WhatsApp for Linux

An unofficial WhatsApp desktop application written in C++.

Features

• Features come with whatsapp web except audio and image capture
• Zoom in/out
• System tray icon
• Autostart with system
• Fullscreen mode
• Show/Hide headerbar by pressing Alt+H
• Spell check in system language. You might need to install the corresponding dictionary to get this working i.e. aspell-en package for English
• Open chat by phone number

Using whatsapp-for-linux

Check out releases for available packages.

Dependencies

• cmake >= 3.12
• gtkmm-3.0
• webkit2gtk-4.0
• ayatana-appindicator3-0.1

Build & Run

Development

# Create a debug build directory and go into it
mkdir -p build/debug && cd build/debug

# Build the project
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ../..
make -j4

# Run
./whatsapp-for-linux

Local installation

# Run inside the build directory once the application is built
# You'll probably need administrator privileges for this
make install

Packaging

Set RELEASE_VERSION environment variable before packaging. The actual version can be read from generated/VERSION file in the build directory.

Debian

# Build the package
dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us -ui

Snap

# Build the package. Pass --use-lxd option in a virtual environment
snapcraft

AppImage

# Make sure that the application is installed into the `<Project Root>/AppDir` directory
make install DESTDIR=../../AppDir

# Build the package
appimage-builder --skip-test --recipe ./appimage/AppImageBuilder.yml

Contributing

Please read contributing.

Code Contributors