Discofast is a Discord client written in Rust with egui
and fastframe, the framework behind Spotifast and
ZapFast. No browser engine, no Electron.
The layout follows Discord's desktop client on purpose: the server rail on
the left, channels beside it with your user panel at the foot, the
conversation in the middle and the member list on the right. Every button
sits where Discord users expect it.
Renamed: Discofast was called FastDisco up to 0.9. Installed
copies update onto the new name by themselves and keep their settings
and login; on Arch, fastdisco-bin now pulls in discofast-bin.
Status: early development. Login, servers, channels, direct messages
and chatting work against Discord.
Signing in with email and password from outside a browser usually makes
Discord ask for an hCaptcha, which Discofast cannot show. Use the QR code
with the Discord phone app instead.
Warning: Discord's Terms of Service do not allow third-party clients
that log in with a user account. Using Discofast may put your account at
risk. Use it at your own discretion.
Download
Every version is built for Linux, Windows and macOS and published on the
releases page.
Arch Linux: yay -S discofast-bin (or any other AUR helper).
Ubuntu and other Linux desktops: download
discofast-<version>-x86_64.AppImage, then
chmod +x discofast-*.AppImage and run it. Needs Ubuntu 24.04 or newer.
Linux, by hand: the x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu archive has the
binary, the launcher entry and the icons.
Flatpak: download discofast-<version>-x86_64.flatpak, then
flatpak install --user discofast-*.flatpak.
Windows (x86_64): run discofast-<version>-x86_64-setup.exe, or
unpack the archive and run discofast.
macOS (Apple Silicon): open discofast-<version>-aarch64.dmg and
drag Discofast to Applications. It is signed ad hoc, so the first time
open it with a right click, Abrir.
Build
Requires Rust 1.98+. Video, audio and YouTube playback use ffmpeg,
ffprobe and yt-dlp when they are installed; without them the media
opens in the browser.
cargo run
Two optional features: video watches Discord screen shares (not yet
tried against Discord), and selfhosted sends camera and screen between
friends through a LiveKit server of your own; contrib/livekit has the
server and how to set it up. selfhosted is on by default, so every
build has it; --no-default-features leaves it out.
scripts/install.sh builds a release and installs it for the current
user, with the launcher entry and icons.
Website
site/ is the Next.js website, deployed on Vercel with site as the
project's root directory. Its download links come from the GitHub
releases API, refreshed every ten minutes, so a new release shows up
without touching the site. A GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable is
optional and only raises GitHub's rate limit.
cd site && npm install && npm run dev
Updates
Discofast checks GitHub for a newer release when it opens and once a
day, downloads it in the background, and shows a green arrow in the
header when it is ready; clicking it restarts into the new version, and
a version that does not start is rolled back. Only copies that can
replace themselves do this: the AppImage and the unpacked Linux and
Windows archives. The AUR package updates through yay, and copies
built from source are left alone. Each release's checksums.txt is
signed with the key in assets/update-public-key.hex.
Releases
The version lives in Cargo.toml. Each push to main with a version that
has no tag yet builds every platform and publishes v<version> on GitHub,
with the commits since the last release as notes. A new feature bumps the
minor version, a fix bumps the patch.
Roadmap
What works today, and what is still missing for Discofast to do
everything Discord's desktop app does.
Account and connection
Login with the QR code from the phone app
Login with email and password, with a two-factor code
Login with a token; the token is kept in the OS keyring
Gateway with heartbeat, resume and reconnect
hCaptcha when Discord asks for one at login
Switching between several accounts: each kept in the keyring, listed under "Mudar de conta" and on the login screen
Layout and navigation
Discord's layout: server rail, channels, chat, member list, user panel
Discord's title bar: back and forward (Alt+←/→), the place in the middle, inbox and help
