Delta Chat Desktop

Desktop Application for delta.chat

Documentation Links

Table of Contents

Install

The application can be downloaded from https://get.delta.chat. Here you'll find binary releases for all supported platforms. See below for platform specific instructions. If you run into any problems please consult the Troubleshooting section below.

Linux

Flatpak

The primary distribution-independed way to install is to use the flatpak build. This is maintained in it's own repository, however a pre-built binary can be downloaded and installed from flathub which also has a setup guide for many Linux platforms.

Arch Linux

WARNING: Currently the AUR package compiles from latest master. This can be more recent as the latest release, introduce new features but also new bugs.

If you have a AUR helper like yay or paru installed, you can install it by running yay -S deltachat-desktop-git and following the instruction in your terminal.

Otherwise you can still do it manually:

# Download the latest snapshot of the PKGBUILD
wget https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/snapshot/deltachat-desktop-git.tar.gz

# extract the archive and rm the archive file afterwards
tar xzfv deltachat-desktop-git.tar.gz && rm deltachat-desktop-git.tar.gz

# cd into extracted folder
cd deltachat-desktop-git

# build package
makepkg -si

# install package (you need to replace <version> with whatever version makepkg built)
sudo pacman -U deltachat-desktop-git-<version>.tar.xz

Mac OS

Homebrew

$ brew install --cask deltachat

DMG

Simply install the .dmg file as you do it with all other software on mac.

Windows

You can find the downloads for windows on https://get.delta.chat, though we recomend using the Microsoft Store release, because there you get automatic updates.

From Source

⚠ This is mostly for development purposes, this won't install/integrate deltachat into your system. So unless you know what you are doing, we recommend to stick to the methods above if possible.

# Get the code
$ git clone https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-desktop.git
$ cd deltachat-desktop

# Install dependencies
$ npm install

# Build the app (only needed on the first time or if the code was changed)
$ npm run build

# Start the application:
$ npm start

For development with local deltachat-core read the docs

Troubleshooting

This module builds on top of deltachat-core-rust, which in turn has external dependencies. The instructions below assume a Linux system (e.g. Ubuntu 18.10).

If you get errors when running npm install, they might be related to the build dependency rust.

If rust or cargo is missing: Follow the instruction on https://rustup.rs/ to install rust and cargo.

Then try running npm install again.

Make sure that your nodejs version is 18.0.0 or newer.

If you still get errors look at the instructions in the deltachat-node and deltachat-core-rust README files to set things up or write an issue.

Configuration and Databases

The configuration files and database are stored at application-config's default file paths.

Each database is a SQLite file that represents the account for a given email address.

How to Contribute

Read docs/DEVELOPMENT.md

For translations see our transifex page: https://www.transifex.com/delta-chat/public/

For other ways to contribute: https://delta.chat/en/contribute

Logging

You can access the log folder and the current log file under the View->Developer menu:

Read docs/LOGGING.md for an explanation about our logging system. (available options, log location and information about the used Log-Format)

License

Licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later, see LICENSE file for details.

Copyright © 2019 DeltaChat contributors.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.