available would be nice.

Disable message preview in notification

It'd be great to be able to turn off the message preview inside the notification.
Could be switched globally or by channel.

Menu not working

The menu is not working, if you are not logged in.
When I select any option from the menu, I get the following error message.

Missing Timestamp on current message

When I am in a chat, the messages received does not display a timestamp

Multiple Accounts

Implement the ability to log into multiple accounts

Note: This is a game changer

system-wide proxy setting ignored

The app ignores system wide proxy settings. This is confirmed on Windows but I suspect it's the same on Mac.

tooltips on buttons

"Looks very pretty! My only suggestion so far is to add tooltips to the buttons in the bottom left. Most of them are intuitive, but I'm terrified to press the X."

Spell check as you type

icon on windows needs improving

Page up, page down, home, end key, and up/down arrow key support in conversation view

Page up, page down, home, end key currently do nothing in the conversation view. It would be nice to have them scroll the conversation view in a manner similar to other chat clients.

The up/down arrow keys cycle through previous messages, which is good when the input box is focused, but it should scroll the conversation view up and down when the conversation text is focused.

Pre-built x64 binaries for Linux and Windows

Would be cool if there were prebuilt archives for 64bit systems for Linux and Windows on the releases page.

No Longer Connects

Windows 1.0.0 32 and 64

Stuck at Connecting in the top right corner. Worked before yesterdays release.

Troubleshooting steps. Remove App -> remove AppData-> Roaming, reboot try again etc.

Minimize to tray/start minimized

It would be awesome, if it was possible to minimize yakyak to tray, and hide it from taskbar while being minimized. In combination with that feature, a 'start minimized' option would be handy.

Add message read status

The original Hangouts clients all will display a user icon below the message last read. This would be nice to have in yakyak as well.

User Thumbnails on SMS Conversations

I use hangouts a lot for SMS conversations from work. The Chrome Hangouts app doesn't combine the accounts, but the app on Android does, so when I chat from my phone, I have to pick which account of that person I want to talk to, their phone (SMS), or their Google account. Both the Chrome app and the phone app syncs the thumbnails for those users in my contacts.

Right now I am just seeing a lot of the blue default thumbnail icons. It would be great to be able to sync up these thumbnails to the appropriate user contacts, whether they are SMS or Google accounts.