moho

Every conversation you're in, in one window.

moho is a desktop chat client that speaks IRC, Discord, Matrix, Kick and many more protocols at the same time. Whether the room is a twenty-year-old IRC channel, a Discord server, an encrypted Matrix room, or a stream's chat going past at forty lines a minute you're able to be part of the conversation.

What it does

• Many networks, one place. IRC, Discord, Matrix, Kick and many more protocols soon, side by side, with the same reply, edit, react, search and tag-someone gestures on each — as far as each service actually supports them.
• Calls. Voice, camera and screen sharing on Discord and on Matrix, including the group calls Element holds on a media server. On Discord, Go Live, streams both ways with sound, echo cancellation, volume per person, the soundboard and stage channels. A call can sit in the corner or pop out into a window of its own.
• Matrix, properly encrypted. End-to-end encryption with device verification by emoji or QR, cross-signing, key backup, and encrypted attachments.
• Kick streams in the window. Watch the stream beside its chat, in the corner or in a window of its own, polls, predictions and other interactive methods are functional and at your fingertips.
• Yours. GPL-3.0, no telemetry, no account with us — your history is a SQLite file on your own disk.

Get it

Prebuilt Linux and Windows downloads are on the latest release; what each version changed is in CHANGELOG.md. moho tells you in its mentions inbox when a newer version is out.

The AppImage needs libfuse2 on recent distributions; if it refuses to start, either install that or run it with APPIMAGE_EXTRACT_AND_RUN=1.

The Windows installer is not code-signed, and won't be. Two things in Windows react to that:

• SmartScreen warns when you run the downloaded installer. Choose More info, then Run anyway - or beforehand, right-click the file, open Properties and tick Unblock.
• Smart App Control, on some fresh Windows 11 installs, silently refuses to start any unsigned program: moho installs, then never opens. Turn it off in Windows Security > App & browser control > Smart App Control settings. Windows does not let it be switched back on without resetting the PC. The installer checks for this and says so before installing.

Build it

You'll need Rust, Node, git, and — for the daemon — cmake, pkg-config and the ALSA headers (alsa-lib on Arch, libasound2-dev on Debian).

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/Moho-Chat/moho.git
cd moho
npm install
npm run daemon    # cargo build --release in nobilis/ — this is the long one

If npm says install scripts were blocked, approve the two that fetch platform binaries; without them there is no Electron to run:

npm install-scripts approve electron esbuild

Test it

npm test            # the window's unit tests (Vitest)
npm run test:ui     # layout checks against the real app - popups must stay inside the window
npm run test:tray   # the tray: its icon, tooltip, menu, statuses and restart
npm run test:gif    # GIFs drawn as pictures, and the GIF picker
npm run test:scroll # scrolling and where a conversation opens
npm run test:kick   # where Kick event cards sit in each layout
cd nobilis && cargo test --release

The test: scripts other than test build the window, run it against a scratch home and a fake IRC server, and need the daemon built first. On a machine with no display, run them under xvfb-run. npm run shots photographs the interface scene by scene, for looking at changes.

Run it

npm run dev       # hot-reloading renderer, Electron, and the daemon

To install it like a real application — builds everything, packages an AppImage, drops it in ~/.local/bin and writes a launcher entry, after which moho is in your application menu:

npm run deploy

Other ways out of the box: npm run pack:dir for a self-contained dist/linux-unpacked/ directory to run in place, npm run pack:deb for a Debian package, npm run pack:win for the Windows installer (cross-built with mingw-w64; packaging it also needs wine with 32-bit support), and makepkg -si against the bundled PKGBUILD to install it as an Arch package under /opt/moho.

Packaging leaves a lot behind - an AppImage per build, and Rust build output that Cargo never cleans up. npm run deploy first runs npm run tidy, which keeps the newest two AppImages and empties nobilis/target/ once it passes 8 GB.

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Architecture, the daemon's wire protocol, what each backend actually implements, and where state lives on disk: ARCHITECTURE.md.