Because WebCord is based on Discord Website and (unlike official client and client mods) does not use any of the Discord's proprietary Node.js C++ native modules nor fake itself as an official Discord client (but rather as a Chromium browser), it has similar features and limitations like Discord Web application. However, WebCord client is capable of doing some tweaks to it, implementing following list of the features:
| Name | Description | State / Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tray icon | Hiding application in the tray. | ✅️ Done |
| Red badge (tray) | Display indicator at DM or mentions on tray icon. | ✅️ Done |
| Custom CSP | Allow users to modify CSP to block unnecessary websites. | ✅️ Done |
| Flash window on mentions | Flash window button to visually indicate mentions or DMs even with tray disabled. | ✅️ Done |
| Custom dictionary languages | Customize the language set used for the auto-completion feature | ❌️ TODO |
| Translations | WebCord's localization support for multiple languages. | ✅️ Done |
| Hiding the Discord's side bar | Switching the visibility state of side bar containing channel list. This makes WebCord working on the devices with the smaller screens, like e.g. PinePhone smartphones. | ✅️ Done |
| Node.js based WebCord extensions support | WebCord-specific add-on implementation that allows for using Node dependencies. | ❌️ TODO |
| Chromium-based extensions support | Chromium browser add-on support. | 1️⃣ Alpha (experimental implementation) |
| Add-on permissions management | Limits the permissions of the extensions for the security reasons. | ❌️ TODO |
| Global shortcut for push-to-talk | Makes the shortcut for PTT globally available. | ❌️ TODO |
Block /science and /tracing API endpoints |
Implement blocking of some known tracing methods in Discord. | ✅️ Done |
Block /typing API endpoint |
Optionally block typing indicator. | ✅️ Done |
| End-to-end message encryption. | Allow to encrypt the message in the box before it is send. | ❌️ TODO |
| HTML-based settings menu | Web-based settings menu instead of GTK (menu bar) ones. | 2️⃣ Beta (it's actively improved) |
| Command-line flags parsing | Provides a support for handling a command-line parameters, including common flags like --help. |
✅️ Done |
| WebCord update notifications | Notifies the user whenever new WebCord version is out | ✅️ Done |
| Bug report generation | Automatically generates bug report based on the OS configuration | ✅️ Done |
buildInfo.json |
Implement generating and parsing a JSON configuration file that contains the release information and build flags. | ✅️ Done |
| In-app documentation browser | Built-in Markdown reader for offline documentation files. | ✅️ Done |
| Splash screen on load | Display animated splash screen before loading Discord. | ✅️ Done |
| Permission management | Lets you decide what Discord can do and what it can't. | ✅️ Done |
| Custom Discord instances | Allows to use different Discord instances, e.g. Fosscord. | 1️⃣ Alpha |
| Hide download buttons/popups | Hide elements referring to official Discord client download link | ✅️ Done |
| HTML-based about panel | Non-native window showing the information about the application, like licenses, versions or credits. | 2️⃣ Beta (it's actively improved) |
| Custom Discord and WebCord styles | Allow styling Discord and WebCord with own themes. | 1️⃣ Alpha (Only Discord can be styled) |
| Answer to invite URLs | Replies to guild invite links (like official Discord client). | ✅️ Done |
| Navigate using external web browser | Handle navigation requests via WebSocket | ✅️ Done |
| Application data encryption | Encrypt application files to prevent tinkering with it by the third-party software. | 2️⃣️ Beta (improvements are planned) |
NOTE: Please report bugs for the features listed above. If your issue describes a feature that is not on the list, you may consider opening a feature request. If some of the implemented app's features are missing there, feel free to inform me about that in the Issues or Discussions. If you are talented enough, you could also implement them yourself and do a Pull Request.
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❌️ TODO – this feature may or may not be implemented in the future. It's in concept state – there's nothing implemented about it and it might not be implemented soon, even if it is ever planned to be done.
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⚠️ Will do – there's nothing implemented in code about this feature, but it is planned as a next feature to be worked on. -
1️⃣ Alpha – the work on implementing this feature has already begun, but it's still far from being finished.
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️2️⃣️ Beta – this feature has been mostly implemented, but it still needs to be polished before being marked as done. This indicates that this feature will be actively worked on to adapt it for the new changes, find a better implementation and so on.
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✅️ Done – this feature has been fully implemented and there's no need to actively work on it.
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⛔️ Broken – this feature has been working, but it recently stopped working either due to some Discord and/or WebCord updates.
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🚧️ Under construction – A major rewrite around this feature is in progress to improve it.
Here are some notes about the features that are still not visibly implemented and are far from being called user-friendly. Things are meant here to be broken, so don't expect you will be able to use them as you intent to.
Since version 3.0.0, WebCord is capable of styling Discord pages – unlike
browser extensions like Stylus it does that without injecting any HTML elements
to the page, to be more difficult to detect the modifications. On the other
hand, the injected stylesheets can be easily overwritten by Discord CSS for some
properties, which could be prevented with the !important rule. Moreover, using
@import keyword for referencing an another CSS stylesheet wouldn't work at all
as well and needed to be resolved before injection. That is why the
implementation up to WebCord 3.1.3 was so problematic and didn't play well
with most already pre-made Discord themes.
However, it is now greatly improved since 3.1.4 release – most themes, which
does not rely on remote content like images and fonts, should be now mostly
functional, since WebCord is currently capable of resolving @import statements
and fixing the themes on the fly to make Chromium render them correctly. The
only issue now is to allow styles to provide their own Content Security Policy
in order to allow loading the remote content needed for scripts to function
properly.
Currently WebCord loads CSS themes from {userData}/Themes/ directory when
they ends with .theme.css extension, like most BetterDiscord themes does.
However, in the future releases WebCord will encrypt themes with safeStorage
in approach to prevent tinkering with it by third-party software after it is
added to WebCord in order to improve the security especially in the future
releases where it is planned that WebCord allow themes to modify its CSP in some
way. This breaks with loading themes through .theme.css files and adds
--add-css-theme flag as an alternative.
From version 3.0.0, WebCord can load unpacked Chrome extensions using
Electron's Chrome Extension Support. Since Electron implementation
of Chrome extensions is far from the one in Chromium (which is due to the fact
Electron removes a lot of browser-specific code in Chromium's code), a lot of
extensions may not be fully functional or not work at all.
This is why a WebCord-specific implementation of the extensions is considered to be done in the future in which case Chromium extensions might be deprecated and / or removed.
You can load Chromium extensions by extracting them from .crx archive to
{userData}/Extensions/Chrome/{extension name}/ folder.