Lith - Multiplatform WeeChat relay client

Lith is a project mostly focused on bringing a fast and user-friendly WeeChat client to all major desktop and mobile operating systems. The main focus of this project is to bring a full-featured native relay client to iOS but all major mobile and desktop platforms are supported to some degree.

Getting Started

Lith is a utility application for WeeChat (not to be confused with WeChat), a terminal chat application mostly focused on the IRC protocol. It is a only a graphical relay for messages that are actually received and sent by WeeChat. That means you need to prepare a WeeChat instance on on your computer or server (or have a provider do that for you) to be actually able to use Lith in any meaningful way.

For setup on the WeeChat side, please consult the following sources:

• WeeChat official user documentation

On desktop systems, you can run WeeChat on the same device as Lith but the main focus of this project is to handle remote connections, especially on mobile platforms and iOS in particular. The remote WeeChat server needs to be directly over the internet either through a TCP socket or WebSockets.

There is also a browser version of Lith you can try right now thanks to WebAssembly: https://lith.app/Lith/.

Features

• Inline preview of images and videos
• Fast buffer list filtering
• Dark and light mode support
• Native local notifications on desktop platforms
• Secure storage of login credentials

Limitations

• Message text is not selectable
• Keyboard shortcuts can only be tweaked by editing the config file
• Android: Builds are not tested at all at this moment, not signed, currently not installable without signing
• macOS: Builds are not signed + Some keyboard shortcuts are broken
• Windows: Builds are not signed + There is no installer
• WebAssembly: Builds are pretty large (around 12MB at this moment), there are keyboard focus issues and video preview support is not supported.
• More: https://github.com/LithApp/Lith/issues

Future plans

• Full App Store release
• Push notification support (first on iOS, then Android, probably)

Binary Packages

Lith currently supports the following platforms:

• (Usable) iOS and iPadOS:
  • RECOMMENDED: https://testflight.apple.com/join/QfcVgNHD - "Stable" track - even minor releases
  • https://testflight.apple.com/join/xS3hWrmj - "Unstable" track - more or less everything I tag with an odd minor version, may be messy
• (build-only) Android: https://github.com/LithApp/Lith/releases
• (Usable) Linux: https://flathub.org/apps/details/app.lith.Lith
• (Usable, not tested) Windows: https://github.com/LithApp/Lith/releases
• (Usable, not tested) macOS: https://github.com/LithApp/Lith/releases
• (Not tested, feature gaps) WebAssembly: https://lith.app/Lith/

Build instructions

Lith is written using C++ and the Qt framework with QML. The only supported version is Qt 6.5 and newer. Other dependencies are listed below.

When building for all supported platforms, only the following steps should be necessary if CMake is setup correctly:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

Alternatively, you can just open the project file in Qt Creator.

There is also a package for Arch Linux in the AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/lith-git

Dependencies

Besides Qt, Lith currently depends on the packages listed below. You don't need to install them manually. This can be controlled, see the section below describing the CMake options to choose which packages to use.

Qt always needs to be installed outside of Lith's build system. Other dependencies are:

• qtkeychain - Used to store login info (host, port, passphrase, ...).
• QCoro - Simplifies programming asynchronous code with Qt C++ coroutine integration.
• qhot - (Development only) Provides hot reload for QML, I use this to speed up UI feature development.

CMake options

• LITH_FEATURE_KEYCHAIN - ON by default. Enables keychain integration on Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS and Android.
• LITH_FEATURE_QHOT - OFF by default. Builds internal qhot instance and adds a target to automatically run Lith in qhot. Not useful for end users.
• LITH_FORCE_DOWNLOAD_DEPENDENCIES - OFF by default. Makes CPM go for downloading packages from GitHub without checking local system. This option takes preference over LITH_FORCE_LOCAL_PACKAGES_ONLY.
• LITH_FORCE_LOCAL_PACKAGES_ONLY - OFF by default. Enforces usage of only packages installed on local system.

Get in touch

For bug reports and questions, feel free to use the Issues page here on GitHub.

There's also an IRC channel: #lith on libera.chat (irc.libera.chat:6697 with SSL)

You can contact me directly on [email protected]